Experts: Connecticut school could not have prevented shooting
Still, Bond said, there is no way for students and teachers to protect themselves when someone begins shooting with a weapon. He said even a security guard and locked doors could not have stopped the killer.
Without knowing the school’s security system, Kenneth Trump, president of consulting firm National School Safety and Security Services, stresses that schools need to be “looking for these lone wolf actors.”
“As a father, I would love to have a 100 percent guarantee that nothing bad will ever happen in my kids’ school, but as a rational school safety professional I know nobody can give me a 100 percent guarantee on safety,” said Trump.
But he has seen the danger drop at schools in the wake of Columbine. Dozens of shootings have been thwarted by students, teachers and principals sharing information and warning about students with weapons or plans to kill.
Blowback
Note from Hot Air management: This section is for comments from Hot Air's community of registered readers. Please don't assume that Hot Air management agrees with or otherwise endorses any particular comment just because we let it stand. A reminder: Anyone who fails to comply with our terms of use may lose their posting privilege.
Trackbacks/Pings
Trackback URL
Comments
I work in a school, no matter what you do there will always be access points, especially when students on the inside are older.
rob verdi on December 15, 2012 at 3:19 PM
This is the truest statement there is. By virtue of being born, we are all at risk of something bad happening to us. Even innocent children.
“But for the grace of God, go I.”
Still doesn’t change what a horror this is.
Bitter Clinger on December 15, 2012 at 3:21 PM
Okla. teen arrested in school shooting plot
Shy Guy on December 15, 2012 at 3:21 PM
Hey, but king/god Obama could have. Why didn’t he?
The indecent man inserted himself politically yesterday and today.
A decent president would have simply offered his/families’ and the land’s condolences to the families, who so tragically lost their loved ones, due to a sick young man.
Schadenfreude on December 15, 2012 at 3:21 PM
why couldn’t a security guard have stopped the killer??
Sachiko on December 15, 2012 at 3:25 PM
Even the worst totalitarian society that none of us would want to live in can stop every random act of violence. Perhaps in the future the ruling class will enslave us all to a tyranny so intrusive in our lives, perhaps even in our thoughts, that this sort of tragedy is impossible, but every freedom loving person who loves their family and friends and are responsible stewards of the future should strive to ensure that that never happens.
FloatingRock on December 15, 2012 at 3:26 PM
Probably because the shooter could have shot his way through a window and entered a classroom that way.
vegconservative on December 15, 2012 at 3:28 PM
Allow teachers to carry. Allow school employees to carry. It will all stop overnight.
These shooters are not brave. They are cowards. They aren’t shooting up police barracks. They go where they can feel powerful by killing as many as they can. that is only done when the shooting is easy. Fish in a barrel.
Gun Free Zones should be renamed to Slaughter at Will zones.
And as for employees and teachers being trained… none of these shooters are trained to handle weapons. It doesn’t matter if they are wearing body armor or not… they all are going in to shoot unarmed defenseless adults and children. And if suddenly someone starts firing back at them… not quite the same as shooting fleeing children.
It is way past time to stop this insanity! Ban gun free zones! Allow teachers to defend themselves and their children! give them something better than just running and hiding!
Stop the insanity! Allow guns in schools!
JellyToast on December 15, 2012 at 3:29 PM
I think not buzzing him in wd have been a start. Sure he could have broken a window but safety glass is not so easy to break. And then they could cut themselves. Also, it makes a lot of noise & slows them down giving them more time to call and get a police response.
This story is just pushing we must ban guns meme.
Blake on December 15, 2012 at 3:31 PM
Or maybe he could have been shot the moment he showed up with a gun… by a school employee who had one. Or several school employees. But this was a “gun free zone.” Guns weren’t allowed.
JellyToast on December 15, 2012 at 3:32 PM
You shoot through a window, you end up with a window with a bullet hole.
Blake on December 15, 2012 at 3:33 PM
I agree, if one or two administrators or parents were armed, maybe this could have been avoided or at least limited. But our society is just anti-gun enough that Lanza was certain that he’d be unopposed until police arrived. This is the result.
We have promote this ASAP on social media rather than just repeat it to ourselves.
elfman on December 15, 2012 at 3:36 PM
A sign on the door stating “The adults in this facility are armed” would prevent more killings than a sign declaring it a ‘gun-free’ zone.
agmartin on December 15, 2012 at 3:38 PM
The answer to mass killings like this, generally speaking, is not more tyranny, it’s striving to become a more ethical, responsible people. The truth is that young people in America don’t have much to look forward to in life, they have been, and are still being, sold out. They have been trained in school all their lives to think of somebody like Obama as an ideal, even though he, just like the Republicans, are stealing the future of young people to pay off their corporate cronies, labor cronies and other special interest groups represented by lobbyists, and so many young people, aside from Ron Paul supporters, think he is great.
But while young people today have been deliberately misinformed by the ruling class through the MSM and their schools and thus the young are unknowingly supporting the very politicians who are selling them out.
As a result of the fact that both political parties are literally destroying, (stealing and spending), the future of young people, thus leaving so many of them with little or no hope for the future, I think more of this sort of thing is going to happen, unfortunately. The more hopeless young people are, the more some of them are going to crack.
So the way to stop this sort of tragedy from happening in the future is to reform our government practices, stop deficit spending and money printing that supports the cronyism, so that young people will have a brighter future to look forward to.
The answer is to be a more responsible, ethical nation with a less corrupt government. More tyranny is the wrong answer and is not a viable solution. The only people that tyranny serves is the crony elite at the top.
FloatingRock on December 15, 2012 at 3:42 PM
sesquipedalian could have.
Schadenfreude on December 15, 2012 at 3:42 PM
You might not be able to stop him from firing the first round, but you sure as hell can stop from firing the 100th round.
BDavis on December 15, 2012 at 3:47 PM
This.
A friend and I were discussing the fact that you never hear of a lone, crazed, gunman shooting up a gun show or sportsmens club.
CurtZHP on December 15, 2012 at 3:47 PM
fix
FloatingRock on December 15, 2012 at 3:52 PM
The “facts” of this case have been changing on pretty much an hourly basis. But somehow Reuters’ “expert” has analyzed the situation to the point where he’s ready to criticize a security system — which he admits he knows absolutely nothing about.
Mainstream reporting at its finest.
logis on December 15, 2012 at 3:53 PM
But that’s where all the guns are, so that’s where all the shootings HAVE to be taking place.
logis on December 15, 2012 at 3:55 PM
Regardless of all the taxpayer money spent on security at public schools…they contend there is nothing they can do to stop the killing. Conflicting reports indicate the school had security safegaurds but may or may not have used them correctly. I have a tip for parents…don’t send your children to public schools and demand wherever they go to have teachers that are trained and armed.
trs on December 15, 2012 at 4:15 PM
yeah but the guard could run to the classroom and shoot the killer, that’s what i meant.
that’s what i’m doing, repeating these things on other sites. there are so many people out there who actually do not understand the logic of using a gun to shoot a killer!! they don’t understand the need to have a gun in that situation!! i try to explain why that’s necessary sometimes. and people just don’t understand what i’m saying, it’s like i’m talking to a wall.
Sachiko on December 15, 2012 at 4:29 PM
Every teacher should have a firearm in the classroom. There are no guarantees that anyone could have stopped this shooter, but, every measure possible should be taken to protect school children – training and arming teachers is a necessity.
Pork-Chop on December 15, 2012 at 4:33 PM
An insanely bad idea. assuming about 250,000 or so schools, daycares and colleges, public and private, in this nation, there would be too many opportunities for tragedy if every one had somebody armed on site on a regular basis.
Let’s assume for argument’s sake that once in 100 years an armed person inside a school, such as a guard or a principal, creates an incident. Maybe his gun gets lost or stolen. Maybe he has a bad day. Let’s then say one in ten results in one death. That’s one death in 1000 school years. Not to shabby if you’ve prevented a Columbine in the interim.
However, out of 250,000 schools, etc, that would mean 250 deaths per year, and since horriffic shootings at schools have been about 6 years apart, that would be 1,250 deaths by the protectors to prevent maybe a dozen or two from the psychos.
And there’s no guarantee that arming a person would stop a shooter from killing anyone. An armed guard might stop him from killing half. So to prevent just a dozen deaths you might withstand over 1000 deaths from the guns rightfully place within schools for protection.
Keep in mind that each death or injury caused by a gun allowed on campus would be a liability that would financially cripple the school system.
shuzilla on December 15, 2012 at 4:57 PM
Omnipresidentin’
Schadenfreude on December 15, 2012 at 5:02 PM
Sure, the school couldn’t have prevented a shooting, but they certainly could have prevented the massacre. But political protocols prevented the district from including the one security protocol that would have prevented the massacre, which left their system “ensuring” nothing more than annoyance or disturbance prevention for the students and parents.
Dusty on December 15, 2012 at 5:08 PM
The shooter took out most of the top tier of the school management before moving on to the classes. Likely he would have dispatched an armed guard stationed at the gate as soon as he was let through.
While I salute the bravery of the teachers that tried to protect their students, they really had no chance in an environment where they were required by policy and law to be helpless. All the metal detectors and ID requirement in the world don’t help you if you have no counter-force to oppose an armed killer who manages to get past your first layer of passive defense.
Socratease on December 15, 2012 at 5:24 PM
Nobody can guarantee what will happen in the future, especially gun-banning politicians. Almost certainly an armed teacher could not have stopped the shooting before he began, but almost certainly an armed teacher could have responded before 27 people were shot. Remember that the initial shots against the Principal were broadcast over the PA system, there was ample warning that something was going on.
Could an armed teacher have a bad day and lose their gun? Yes, they could. If you had an armed police officer in the schools, they could (and have) done the same. Are you claiming police officers should therefore not be armed? It’s always a balance between advantage and disadvantage, just like gun restrictions have the disadvantage of leaving victims helpless.
But also don’t forget the advantage of random teachers being armed on the decisions these shooters make. They choose schools and churches and shopping malls because of their policies of gun-free zones to guarantee a safe environment for their slaughter. Take away that guarantee and you shift the calculation.
Socratease on December 15, 2012 at 5:35 PM
So you believe that if you had to carry a gun you would kill someone every 3 years or so from having a bad day or gross stupidity.
Slowburn on December 15, 2012 at 5:50 PM
Every school should have at least have a locked gun cabinet, and adults trained in how to use those weapons.
Moesart on December 15, 2012 at 5:56 PM
I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t have gotten very far if all the of the teachers were armed.
Count to 10 on December 15, 2012 at 6:03 PM
You missed the entire point of my post. You’d have a point if every single school and daycare statistically had an even chance of such an attack in any given year. But each one has only about a one in one million chance of a Connecticut-style shooting each year. I think the chances of a death from a gun carried by someone invited into a school is greater than that of a gun held by an assailant. If we were having a civil war, and such attacks happened daily, that would be a different story.
shuzilla on December 15, 2012 at 6:12 PM
I wrote no such thing. I presumed, for argument’s sake, that once in 100 years there would be an incident with a gun carried by a guard or faculty at a given school, and that 1 in 10 of those incidences would result in one death on average. Or, every 1000 years of a person carrying a gun in a school there would be one death as a result. I think that is pretty generous. How did you get one every three years?
One death in 1000 years at a given school, if it saved a Columbine from happening, seems like a good deal. But there is only a one in a million chance of a Columbine happening at any given school in any given year, meaning the risk from allowing just one person to carry a gun is greater than the risk of a mass shooting, at any given school. Do you get it now?
All it takes is for the perp to figure out that there’s no need to smuggle a firearm into a school, and you’ve got your liability issue. One kid distracts the guard, the other cold cocks him from behind. They take the gun to class. One stands outside while the otehr empties the clip. Or there’s a gun cabinet/safe, as another poster suggets. You think students can’t find its location and break into it? Maybe not this year but how about next? How many faculty will have kids going to the same school where they teach, who might figure out a way to get the access code from the parent? What if this Adam guy had tortured and killed his Mom at home TO GET THE ACCESS CODE, walked into the school (hey, that’s Mrs So-N-So’s kid – Hi kid!), got into the safe and accessed weapons that way?
shuzilla on December 15, 2012 at 6:27 PM
Seems like that’s an argument for doing nothing. If somebody is upset their kid was shot in school, just console them by telling them their child’s death is a rare event and it’s the price we pay because allowing schools the means to defend their children is just too risky. I can’t wait to see the press releases on that.
I don’t believe that’s true, and the statistics don’t back you up. There are millions of defensive gun usages every year according to surveys by the (hardly pro-gun) government. Gun accidents are a vanishingly small factor in American life, and children injured or killed due to gun accidents in homes that have them are even smaller. Schools can certainly have training and storage requirements for teachers who want to carry, but a blanket everybody-is-incapable gun ban is simply brain-dead political correctness taken to ridiculous extremes and an open invitation to maniacs.
As I said, and a point you also missed: if your point were true, armed police officers would be more of a risk than an aid, since their accident rate would outweigh their utility in preventing crimes. After all, you yourself don’t have a better than even chance of being the victim of a crime in any one year, either. (If you do, you should move to a better neighborhood, quick.)
Socratease on December 15, 2012 at 10:58 PM