They apparently didn’t want armed school resource officers or teachers carrying firearms. So they did this . . .
Most of the teachers in Jay Schools don’t know where each building’s handgun is kept. They also don’t know which of their co-workers are trained to use it.
Neither do the students nor their parents.
Here’s what they do know: There’s a gun in a biometric safe under camera surveillance somewhere in each of the district’s eight schools. It’s not in a classroom. In a life-threatening emergency, more than one trained employee in each of the schools is authorized to pull the trigger.
The details, school officials said, are purposefully kept confidential, the uncertainty serving as a deterrent.
Proponents of arming teachers say the approach could save lives. Detractors say they would rather see more firearms regulation than guns in classrooms.
– Emma Kate Fittes in Hidden somewhere in each Jay County school is a gun in a safe. Experts find the idea ‘flawed.’
And when this doesn’t work when needed because it took too long to respond to the threat in front of the teacher the left will scream that arming teachers didn’t work and gun ( I would say guns but they were only allowed 1 for the whole school) should be removed from the school.
1 locked up handgun that no one knows the location of, the combination of the safe or how to use it? What are the odds that it’s even loaded?
They’d be better off going back to that bucket of rocks in each classroom idea, at least you could go down throwing.
So…that leaves the bathrooms, janitor closets, teacher break room and the principal’s office.
Better than nothing I suppose.
“Detractors say they would rather see more firearms regulation than guns in classrooms.”
Of course they do. It’s always the same non-solution to address the wrong part of “a bad guy with a gun.”
Bets on whether the gun is stored unloaded or not? Me, I assume unloaded… not just unchambered, but actually unloaded.
Is this better than nothing? I’m 50/50 on that. A false sense of security is sometimes worse than nothing, and that is exactly what this feels like: security theater.
“Bets on whether the gun is stored unloaded or not? Me, I assume unloaded… not just unchambered, but actually unloaded.”
Of course, unloaded!
They will be around *children*, and their safety is the only thing that’s important…
It needs to be unloaded because it might “go off.” I hear they do that occasionally.
Our problem is you cant fix stupid, and these people really believe gun free or gun safe zones really work. Then the next step if that doesnt work is to strip us of our rights because they are afraid. Few of these people would volunteer for the service or to defend their homes. In a war they join the other side and inform on others. There is no fixing stupid….
This just shows how flawed their thinking is. But an arm some where is better then a sharp pencil hidden in a desk would be.
This plan shows one thing very clearly: the people who came up with it are more scared of guns than they are about the possibility of a school shooting.
I doubt the secret stays a secret, and I tend to think something more than just a singular handgun would be prudent. Still, it’s better than a bucket of rocks.
Sean G./The Rookie,
I disagree: a bucket of rocks in each classroom is a far better defensive measure than a single handgun locked in a safe somewhere, at least for grades 6 and above.
Why? A spree-killer will NOT be able to stand in the doorway to a classroom or inside a classroom and put shots on target while an entire classroom of children (grades 6 and above) are throwing tennis ball sized rocks at him/her. And if we are talking grades 8 and above, we are actually into lethal territory — meaning that a spree killer standing in a doorway or classroom probably would not survive the entire classroom throwing tennis ball sized rocks at him/her.
For grades 5 and below, a bucket of rocks isn’t such a great defensive measure. In those instances, hardened classroom doors (that a typical spree-killer would not be able to defeat/breach) would be much better. Of course armed volunteers onsite would be far superior.
I’ve always liked the concept of heavy bullet-proof doors with reinforced frames, hinges, and non-electric locks for classrooms. If the kids are going to shelter in place where armed faculty isn’t in the scheme of things, at least a real safe room might be justified as an alternative with construction costs. A door with a thick Lexan core inside kevlar sheets and sandwiched by one half-inch of tempered steel plate with dead bolts will easily repel the typical 5.56 round and anything short of a .50 AP round. If it worked for the State Department vehicles I serviced, it’ll work for a damned entryway door.
This would relieve teachers of the responsibility of being armed and negates the chance of faculty being disarmed by students. The libtards might be mollified but it still leaves the issue of police effectively dealing with an active shooter mixed in with people who might be outside the safe zones.
It will probably stop a .50AP as well. Two inches of hardend steel is about the limit of .50BMG. You already got one inch of steel, kevlar fibers, and a sturdy core, bullets would probably glance off the back layers and get trapped in the wall.
Armoring up the classrooms limits the casualties to one room-full. That’s great; better than letting a killer have the run-of-the-house.
The problem remains that the accepted number of casualties is a room full of students (plus 1 teacher). Is that number – about 31 – really “acceptable”?
So, armoring up doors is a worth-while approach. Yet, there are a lot of doors in a school; and, a limited tax-payer appetite to armor-up a school. Should we armor-up many individual classrooms? Or, armor-up a few exterior entrances?
I don’t presume to have the answer. We need to find solutions that are politically-acceptable and financially-acceptable and reasonably effective.
We PotG seem to jump immediately to arming a sufficient fraction of teachers to create a deterrent and a prompt response-time. The difficulty here is that the teachers’ unions will fight that approach and will stop it in most school districts. So, for a long time, we will still have school shootings. These incidents are bad for the cause of gun-rights, to say nothing of the loss of life. It’s in our own interest (and that of our nation’s children) to find some acceptable approaches to school shootings even if they don’t include our favorite approach.
Personally, I think we ought to consider equipping and training students (above a particular grade e.g., 6’th) with pepper-spray. These kids could reliably disrupt the shooter’s ability to carry-on after the first few shots were fired. By no means a perfect solution; nor a stand-alone solution. It is, nevertheless, politically-salable and economical.
We could rant and rave about ZERO casualties being the only acceptable number. We just can’t achieve that goal by any realistic approach. The best we might imagine is to limit the casualties to 1 – 3 before an effective response is brought to bear.
I think the Christchurch video confirms what a lot of people already know – people will cower helplessly in a corner before they fight back.
Children are going to distribute rocks and fight back? It’s nearly as absurd as things like bulletproof whiteboards they could be given to hold up.
A gun far away, locked up, is a half measure that will probably go underutilized. Expecting children to fight back is fantasy.
I’d give it a week before every teacher in the school knows who has access to the safe. Happy hour after school one evening and word will be out. Still better than nothing.
I agree, the anonymity has a deterrent effect, that’s why they should just allow concealed carry and be done with it. The little murdering shits will get the word about that too.
Considering velocity, I think a bucket of marbles and some slingshots would be a better idea.
There is some deterrence in that no one knows who the defender is, sort of like the Air Marshals. It will scare off some potential attackers. It would be more of deterrence if school ” protectors” are specifically mandated to “Shoot To Kill” first, ask questions later. Most of the recent mass shooters have survived their attack, which is bad policy, except in death penalty states.
Seems like a good idea to me.
As others have said, now there is an armed person at the school who can access a locked gun.
It is way better than the current system of calling 911 and waiting and hiding until they show up.
Docduracoat,
I am not convinced that a single, locked handgun is much better than calling 911 and waiting for police to show up.
Suppose the closest person who has access to the handgun is halfway across the school when an attack starts. It could easily take that person 10 seconds to hear the first sounds of an attack and determine that an attack is occurring which warrants getting to the gun safe. Then it could easily take that person 60 seconds to get to the gun safe. Of course we could be looking at another 5 seconds to open the safe and grab the handgun. And then it could easily take that person another 60 seconds to find and engage the attacker. That is a total of 10+60+5+60 = 135 seconds = 2 minutes and 15 seconds. Some recent police responses have actually been under 2 minutes. Of course some have been much longer.
I suppose this is a step in the right direction and could be helpful if the minimum police response time would typically be several minutes. On the other hand, enabling a spree-killer to operate unopposed even for 2 minutes and 15 seconds could easily mean 20+ dead students and staff.
And this still fails to address another fact: a determined spree-killer could operate outside the school when the crush of students are stepping off buses in the morning or getting onto buses in the afternoon. That is why we need responsibly armed volunteers inside and outside the school.
Jay County is rural, the police response time would be measured in 10s of minutes (like 20 on up).
What’s dumb about this idea is that all of the parents, kids and local hires to the school are as familiar with guns as the responding officers, maybe more so. Let parents, responsible students and non-liberal school employees provide security.
Some of these “kids” drive tractors, combines, pickup trucks hauling tons of produce, take care of animals that weigh hundreds of pounds or more, hunt, shoot pests and vermin, etc. All without killing anyone. So do their parents.
They should be security until the local cops show up.
A bucket of rocks in each classroom would be more effective, I fear.
Oh, and we have another mass shooting today in the Netherlands. You know, Europe. Where Obama tells us these things *never* happen, because they all have ‘common-sense gun control’.
“Manhunt Launched For 37-Year-Old Turk Following Utrecht Shooting”
“Local radio is reporting that at least one person has been killed and several injured after multiple shots were fired in a tram in a Dutch city of Utrecht.”
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-03-18/1-dead-multiple-injured-gunman-opens-fire-utrecht-tram
Guy really did stir up a hornet’s nest.
The whole thing is a fucking farce. They even blur the face of the NZ shooter in court.
At this point I almost hope it plays out the way he wants it to. If we’re stupid enough to play his game then we deserve the prizes.
Yep, I’m about 3/4 through his ‘manifesto’ and it reads like ‘Mein Kamph’ ( I have a hard back copy from 1938) The key to understanding is to pay attention on the ‘how’ a thing is done, not the ‘why’. (The why will never make sense, to me anyway)
Things I’ve read this morning in the news include a 22 year old in NZ being arrested for sharing the video.
Manifesto shooter fired his attorney and seeks to represent himself in court…He’s not doing this on a whim.
https://www.activistpost.com/2019/03/memory-hole-new-zealand-news-reports-suggested-2-shooters-ieds-found-strapped-to-multiple-vehicles-suspects-strange-travel-history.html
They should have entombed the pistol inside a block of concrete with a sledge hammer attached to a chain nearby while they were at it; “In case of emergency, break concrete.” Or made the safe a keypad/voice-print/biometric/dual-key-turn/breathalyzer combo lock, thus ensuring it can never be used in an emergency.
Morons…and yet, this dumb scheme is likely still more effective than waiting for police to arrive many minutes later. Really puts those fast response times they’re so proud of into perspective, don’t it?
Not the best idea but I’ve heard worse.
The fundamental problem with this is that, just like Parkland, it requires someone to run to the gunfire while the people who are asked to endure the incoming rounds remain unarmed.
Their thinking is partway to where it needs to be. Sort of like some of the brakes on the car work and some do not.
Sure hope they never need to do a panic stop.
True, just because baby steps aren’t big boy steps doesn’t mean we should poo-poo them. Just like ‘shall issue’ is leading to Constitutional carry, perhaps when the hoplophobes notice a lack of blood in the streets (halls) they’ll become more comfortable with the idea of guns in schools.
So, once activated, the designated responder(s) has to race to the hidey hole, unlock the gun safe, take the pistol (that someone else was responsible for maintaining and loading…was it maintained?…was it loaded?), then respond to the scene, determine the in-progress incident warrants use of deadly force, while trying to suck oxygen in through every pore of their hyperventilating, adrenaline dumped body…What could possibly go wrong? Defensive gun use can only occur when you actually have a gun…on you…at the time it is most needed.
Just another example of “off body carry”, NEVER a good idea…
“handgun”
Singular, and nobody knows where it is, and nobody knows how to use it(save a select few)…that just great…
“the uncertainty serving as a deterrent.”
To what end, someone just looking for the gun(safe)…??? What a stupid idea and implementation, which inevitably, could get someone(s) killed…And then liberals would have a field day…
Much better to just put a gun safe in the principle’s office, leave it empty, and tell everybody there is a super duper .9mm in there but its invisible. So be very afraid bad guys… invisible .9 milliiiiii meterrrrrr. scary!……… BOOO!
/sarc off/
Excuse me Mr. Murderer, I have to run and unlock the safe so I can get a gun to shoot you with. Yup, that’s a real deterrent right there. A school RO would be first target, but a teacher that’s carrying a weapon concealed is harder to spot. Murdered will never know who has a gun. In Texas most school districts allow licensed administration, faculty and staff ( yes even janitors ) to carry. Some school districts advertise that there are weapons in the school, but not which personal are armed, others do not advertise that fact.
“Well, it was there”… so then they will need an investigation into what happened. That could take years, and Government grants, resulting in an outcome no better than what the fbi reached in Las Vegas.
In the meantime everyone will have forgotten about the dead when it was the living who should have received the attention, but Administrators sought absolution, pushed the problem off on someone else and people died. A culture of death has no business protecting the living.
The intentional culture of idiots inside the academic system who have no real-life experience being given responsibility for life-and-death decisions for their kids just boggles common sense. A hidden gun locked up and relying on a “Where’s Waldo” approach of defense is ludicrous.
If this was in Washington, or any other state with UBC, the teacher would have to pass a background check before taking possession of the firearm. So you’d need to keep an FFL with a hotline to the NICS check people locked in the box with the firearm.
There should be more than one stashed around the school and more than one trained. It’s like our town only has 60,000 people so we only need one firehouse right in the middle of town. The part about other teacher’s not knowing might make sense to some but what happens when the armed teacher gets pointed out as THE gunman? parents do not need to know and local LEOs should know, at least by photo but personal coordanation would be safer.
any bets on no one ever checks in on said firearm and the battery is well past dead on the day of need, so the lock in in-op and the teacher just stands there while the baddy bangs away at kids??
I hope these teachers do not teach Logic class , the kids would flunk.
It’s manifestly evident that the modern Left doesn’t give a damn violence against children. How does a reasonable person attend an “anti gun” march in the morning and then a “post birth abortion” march in the afternoon?!? The mere fact that the Left and media have to lie about “gun violence” statistics shows that their agenda is insincere. In fact, the modern Left is against anything that might reasonably reduce or eliminate school shootings. The fact is, the Left NEEDS school shootings so to push their totalitarian agenda.
Secured areas and a way to fight back have been the ONLY effective deterrent to violence since mankind lived in caves. Childishly declaring a location “off limits” to guns is arguably the opposite of a deterrent. One might argue that most school layouts and planned response to a violent attack maximize the number of casualties without doing anything to actually protect kids.
The hypocrisy is clear when you see what steps Leftist take to protect THEMSELVES- ie. fences/barriers and armed security. Want to see REALLY effective security? Checkout the Oscars.
How about this. Have a combination gun safe in the principals office with a pass code that only teachers that have gone through a gun training program know. It would probably also be a extra layer of security if the safe had a feature of either a fingerprint reader or an iris reader on it. Inside would be two loaded shotguns, one with #4 buck and the other with slugs plainly marked as well as a couple of handguns. In an emergency, a trained teacher could go there and open the safe, removing the guns and pass them out to the other trained teachers. At the end of the school year the guns could be transferred to the local police/ sheriffs department until the new school year starts.
Seriously retarded…one gun to rule them ALL. Whut da’ eff is wrong with a non-cowardly resource officer?!? Home school for the win😄😊😏
seems like comments broken, anyone else having issues ?
It will be too little, too late.
This is just posturing. Someone is fooling themselves.
Firearms are not talismans or charms.Firearms must be carried and trained with to be of any value..
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