Schools Are Spending Billions on High-Tech Defense for Mass Shootings | Hacker News Reader

Schools Are Spending Billions on High-Tech Defense for Mass Shootings

nytimes.com

6 pointspseudolus9 comments

Because that's the easy out for politicians. The harder path and the one that has the best chance of actually working - major gun control - takes politicians with courage. We know how that works.

> major gun control

a huge portion of the country doesn't agree with this

A recent poll suggests that seventy percent of Americans think enacting new gun control laws should take precedence over protecting ownership rights. So a larger portion of the country does agree with this.

> So a larger portion of the country does agree with this.

but 50% will vote red (roughly), 50% will vote blue (roughly), and the red party as a whole has displayed 0 interest in banning the "loophole" that is... an 18 year old can pass a quick online background check (near impossible to check the background of a young adult when history is so little) and be given an AR-15 legally

70% poll is useless unless our democracy/voting structure somehow changes in a way that would allow those 70% of people to have their opinions result in change

The Uvalde police did not do their jobs. How can you screen for cops that will confront a gunman? I think that is as important as more spending on equipment.

It’s not a screening, it’s training at least according to an expert on such things, Jocko (retired SEAL commander/trainer). In a podcast talking thru the timeline of actions in Uvalde it was much clearer from his perspective that consistent training makes things muscle memory. The other key concept he talked about that paired with training was decentralized command, first on scene that has training becomes the lead person on what immediate actions to take with the information at hand and leads. He does call out that he isn’t talking SEAL level training, just basic stuff, using radios, using information learned (i.e. where is active shooter, what direction are they shooting, etc.) and what actions to take, how to breach a door, basic stuff.

After listening to his perspective and the accounts of what happened it’s obvious now there was a lot of indecision and no leadership. His final point was people will scoff at police spending 20% of their time training and he counters with would you rather have 10 hardly trained police show up or 8 well trained police show up to an event like that. His reaction to a lot of the “arm teachers”, etc ideas was also “they need to be trained”.

> The Uvalde police did not do their jobs

devil's advocate but like... maybe the general public incorrectly assumed that public servants like police officers making $60k/yr are going to risk getting killed?

like... i do 9am-5pm in my house, for a lot more than $60k/yr. you could not pay me $60k/yr to run into an active shooting situation. why would i expect somebody else, regardless of their job title, to risk dying to protect others?

heroes are cool and amazing but... why are we expecting somebody earning a median salary whose main job is like... traffic stops, domestic violence disputes, noise complaints

it isn't even about money. i don't think paying somebody $250k/yr magically ok's society to say "well... it's your 40 hour a week duty to risk getting killed"

idk, i'm sure i'm wrong. i'm just being play-contrarian/devil's advocate/fake edgy

We do that for the military. Society definitely has the magic OK to say that people can trade money for risk, even to life and limb. I'm also relatively certain that a very good chunk of the US military is A: Willing to risk their lives in such a situation, and B: Not going to make the absolutely batshit insane choice of stopping others who were trying to resolve said situation.

In more general terms, there's a whole bunch of jobs out there where the pay is higher because of risk to life and limb too.

Yea these people literally sign up for the job. If they don't want to do the job maybe they should be somewhere else doing a different job

But the reality is that a lot of cops just want to exercise power over those weaker than themselves

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