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Comment by alwa | Hacker News Reader

Normally I’d ding a comment like this as low-effort, but… I honestly can’t think of any more appropriate reaction.

I know I’m behind the times, but I was surprised recently when, at an elementary school in the US, they showed me painted lines on the floor of the classroom, indicating the zones out of the line of fire for somebody shooting through the small, jail-like window in the door… apparently they train the babies on this.

I wonder what led up to a system like that—overcompensation for a really big mistake in the past? Abstract fears? The genuine wishes of the parents?

(Edit: looks from sibling comments like this [the pickup line technique] might be a hangover from the excesses of the COVID times…)

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> I know I’m behind the times, but I was surprised recently when, at an elementary school in the US, they showed me painted lines on the floor of the classroom, indicating the zones out of the line of fire for somebody shooting through the small, jail-like window in the door

It all seems overdone and ridiculous, but when you get a phone call from your child as they sprint from the school building to the safety of the woods due to shots fired in the building, you're glad they did prepare for the "when to stay" and "when to run" decision...and then after you realize that it's even more ridiculous that they had to use that training.

That was the longest couple hours of my life, but knowing that the kids got the f** outta there made it a bit more bearable.

Uff. I can't even imagine. I'm so sorry for you and your kids alike. And I guess it's not the precautionary floor lines that strike me, it's that this style of violence really is so pervasive—and we've concluded that it's such an inevitable part of childhood now—that the reasonable thing to do is to reify it in the physical architecture of their day-to-day lives. And in training young minds to imagine themselves unarmed in a situation of combat...

Of course we don't get to just choose innocence and be surprised by a style of evil behavior over and over again. But I wonder also sometimes if, just as suicides can inspire people who hear about them, large-scale and permanent institutional response to kids-shooting-classmates gives form and legitimacy to that avenue of acting-out, when disaffected kids think about acting out.

> it's that this style of violence really is so pervasive

Agree, and it's tragic that this is were we are in the US, and the only concrete action we're willing to take (thoughts and prayers don't count) is to try to mitigate the impact of a shooting rather than preventing it.

So about 12 people were curious but not too surprised when our American friend told us her experience of a school shooting at her university. She was in a different building to the shooter.

The room was shocked into silence when she said "oh, and there was the time at my elementary school..." and had another experience of guns at a school.

We had been surprised by this:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/mar/08/one-in-15-amer...

These numbers don't remotely pass a smell test. The same study claims 2% of Americans have been injured in a mass shooting, and cites 500 mass shootings a year.

2% of 340mm = 6.8mm injured in a mass shooting Conservatively assuming that's equally spread across all ages, and assuming a lifetime of 80 years, implies 6.8mm/80 = 85,000 people injured a year 85,000/500 mass shootings a year = 170 people injured per shooting

This is absurdly high - the Pulse nightclub shooting for instance injured 60 people.

It's obviously harder to analyze the number of people that 'witness' a shooting, but it also seems implausible that an average of ~595 people are witnessing each of these 500 shootings.

The problem here is that self-reported studies like this are incredibly unreliable. Interestingly, the same effect appeared in a pro-gun study, which cited an insane 2+ million defensive gun uses a year.

There's no incentive not to take unreasonable precautions.

If something happens and you didn't do everything people imagine could have prevented it, you'll be fired, you'll be sued, and your name will be dragged through the mud.

If you take a bunch of unreasonable precautions and nothing happens, you're fine.

School shootings became very publicized twenty years before the pandemic, Columbine in 1999. School shooting drills and lockdowns became more common afterwards as few realistic solutions have been passed and nothing has been done to mollify the fears of parents.

School shootings happen at school, not to and from them. (Obviously kids get shot. But mass shootings requires amassing.)

America is the special combo of too much coddling and fuck-em, all at once.

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