A pre-K teacher on the trouble with lockdown drills
washingtonpost.com
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My daughter was in JK ("Pre-K") last year. If the school pulled a stunt like this, she wouldn't be attending it anymore. It's offensive and pathetic... I really thought I was fully jaded enough with the public school system that nothing could surprise me anymore, but well I guess I was wrong.
Is this is some sort of Orwellian conditioning process to prepare these young minds for the friendly Homeland Security Officers that will be riding armored tanks around town in the not-to-distant future?
Do people think these drills are reasonable, proportionate, and beneficial? It's sounds completely toxic to me. There are innumerable ways you could help increase K-12 students likelihood of surviving a multitude of common disasters, or fatal accidents. Let's talk about what to do if you see a downed electric wire. Or how to recognize a stroke. Or teach them the the Heimlich maneuver. Or how to find people to talk to if you're feeling depressed. Or not to drink the shit under the kitchen sink, or eat anything in the medicine cabinet. Or how to safely cut with a kitchen knife. Or how to make a disaster readiness plan with your family. You know, shit that actually maims or kills more than 1 in 10,000,000.
Practicing hiding in the closet because a killer is roaming the halls with an assualt rifle... Either this is an "agenda" or someone needs to get a fucking clue. I guess in that sense, the last two paragraphs of the article clarified it for me.
Absolutely! Isn't that taught?
> If the school pulled a stunt like this, she wouldn't be attending it anymore.
That's kind of throwing the baby out with the bathwater? Would you really make such a binary choice about such a small part of the school? And what school would you choose instead?
> Either this is an "agenda" or someone needs to get a fucking clue.
Surely its a combination of small factors such as people being genuinely scared that their school will be next or that its dictated from above the school level?
To me, it reflects so poorly on the judgement of the school administrators that it should make people seriously question what's going on. Every school does fire drills, probably because there's some regulation requiring it, and the mental framework for the drill is that there's an accidental fire in the building. This is an entirely different league. This is a "terrorist loose in the hallways" training exercise for 5 year olds. I'm mad enough it happened to someone else's kids.
Just to give some context, my daughter's JK teacher brought her horse to school for show-and-tell, she gives my daughter riding lessons (and yes there's a lot of trust involved letting someone help your 5 year old ride a horse), she had my daughter over for dinner one night when we had to take my son to the ER. It's a parent-participation school so regularly I spend time in the classroom. I could not imagine a more nurturing, peaceful, and loving environment. The juxtaposition of that with this terror drill is hard for me to reconcile.
I totally agree this is a combination of fear and horrible policy-making by administrators. I in no way hold the teachers responsible/accountable for this.
(For the record we definatly dont do that, but im also in japan haha. )
Drilling for fire alarms or an earthquake are entirely different in my mind than drilling for a terrorist roaming the halls. That's why I think it's toxic, because it's spreading fear, and to an extent it's conditioning children to expect such a thing.
Fire drills don't create an environment of fear because it's in the context of a passive/accidental/natural event. Fires happen all the time. When my daughter was in pre-school a couple firemen spent an hour in our daughter's classroom and then fully suited up, because apparently kids who have never seen a fully geared up fireman will often hide/run from them instead of going to them in a fire. She had a wonderful time playing dress up with them, but she also started to learn about how fire is serious and to stay away from it.
But, let's play the "Hide-from-my-terrorist-classmate" game... just I don't know.... I don't want to think about, "Daddy, why did we practice hiding in the closet at school today?"
On a tangent - there was, nearby, a bill motion that would not allow high school students to graduate without attending a CPR class. I like that.
Following Washington passing I-594 (removing the gun show background check loophole) with a vote of about 60% reared the ugly truth that at least 20% of Republican voters voted for this, something that is hard to reconcile with "Obama is coming for your guns". So, predictably, this aspect has been ignored.
I've realized many Americans will never see high-caliber/high-capacity assault rifles as an easier problem to solve than mental health or psychopathic triggers. It is also not an XOR, because you can try to solve both in parallel.
The rest of us non-Americans are just glad our psychopaths and murderers are nowhere near as effective as American ones. And that our children can go to school without having to practice hiding under their desks to avoid being slaughtered mercilessly by some random guy. With a gun.
> "assault rifles"
Maybe part of your problem is that you are not particularly informed when it comes to gun laws and crimes committed with guns in the US. Americans, who are familiar with both, immediately notice your ignorance and tune out whatever you are saying.
Assault rifles in the US are heavily regulated at the federal level (as are all other automatic weapons). Since 1934, there have only been two murders with legally owned automatic weapons. One was in 1988 (the murderer was a cop^), the other was in 1992. In neither case was the machine gun an assault rifle (both were machine pistols). To put this in perspective, there are hundreds of thousands of legally owned machine guns in the US.
Legally owned assault rifles simply are not a problem for America.
^ Worth noting since law enforcement are are still allowed to purchase new automatic weapons, while other American civilians are not.
Maybe they should be worried more about road safety, heart disease, diabetes, wars so many more pressing issues.
I hear all this talk about "well it is in the Constitution". Let's talk about Constitution. It is a not a scroll passed down from God, contrarry to what many believe. Founding Fathers are not Moses and Abraham. It was a piece of paper written hudreds of years ago, when arms meant rifles and pistols. Some things in it cannot be taken literally anymore. What was the purpose of letting people have arms? Presumably not just to hunt rabbits, but mostly to protect against government abuse and to be able to overthrow it.
Except arms doesn't mean rifles anymore. It means ICMBs, sattelites, fighter jets, shaped charges, IEDs, EMPs, aircraft carriers. Climbing on the roof of your house with a rifle will do jack shit to being able to oppose or protect against "government abuse". It is pointless and stupid. I've seen people go to Startbucks with their AR-15 slung over the shoulder. Really? This is a grown up toddler walking around showing their toy off. Maybe it should be one of those thing if someone really really wants a gun, they shouldn't be allowed to have it, because they are a little too obsessed with it.
On the other side, I don't get the "lets ban the guns" crowd either. So what if some people want to go to gun ranges and shoot soda cans. Or even be idiots and show off their AR-15 at Startbucks. They won't overthrow the government because they'll start shooting each other first. Criminals will find ways to get access to guns anyway. Want to save the children. Best way is to put more money into education, healthcare, social care, after school programms, assist parents and so on.
You are actually quite wrong. All those weapons you mention are useless for dealing with small groups of people. Those weapons are for taking out huge installations and entire countries.
Even the most oppressive government you can imagine does not kill its citizens in mass, they do it in small numbers. And rifles work perfectly fine to protect against that.
They might not help if the government decided to take out an entire city - but the government can't do that very often before having no one to govern.
Look at Syria and ISIS. What weapons are they using against the established government of the area? (Not making moral judgments here by saying "established", just using them as an example.) They are using small arms, not fighter jets.
assault rifles have always have been illegal, assault-style weapons are different from assault weapons, and are the only thing that has ever been under popular political debate
Armor piercing rounds are legal to sell, purchase, own and shoot. Steel-core rounds are illegal to manufacture or import.
Teflon-coated rounds are a fantasy. They exist, but do absolutely nothing to make them more effective - instead, they are intended to extend the life of a gun's barrel by limiting wear.
Tanks are not illegal. Armed tanks are also not illegal, provided the main weapon is registered as a destructive device, along with any active explosive or incendiary rounds for it. Training rounds are (e.g. chalk) are unregulated.
I oppose all firearms regulation, period - but let's get our facts straight. :)
In that case I want to demand legislation to have rocket launchers, AA-manpads, propane tank cannons, Shilkas (ZSU-23-4, they work very well for the ground, especially in urban areas, never know where that armored police trunk will roll by) and so on. Semiautomatics and pistols would be a joke there.
Is there any recent example of any of these millitia groups successfully opposing the US government and winning?
- Waco Seige?
- MOVE standoff, where Uncle Sam bombed a whole city block.
I wouldn't call those successes exactly.
Afghanistan. Not just the American government, the USSR had to withdraw from there as well just about 20 years before.
Also, can't think it would have been legal during the Soviet occupation. Presumalby we should then ban the guns here as well if we are to follow the model then?
Or, if we don't then I want an ammendment to let me have Stinger missles. Pretty sure just semmiautmatics and pistols wasn't quite enough to shoot down military helicopters and blow up whole convoys between mountain passes.
Also, from the history of recent internal conflicts (e.g Ukraine) a militia fighting its own government can obtain and use tanks and artillery quite easily as there are plenty of people on the both sides who are trained to use such equipment.
All but the most oppressive government doesn't lightly kill its citizens. It instead sets up a propaganda campaign, paints an image of dangerous dissidents, and tell the common people to fear them and join the good (that is, the government's) side. And you know what: rifles works "perfectly" in that framework. If I were a covert agent in a dictatorship and if I had no conscience, I'd propose letting a few individuals get away with their rifles, and the government can go a merry chase to protect "public safety" while associating everyone who wants a better government with those "terrorists".
It turns out the framers knew a lot about human nature, and the nature of government. Humans have done bad things with guns since long before 1789. This is something the framers considered extremely carefully and concluded the risks of an unarmed populace far exceed and outweigh the benefits of an unarmed populace. In my opinion, nothing has changed in this regard. If anything, the risks of disarming have seemed to increase dramatically.
IMO, fear of guns is highly irrational versus the fear of a government not beholden to its population.
We are past the point where the weaponry available to the average civilian is sufficient to form a militia capable of holding back the armed forces, should the armed forces choose to cooperate in suppression of the civilian population. Syria doesn't have the capabilities the US forces do, and it shows.
So if the point of the 2nd Amendment is to defend the people from the government through the threat of the people taking up arms against the government, it can be deemed a failure.
The government is not a single perfectly cohesive faction. In extraordinary situations, people will do extraordinary things. Surely if you believe such a future is at all possible, then it would be pure insanity to relinquish the 2nd.
But even if you concede such a future is impossible and government is perfectly benevolent, it is the 2nd Amendment, it should be respected or repealed by proper vote, or else in defacing it you deface the whole document.
The reality is that these terrorist attacks (purposely inflicted mass civilian casualties) are horrible and appalling, but thankfully at least incredible rare, shocking, abhorrent events. This is not an excuse for indoctrinating fear into schoolchildren. The response to terrorism must be measured, considered, and appropriate. Or else the 'Terrorists Won', right? I see TFA, to some extent, as the terrorists have one.
Liberty never will but terrorism will. Anyone opposing will be classified as a terrorism, and trust, most people will believe that.
People can be very easily controlled. And rifles and will to nothing here. Think how many wanted to go to war and agreed to fight in Iraq. How many believed and still believe that Saddam was alqaeda. Or think about people consistently voting against their own interest.
It's about people in this country treating guns like their favorite playtoy.
Every freaking thing glorifies guns and what used to be people just committing suicide is now "hell I'll take a dozen people with me because it is so easy".
It's a mental illness and we absolutely refuse to deal with mental illness in this country.
The firearm is just the means, the motivation is the real question.
Think how nice your country would be if that were so where you live too.
In Switzerland - where most men have a proper army rifle at home - when there's a break those men don't think "where's my gun?" to go get it and use it but rather to hope that the thief doesn't find it.
(Just picking countries I have actually spent time in; if you can pick out other local norms that you think would make the world a nicer, safer place please share; there's bound to be loads more!)
Social norms will police society. Who wants to live in a bigger society where people seem to buy guns with the explicit intention of actually having the ability to use them on others?
The US doesn't need laws it needs a change in the definition of acceptability. Let guns be the defining acquisition of low-life scum and let the idea that respectable people would arm themselves against the scum be ludicrous and giving in to letting the scum terrorize.
I know everyone is going to downvote everyone in this whole thread based on whether they are pro or con guns, which is a shame; better if we used the votes to promote a meaningful debate regardless of which side we personally shoot for?
Now I'm not the kind of man to shoot my own kids or anything like that, but statistically its the man who is most likely to use a handgun to shoot his own family rather than use it to protect them in any kind of superhero intervention dream.
Every American who thinks guns solve disputes should live in Scandinavia and get a feel for how good things can actually be when life is looked at differently and norms are different. I strongly recommend that therapy. Change cultural norms I say!
It's time to have a serious chat about gun control, America. Is the NRA really that powerful that all sensible debate is quelled?
It literally boggles my mind that people make this suggestion with any sincerity.
Seriously though, either:
- school shootings are a statistically significant threat, in which case, arming teachers who wish to be armed seems reasonable
or
- school shootings aren't statistically significant, in which case, enough with the fear-mongering already
You can't point to other countries with no guns and just wish it were like that where you are. It isn't, it won't be for a very long time, and to pretend otherwise is just wishful thinking.
That seems a little silly to me - especially considering the rate of non-compliance with previous registration schemes. In California more "assault weapons" were sold in the state in the three months prior to the registration deadline than were registered. In Connecticut there are people calling for armed conflict over a similar registration scheme, and the reports I've seen say that there are about 100k unregistered weapons there.
Regardless of how you feel about guns, to believe that America could be disarmed in 5 years is exceedingly naïve.
Seems like the best plan is to give weapons to those most responsible, rather than only those who would use them for bad.
It's not like all guns are just going to disappear into thin air.
That's the old Charlton Heston argument. There are "good" people and "bad" people. How likely is it that a teacher is going to flip and kill Andy, 16, next time he shoots his mouth off?
> It's not like all guns are just going to disappear into thin air.
The UK essentially legislated away private gun ownership years ago. But of course, it's a society choice. I'd rather live in a society where my kid can go to school safely, with no guns on the premises.
It's true though. Even better, we can in practice select "good people" (defined as "won't murder somebody with a gun") from the general public with an exceedingly low false positive rate (although with a high false negative rate).
The combination of having to fill out stacks of paperwork for the ATF, go through their background checks, pay a $200 per-gun tax, and pay several thousands of dollars for the gun itself makes for a very effective "good people" filter.
Furthermore, people purchasing semi-automatic weapons are not subjected to the scrutiny that I described. What I described is the process that you go through if you want to buy an automatic weapon. The high price of semi-automatic rifles such as AR-15's discourage use by people who would abuse them, but the even higher price of automatic weapons is even more effective. Only two people have been murdered with legally owned automatic weapons since the 1930s.
http://qz.com/37015/how-school-killings-in-the-us-stack-up-a...
Your stats actually back my position up quite nicely, which is: if you're going to have an armed society, then probably the worst thing you can do is gather large numbers of children together under the care of people who are themselves unarmed.
Personally, I think that it's reasonable to be allowed to go armed in public; especially for the old, infirm, and physically weak a weapon is a great equaliser.
The problem comes when you have an armed society, with pockets of disarmed (as opposed to unarmed) prospective victims.
It's a have-your-cake-and-eat-it situation. Either you disarm the population (wearing the cost to those incapable of physically defending themselves, and also, best of luck with that) or you arm the teachers who wish to be armed.
Any other position is wishful thinking.
Because after the first shooting started by a teacher, there's really noone left to arm. Other teachers, or security are not exactly helpful here, because the shooter has easy access to taking kids hostage. Everyone who was useful has been armed. What's the solution now? And if there is one, why wouldn't we apply it as step one, before arming teachers?
Or, maybe just maybe, it might lead to less deaths by shooting if there were less guns floating around to do the shooting with?
When people say America is an oligarchy, this is what they mean. Your congressperson almost always does not represent you, they represent groups like the NRA. Sensible debate is not "quelled," Congress just does not want to have the debate at all. It is totally sensible for Congresspeople to not have what you would consider a real debate on gun control, because doing so would directly affect their chances of reelection. Instead they avoid the topic or engage in a sort of theater debate while the proverbial smoke-filled room dealmaking happens.
On top of this, many people do not grep the 2nd Amendment and truly believe that it protects all gun rights. In a sense it does, because that's how most people today interpret the Constitution: loosely. So public opinion is often with the NRA more than you might think, especially if you live in a blue state.
See also: the exclusion of a public option from Senate healthcare debates as a topic. It's a perfect example of this phenomenon.
Otherwise it rather looks like, oh, say, screaming about scary terrorists using encryption as an excuse to ensure insecurity for the rest of us.
The fact that a comment like yours always appears is a large part of why we can't ever have discussions about reasonable regulations.
Hell, where I live there are people who literally argue that property owners should not be able to decide whether to permit what are essentially armed trespassers, since that might infringe on someone's "right" to be armed on your property.
Focusing on cosmetics is silly, and some advocates of restrictions would just as soon see all guns gone, but I think most people just want to see common sense applied.
I think you have not talked to many gun fans. Exceptionally few crimes have been committed with legally and privately owned fully automatic weapons, so I see absolutely no reason why those laws should be revised. Your issue is with the illegally owned guns, and I think that few gun fans would object to enforcement of those laws.
I cannot think of any crimes committed with a legally owned RPG. Clearly the regulation for RPGs that is already in place is sufficient.
I worry when Governments go out of their way to disarm their citizens; even if they're benevolent at the time, they often don't stay that way. Look up the history of disarmament in pre-WWII Germany and Russia.
Today, you can purchase an SKS from a federally-licensesd dealer after a NCIC background check. You can then take that gun home and replace the magazine with one made in the United States, and no law is broken. Replace it with an identical magazine made in Poland, though, and you've committed a felony under 18 USC § 922(r), and if convicted face up to 10 years in prison.
The laws surrounding the ownership of arms in the United States are onerous and Byzantine. I've spent a great deal of effort doing my best to comply with those laws in order to exercise a right that's protected under the federal constitution.
Forgive me if I no longer treat "But we can compromise!" as a valid argument.
It would be so nice if Americans could somehow hand in their guns. On the Old Continent, if you are upset at XY and say that XY ought to be shot, it's viewed as obvious hyperbole, because people don't shoot each other. In America, it's a threat, because the culturally acceptable thing for an upset person is to go on a rampage with a firearm. It's crazy.
Please, no talk about "personal responsibility for one's safety". It's the environment that is safe or not, and a single person is plainly incapable of defending themselves against it. In a variation on Peel's principles, it's not the individual's responsibility to shoot criminals, it's society's task to prevent crime. I'm very cynical and have found that universally whoever talks about "personal responsibility" wants to unload their responsibilities on you.
Downvoters, shoot away!
No, even here, people just don't do that.
> because people don't shoot each other. In America, it's a threat, because the culturally acceptable thing for an upset person is to go on a rampage with a firearm. It's crazy.
It's crazy? No this idea of yours is. Where did you get it? Some bizarre movie?
No, in America people pretty much never shoot each other. I've heard there is this perception in other countries that you constantly have people shooting each other in America, but actually you don't. You could go your entire life and not see a gun.
> It's the environment that is safe or not
And it's safe. Not sure what that has to do with guns though. I guess the more guns people have the safer?
I think you might want to come to America and visit Texas, or some other area with greater than 50% gun ownership. You'll never feel safer.
You perception and reality are so far apart that words are not likely to convince you.
Interesting. This is technically incorrect, in a way that would leave it more misleading if corrected naively.
Any given American almost never gets shot or shot at, and any given American almost never shoots another. Partly because of the size of our population (and partly for some other reasons) it is pretty frequently the case that some American shoots another. That is not incompatible with it being not being a significant risk.
Government: Give me your guns.
The People: No.
By a "serious" "chat" you mean one in which The People surrender the law and their rights to the current government. In fact, that's not serious. That's juvenile.
People: Maybe we could figure out something that helps to keep known violent or mentally ill people from being able to go on killing sprees.
The NRA: LIBERAL OBUMMER FARTBONGO WANTS TO CONFISCATE EVERY GUN IN THE WORLD BUY ALL THE AMMO YOU CAN GET COLD DEAD HANDS COLD DEAD HANDS COLD DEAD HANDS
It is unfortunate that the very worst thing I can wish on you is to have to live in the society that results from implementing your views.
The NRA's entire schtick since 2008 has been, well, um, pretty much what I said. Plenty of analyses running around of ammunition prices/shortages and their relationship to the frankly vicious campaigns run by the NRA and other even less reputable organizations on its side of the issue.
What is juvenile is continuing to act -- and see this thread for examples -- as if reasonable gun policies are being held back by extreme gun-confiscation advocates who can't be trusted to know what they're talking about. Meanwhile, people die.
I am a gun rights advocate, and I most certainly do not use slurs to talk about Obama or anyone else.
Meanwhile, politicians who are leading figures in the gun control movement in Congress show a lack of basic knowledge, to the point that they often don't even understand the impact of their own bills.
Honest question--I've never owned a gun and I don't intend to.
http://www.theonion.com/articles/no-way-to-prevent-this-says...
Yes, it's satire.