What are some other options that would help keep our kids safe? Put it all on the table.

1: Homeschool I guess;
2. Doors that lock and no one gets in or out during school hours?
3. Frisk and search each kid and backpack at the start of the day prior to locking down the school?
4. More counselors and anti bullying campaigns, ( we have a lot of this already)
5. Attack Dogs roaming the halls?

I am all ears.

A single cop isn't going to do jack shit against a shooter.

Having said that, cops in schools are not bad ideas. We had one in one of the schools I where I worked.

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-----------------------------Baron Von Speedypants
-----------------------------RunTraining articles here:
http://forum.slowtwitch.com/...runtraining;#1612485

This is just not true. The rate has gone up, but mo SD this certainly not from 0.

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I'm beginning to think that we are much more fucked than I thought.

I do not recall a single one growing up in the 70s or 80s. first mass shooting I recall was columbine but surely someone will post about others to prove me wrong.

Point being I had ten times the access to guns, and everyone I knew did, than my kids do and kids everywhere now do. I have a hard time believing the rise ( if there is one) is caused by easier access to guns now than in the 70's and 80s, because its not easier now.

But as I said before, if someone comes up with a good plan to reduce school shootings, mall shootings, church shootings, etc let me hear it.

1974, Ayersville High School graduation near Defiance, OH. Between Bacalaureate and Commencement mom of one of my sister's classmates gunned down in the parking lot. There is a handy Wikipedia page that lists them with cites to sources. Not sure if that one is even on there.

I'm not saying they are nothing. But they have always been there. The rate has gone up yes. But not by an order of magnitude.

You listed 4 or 5 options literally without trying. We need to figure out why kids become murderous and work on that. I'm not an expert on child psychology but I doubt it is the absence of one police officer in their lives.

Not moving the goalposts, but thought of this as I was typing. If we harden schools so they are impenetrable to murderous kids, is that going to make them not be murderers or will they do it somewhere else ? The only way to do that is to figure out the why.

Spending billions a year on something that happens 25+/- times a year and on a tactic that has limited efficacy just doesn't make sense. There has to be a better place to focus.

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I'm beginning to think that we are much more fucked than I thought.

I worry that it will do just the opposite. If we treat our kids like murderers constantly, I tend to think that more of them will become murderers and the level of school violence will only increase. If we communicate that we expect them to go on a shooting spree at any moment, these incidents will become just another form of teenage rebellion.

For a cogent discussion, you need a cogent hypothetical. As many have pointed out, you're offering a false choice.

Sure, if you knew for a fact that your kid's school would be attacked tomorrow, and that your kid had to be at school, you'd want someone there to defend them. But that's not the situation any of us is facing.

1. If we knew a school would be attacked, we wouldn't send our kids to that school.
2. The question isn't whether we want a cop (or multiple cops) at your kids' school. It's whether we can afford to put cops at every school. 1 cop per school won't do it, so $5 billion is a meaningless number. You need multiple cops to cover down on most schools. If nothing else, you need extra cops to cover down when primary cops are sick or on vacation, etc. So we're looking at $10 billion or more.
3. We don't know when a school will be attacked. Spending money that is 100% going to put a cop in the path of a perpetrator is not the same as spending money that might have a very small chance of putting a cop in the path of a perpetrator.

Your hypothetical is meaningless. If I knew for a fact that I'd be shot at in my car on the highway tomorrow, would I want a bullet proof vehicle? Sure. Am I willing to spend the money on a fully bullet proof car today on the off chance that I might someday be shot at? Of course not.

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Slowguy

(insert pithy phrase here...)

Don't worry, it sounds fucking Looney Toons to me here in the US too.

Great! You can take the officer we had at my kids' HS that had to get fired for perving on some of the girls.

All your & ACE's stupid hypotheticals are based on the assumption that the cops are all, always and only, part of the solution ~ while the unfortunate reality is that they can also be part of the problem at times. If/when you suddenly decide to increase the size of the police forces, just like when the military has to try and cast a wider net for recruits, the selectivity of the screening process will almost certainly suffer. Back in my day, we had a cop assigned to our HS too, actually in hindsight he was a really good guy even though of course at the time being punks we all referred to him as Pig Wilson. But can you count on 100 out of every 100 being an asset 100% of the time? What about 99/100 being an asset 95% of the time? It's one thing to have a few random shitty patrol cops rotating through various beats & such throughout the city, but having one assigned to your school all day every day is a different kind of exposure. We all know any decent-sized force is gonna end up w/ a few bad apples, or at least several lesser ones.

So, what are the odds your school ends up w/ one of the shitheads? It's probably still pretty low, but if you want to keep pulling hypotheticals out your ass, I'm gonna go ahead and posit that the odds of drawing a cop that's worse than no cop is greater than the odds of a school shooting. And I live in an area where we've had 2 school shootings in our media coverage area since I can remember (20+ years); 1 student shot fellow students, and 1 where the local PD (not an officer assigned to the school) was called and ended up shooting a parent who wouldn't leave the property without a struggle. During that same timeframe, I've lost count of how many news 'scandals' (or whatever you wanna call 'em) about crooked/abusive/unfit cops.

You're going to have a REALLLLY hard time convincing me that having a cop assigned to your school who turns out to be unfit for the job (harassing the girls, or selling drugs, or stealing, or forgetting his firearm in the shitter, whatever...) isn't a vastly more realistic hypothetical than one preventing your kid from getting shot.

No. Not at all.

Even university security is very different. I was working at a large university in Sydney up until 12 months ago. The campus sprawled over 300 acres. There would be small number of unarmed security staff on duty throughout the evening. Their job would largely be to check afterhours building security, file theft/lost property reports, escort staff/students to car park/train station or bus stops if requested late at night, etc.

In Australia, gunshots fired in an inner city or suburban area (no injuries, no fatalities) are likely to make the national morning news.

Most Australians just look at the US and shake their heads.

i've said it before: if i thought there was a reasonable likelihood that my child would be shot at school tomorrow, i would move. i realize that might be evading the hypothetical question posted above, but to me it's a fair answer to a ludicrous situation.

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https://lshtm.academia.edu/MikeCallaghan

http://howtobeswiss.blogspot.ch/

Similarly, if I felt that I needed to carry a handgun with me for protection... I would move.

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How does Danny Hart sit down with balls that big?

Likewise, I was doing something stupid. I was reading the comments on an editorial on the murder that happened on the AT last week.

Even though hiking is statistically one of the safest places in the world - on the AT, there have been 10 murders in 45 years, which sees more than 3 million people a year - many people say that you should never, ever, ever go into the woods without at least a 1911 on your hip, open carry laws be damned. Some people are just scared of living.

And open carrying a pistol in Georgia or the Carolinas or Virginia might not be a big deal, but do so in NY or Mass, you are going to prison for a minimum of 18 months. First offence in Mass is mandatory minimum of 18 months. In NY it's a Class C felony, mandatory minimum of 3.5 years.