Gun dogs?

mcmurry said:

So last week on my morning Arkansas news program, they had a brief story about one of the cities here buying a drug dog that had been trained to sniff out any scents of gun powder, gun oil or solvents! They bought the dog for the local school district after a student brought a gun to school.
Thoughts?

Richard.

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I hope the school children that go shooting, hunting, or just help their folks clean guns, wash up real well afterwards.

I think it's a good idea. Kids with powder residue from shooting/hunting and/or cleaning guns have nuttin' to worry about. If the dog give a positive read, then they may be searched/have their locker searched or just passed over with a metal detector wand. When there is nuttin' found they will be done. There is no law against having powder residue on you....only about having firearms at school. Having verification from a parent or guardian that the student has legally handled firearms recently will help and since firearms and shooting is still legal, getting a positive read does not make one a criminal.

Truth be told, odds are the dog will not be at any one school for more than a few days a year. A coupla random checks and maybe a reported "gun in school". Just not practical to do it any differently. Maybe a few random checks in the high school parking lot. The dog is gonna be more of a PR thing for the school and used more in the field with it's handler, than on school property.

To me, a "gun dog" has always been a bird dog....and not a powder sniffer.

buck460XVR said:

Having verification from a parent or guardian that the student has legally handled firearms recently will help and since firearms and shooting is still legal, getting a positive read does not make one a criminal.

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On second thought buck, I think you're right. Furthermore, I think a "gun dog" giving a positive read on a student that legally handled a firearm recently might even help de-vilify (Is that a word?) the whole "kids with guns" thing that's been going on in recent years. Maybe not, but maybe a few people will notice that most students that handle firearms are doing so legally, and they're not about to shoot up their schools.
Yeah, to me also, a "gun dog" has always one of my dad's Brittany Spaniels, or my old Chesapeake.

And here I also thought this thread was gonna be pretty canine but in a whole different way. But it's not surprising as they already have dogs trained in detecting lots of different things. I'm with .308 Norma hoping that it may even "de-vilify" the whole negative impression that some people want to associate with legal gun use.

True, the lefties may realize just how many good kids actually do handle firearms without causing any carnage. Might just have some positive results even if it never finds a gun.

I would have been sniffed daily with all the fireworks I played with when I was a youngster. I would fight this. No need to call kids out on being proud responsible Americans.

mcmurry said:

Thoughts?

Richard.

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Our school systems persecute children who have a T shirt barely thinly mentioning anything pro 2A, or, any vague resemblance of a gun.

Our leftist school systems now persecute children if when off school and hours later, post a picture on their personal web space i.e. facepaper of their firearms use.

Yet now some herald that same school left admin. mentality will say to the effect, ''oh, lookie! Johnny was shooting last night as a family outing! Wonderful!''

whimsical fantasy thinking imho

Imagine the fun a kid could have with a little bottle of gun oil.

I wish I could be as optimistic as others here. But unfortunately this dog’s training is gonna get abused real quick. If a dog picks up on residuals from Johnny after a weekend of shooting with family, administrators will at some point throw the book at Johnny and his family for doing nothing wrong. I realize this is Arkansas we’re talking about, but weaponized liberalism isn’t limited by area anymore.

And who thinks subjecting a kid who didn’t do anything wrong to a locker inspection and possible accusations is a good thing? From a dude who is currently watching a Texas friend’s kid be persecuted for throwing poppers in his driveway on a weekend (which are deemed by the school principal to be “explosive devices at a school bus stop”) I do not agree that making kids subject to unnecessary inspections and mislaid accusations is a good thing.

DoubleMag said:

Our school systems persecute children who have a T shirt barely thinly mentioning anything pro 2A, or, any vague resemblance of a gun.

Yet now some herald that same school left admin. mentality will say to the effect, ''oh, lookie! Johnny was shooting last night as a family outing! Wonderful!''

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Depending on the jurisdiction (probably not Arkansas), a positive gun "hit" by such a dog on a kid could lead to a social stigma against that kid, or at least a tagging for future close observation by the school authorities. This is a serious adverse consequence that's put in place without due process. It's actually rather alarming.

A "hit", "read" or acknowledgement of scent by the dog is not necessarily probable cause to search........again, since legal activities will leave detectable traces. Gun oil? What is gun oil? Does that smell different than oil used in the metal shop. auto shop or even on the sewing machines in the Home Ec. room? Folks need to get real.

I work for the local school district. Kids at our schools wear gun related t-shirts all the time. The Sporting Clays team has a shotgun on their jerseys that the kids wear to school before every weekend match. They have taken second in the state two years in a row. There is a fund raiser this weekend for them........a shooting competition at the local Sporting Clays course. Big posters for it are displayed in the halls of the High School....and yes, there are pictures of guns on them! Believe me, not all schools are as anti 2nd Amendment as many here want to make them out to be.

no, but a large chunk of them are! Look, that, coupled with "zero tolerance" policies, astounding ignorance of applicable law, and personal political indoctrination, doesn't speak well for parents who have to fight with administrations to keep their kids out of unnecessary tangles with people who can tag the kids with reputations that follow them their entire academic career. A "hit", "read" or acknowledgement of scent by the dog is not necessarily probable cause to search, but what do you think administrators will do with that information? Nothing? I doubt it.

I'm glad you are employed in a school district that is 2A friendly. School districts like yours are fairly uncommon these days (although numbers are growing, which is good). Frankly, if a kid brings a gun ("unsanctioned") to one of your schools, it sounds like the problem can be solved with a phone call and a meeting to pick up the firearm. Good for you. Need more districts like yours.

But even the one I'm associated with, as conservative as it is, has immense influence over how kids are perceived by other adults, especially inside the schools themselves. Applying the dog in the way described in the OP could cause lots of unwanted issues with kids who are otherwise model students. And the dog has no idea about what makes "legal" or "illegal". Someone else gets to decide that. Who do you think gets that privilege?

Here's where I'm going to "get real". If you think the dog is going to "hit" on traces of "legal activities" as much as you say, then it sounds to me like that's going to make up the majority of his day or two at the campus. He's going to spend the majority of his time indicating on a school teacher who checked her oil that morning, or a kid whose folks took him deer hunting the day before, or the janitor who just used a solvent to clean up a crayon mess on a wall. If that's the case, why even bother with the dog in the first place? And why distract the student from being focused on learning?

Our explosive detection dogs in the army would routinely find hidden weapons, small arms ammo, and even expended casings. I have seen dogs working with fish & game find hidden guns on TV.

Sovblocgunfan said:

Here's where I'm going to "get real". If you think the dog is going to "hit" on traces of "legal activities" as much as you say, then it sounds to me like that's going to make up the majority of his day or two at the campus. He's going to spend the majority of his time indicating on a school teacher who checked her oil that morning, or a kid whose folks took him deer hunting the day before, or the janitor who just used a solvent to clean up a crayon mess on a wall. If that's the case, why even bother with the dog in the first place? And why distract the student from being focused on learning?

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You're right. This is where one has to become realistic. In most cases, the dog will probably be used to "locate" a firearm that has been reported. That way if a kid ditches it in a trash can or in the bushes outside the front door, it can be found and the kid disciplined appropriately. Random searches will probably be rare. As far as the "If you think the dog is going to "hit" on traces of "legal activities" as much as you say", I doubt if that will happen. It seems others here do tho. The dogs and their trainers/handlers are better than that.

buck460XVR said:

You're right. This is where one has to become realistic. In most cases, the dog will probably be used to "locate" a firearm that has been reported. That way if a kid ditches it in a trash can or in the bushes outside the front door, it can be found and the kid disciplined appropriately. Random searches will probably be rare. As far as the "If you think the dog is going to "hit" on traces of "legal activities" as much as you say", I doubt if that will happen. It seems others here do tho. The dogs and their trainers/handlers are better than that.

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Um, no. Quite a bit of cases that indicate the opposite if you care to look at legal cases. More than a few dogs are poorly trained especially by the poorer police departments and some will signal based on cues that they pick up from their handler rather than an actual "hit". Properly trained and handled, dogs can be pretty amazing--but they are not perfect by a long shot. There was quite a bit information brought forth during the pair of U.S. Supreme Court cases involving dogs and searches decided using the 4th Amendment a few years back.

Here is one such article: http://www.scotusblog.com/2012/07/jardines-and-harris-made-simple/ What you want are the amici briefs for these cases and that will give you some idea of the issue if you care to look.

I suspect that anyone that uses or is around commercial fertilizer might get a "hit" as well due to the nitrates involved.

Okay, buck460XVR, let's forget the random checks you mention here:

buck460XVR said:

A coupla random checks and maybe a reported "gun in school"... Maybe a few random checks in the high school parking lot.

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And let's forget about those kids who have powder residue from cleaning or shooting and are needlessly subject to unfounded locker searches:

buck460XVR said:

I think it's a good idea. Kids with powder residue from shooting/hunting and/or cleaning guns have nuttin' to worry about. If the dog give a positive read, then they may be searched/have their locker searched or just passed over with a metal detector wand. When there is nuttin' found they will be done.

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Let's focus on a "report" of an observed firearm. An administrator can conduct a search of a student's belongings, locker and personal effects if a report has been made. Without a dog and handler. They are already empowered to do so, and are effective at locating firearms when they have been reported. If I understand correctly, the OP says "a student brought a gun to school", then the dog was purchased. Someone discovered "a student brought a gun to school" without using a dog and handler. So this happens, apparently. My guess is it happens MUCH more frequently than with reliance on dog and handler alone. And it is difficult for a kid to ditch a gun at school. If it's been observed, someone will see the kid ditch the gun. It's a school. With large numbers of people around.

If no one observes the gun at all, then no one sees anything. How do we know to call for the dog and handler if no one knows there is a gun on campus? At what point does the school call for the dog and handler?

This same dilemma can be solved more effectively and with less negative impact by implementing an Eddie the Eagle program. The explosive detection dogs in the army mentioned by FL-NC above are incredibly valuable resources that undoubtedly save lives with their services. But they are used in a context where they are needed. In this context, I don't think they are needed, and cause other downstream issues that upset a student's mindset for learning. I do not think this is a good idea, in sum.

At some point we have to stop treating symptoms and start addressing the underlying cause.

If I had a choice, I'd rather be greeted by a gun sniffing dog at the entrance of my school every morning than go through a metal detector. It seems less intrusive on my privacy.

But I'd rather have neither. What's going to happen is some kid is going to have his hunting gear in the trunk of his car, a dog's going to "out" him and after his locker is searched then they're going to search his car and find a deer gun.

I had either a .22 or a shotgun in the back seat of my truck every day in high school hidden under a lump of clothes. It was highly illegal, but I often shot with my buddies after school and there was little chance of getting caught.

Buck460XVR wrote:
...Kids with powder residue from shooting/hunting and/or cleaning guns have nuttin' to worry about...

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Except for the effect being singled out as a terrorist might have on them.

Seventeen-year-old me would have responded by coming up with a plan to make the entire program degenerate into the farce it is.

• Something like mixing up gun oil and Hoppe's #9, putting it in a perfume spray bottle and "marking" random lockers and desks. After, say, 35 false "alerts" resulting from a single sweep, the administration would probably just quietly put the dog out to pasture.
  
• Or, buy some older playing cards from a thrift store (nitrate-based finish), grind them into confetti in a food processor and then drop them along the baseboards leading to the teacher's lounge or school office - let the dog "alert" on the administration that brought it in and let the adults figure out who among them is the terrorist.

Psychologists tell us that people will live up (down) to the expectations that are set for them. We need to stop spending taxpayer money setting and then reinforcing expectations for our children that they are irresponsible thugs and criminals unless that's what we want them to become.

mcmurry wrote:
...one of the cities here buying a drug dog...

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Which city in particular?

Buck460XVR wrote:
A "hit", "read" or acknowledgement of scent by the dog is not necessarily probable cause to search...
Folks need to get real.

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Probable cause isn't needed in a school setting. The standard is "reasonable suspicion" and the dog alerting provides that. See: New Jersey v. T.L.O., 469 U.S. 325 (1985).

Also, the dog sniffing the air doesn't necessarily rise to even being a search so long as the dog doesn't sniff an individual. See B.C. v. Plumas Unified School District, 192 F.3d 1260 (9th Cir. 1999).

We will continue the downhill slide until people are willing to sacrifice and pull their children from schools teaching liberalism.

Kids are money to schools. The school doesn’t care about griping, but they do care about attendance numbers. All your kid is to the school is a dollar figure. We vote with dollars.

Just one more example of the spineless idiots that seem to be taking over control of everything implementing more mindless dribble.

No doubt this will increase needless headlines and lawsuits though.

And no, it's obviously not a good thing...

This dog policy is a feel-good exercise that is designed to help people feel like they are "doing something". The dog will do absolutely nothing to prevent gun violence.