Debate over "lockdowns"

I take that back, one time. In the Tyler Courthouse shooting, the team leader arrived in time to take the shooter down (after the shooter had fired quite a lot of shots). Not only is this the only example I can think of it is very ironic as I know the team leader quite well.

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I live just down the road from Tyler, " the team leader did not arrive in time to take the shooter down" The shooter got in his truck and was shot a few miles away, only after some officers with rifles caught him.

Ahh, Punji Stakes.... if only I were still in school.

Seriously though that is better than a bat for most lightly muscled females.

marbles to be tossed on the floor

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The kids still have marbles? That allows something along the lines of a flail.
Any windows that might be used for retreat? Some will come open, others are fastened down by excessive paint/caulk/nails. Bookends have purpose in the classroom, and could open those windows if needed.

Very narrow panes with solid metal frames. Maybe the kids could get through but probably not and getting stuck there (hanging several floors off the ground) would not be the best idea.

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You'd think the fire department would require big windows to get the kids out in case of emergencies. It sounds like you've got things pretty well covered, though. Any window on the door leading into the room?

Do most schools even have doors that can be locked to not open from the inside? Its been a few years since I've been in high school but as I recall the doors even when locked still had a large push bar that would allow it to open from the inside. I always assumed it was part of the fire code and like that in many cases.

I think its a complete gamble. Sometimes staying put would be the right answer, sometimes getting out of there would be the right answer. We've also seen doors chained shut by shooters. I don't think there is a universally right answer.

I don't support the whole "lockdown" mentality. It makes the building into the potentional to become a shooting gallery.

Moving targets are much harder to murder than stationary ones. K-12 grades of kids can't legally carry weapons anyways so I can't see how them sitting there defenseless makes them any safer. The only option they have is to run. There will be chaos regardless when a shooter starts firing and I would rather see kids make a break for it.

Just think through the decision to act outside the common actions of your peers. If you decide to jump out the window and run, no problem. But realize there is the potential for running into cops who are approaching with guns drawn. Be prepared to hit the ground and be cuffed for a bit.

Not saying it will happen, just another possible repercussion of one's actions.

Allow teachers to carry in K-12, allow students to carry in college. Problem solved.

The proper fix.

Lockdowns are a horrible idea. They foster the mentality of "I'll wait here to die". We are intentionally raising the next generation of mindless mental slaves. Can anyone give an example of when this "tactic" has worked?

The proper fix is to demand, as parents, that those we entrust our kids to for eight hours a day be prepared to defend them. If my neighbor asks me to watch his kids for a couple hours, I'm not going to throw them to the wolves if something bad goes down. Why is it alright for a school system to do it? There are a lot og good teachers out there who are hamstrung by a corrupt system that is pushing an agenda and brainwashing our kids.

Stolen from another thread:
But have we gotten so far from nature that we have lost the ability to fight for our lives? Last week, Elizabeth City State University in North Carolina ran an emergency response drill. A campus police officer posing as a gunman burst into a classroom, where he proceeded to hold the students hostage and terrorize them with a fake gun for 10 minutes. Not one of the students fought back. Not one thought to pick up a chair or a desk, or even a book, to defend themselves. They all lined up against a wall and passively waited for death.

One of the students said, "I was prepared to die at that moment." Several students say they considered leaping from a window.

What the **** are we teaching our kids? That dying like a coward and fool is better than fighting for a chance to live?

Bah, we're screwed either way.

I was a freshman in high school when Columbine happened. This is when they started instituting the "Code Red" procedure, where if there was an active shooter/internal threat, everyone was to get in a classroom, the teachers were to lock the doors, and everyone stay down and away from the windows.

There were a few flaws in their plan, of course. All the classroom doors unlock from the outside, meaning the teacher has to step outside the door to expose themselves. Also, one part of the plan went "If you're in a hall, get in the nearest classroom." The next part (mostly directed toward the teachers) went "Lock the door and don't let anyone in." Anyone see a discrepancy here?

Of course, this procedure was only in effect for active shooters. We still did evacuation/fire drills for the off-chance of a bomb scare (and we had several bomb threats that year and the next.)

Of course, the administration wasn't too happy when I pointed out that if I were a shooter and wanted to maximize casualties, I would stand out of sight outside, call in a bomb threat, and wait for the people to line up for the slaughter. Like most people, they did not like having the holes in their plans exposed. I do feel bad, though, because you're screwed either way. There's no easy answer to any of these questions.

Small children become easily confused, especially when they're scared. It happened here.
http://www.amazon.com/Terror-Beslan...bs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1204912269&sr=8-1

Lockdowns are a decent option (in today's Brave New unarmed World), but they should not be the last resort.

pleased to report that at my wife's school, every classroom has a back door that leads directly outside. and we have had this discussion before and she is of the opinion that if there were an active shooter, they would all be out the back door.

I think a study should be performed on this.

Find an unused school (they do exist) and get a few hundred volunteers with paintball masks and instructions to lie down when shot. Then run through several scenarios; ranging from one crazed gunman and passive students to a team of motivated 'terrorists' and actively resisting students. The same attacks could be tried againt different responses from the students such as lockdown, orderly evacuation and chaos. After each scenario, count the bodies and eventually you'll find which options would be statistically best for which attackers.

Not a terribly expensive study either.

What?

BullfrogKen Said:

I don't care if it helps, hurts, or is politically neutral to our cause. I'd rather not have another mass shooting, ever. What a terrible thing to say.

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I'd rather not have another mass shooting, either!

Did you read my post?

Where did I say anything about having another mass shooting?

The story, which I discussed and cited, was about a total/confessed fabrication about an alleged sighting of a man with a gun -- to avoid paying for a damaged apartment door.

Remember the panic at the fabricated "bomb threats" in the ’60? The 300+ LEO turnouts slowly faded away. I’m hoping that panic, lock downs and class cancelling will fade away as did the over-response and nationwide news coverage of bomb threats did.

We had six bomb threats in our local schools last year. As far as I know none made the national news.

first off, im a senior in high school. I feel comfortable with a lockdown at my school. but this is based strictly off of the layout of the school and the fact that most of my teachers would put up one hell of a fight. most of the classrooms have either only 1 window or no windows. so in a lockdown, the lights are turned off, the door is locked, and we move to a corner of the room that you can't see from the hallway, and after discussing this previously with some of my teachers most of them said that if someone were to try to enter the room during a lockdown, that they would attack them with whatever they had available to them at the time. Personally, i wouldn't want to try my chances at running through the narrow hallways of my school praying that the shooter isn't waiting for me at the end of it. I'd rather stay put in a locked, dark room and if the situation came down to it, fighting whoever came through the wall.

10 years ago when I was a still in high school, we had a bomb threat every day for a week. When the call came in, they would herd everybody to do the stadium-style bleachers on the football field. This was in the middle of summer and the hours some spent outside in the sun and the heat made many sunburned, some even sick.

One of my friends joked that if the bomb was real, it probably would have been out there on the football field since we were far more crammed together there than inside the building.

I drove to school, so when they started herding everybody to the field, I would go home. At least I always felt safe there.

High schools and elementary schools are very different situations. It's impossible to know what's best for every given situation. Schools that employ lockdowns should be suitably configured though. I do not consider the typical fire-rated 1-3/4" wood doors appropriate for lockdown situations. Where I work, we are responsible for securing old school buildings when they are going to be demolished and I was curious just what it would take to kick one in. I'm about 5'10", 250 lbs, carpenter by trade. I couldn't get any on one kick like in the movies, but 3-5 strong kicks worked reliably.

When I was in High School ( last year) there was a general consensus that if someone came with a gun, the teachers could say all they want, but we, the students, were going out the windows. Our school was in a wide, open area and we would have rather taken our chances running. If there was any other type of alarm we would probably go along with what the teachers were saying, until we believed we could handle the situation better.

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Quite a few years have passed since I was in high school, but there's no doubt that if a school shooting had occured back then at my high school, the 1st floor windows would have seen a flood of students exiting the building, "lockdown" or not. Ditto in college.

And after the shock of the first shots, chairs would have been flying through the air at anyone actively opening fire in a classroom.

An elementary school . . . different situation, little kids won't be able to respond effectively.

I don't think there is a good answer for this kind of problem.

Even arming teachers maybe not do much. If they carried them on their persons, it would not take the kids long to figure out just who had them, and a shooter might just target those people first.

The authorities tend to make up their responses based on avoiding any possibility that they might be blamed for their own bad decisions, so there can never be any discretion involved in these plans. They would often seem to prefer 100 kids be massacred as opposed to having a plan that allowed for a certain amount of flexibility in it where only 50 kids get massacred.

When I was in middle school, there was a suspected bomb left near an entrance of the building. The school officials decided to lock all the kids up in the auditorium. The door the supposed bomb was left in front of opened into the auditorium. Smart? I don't think so. All I wanted to do was exit the building and completely eliminate the bomb threat.

As for sickos trying to kill kids in the classroom, teachers should be able to carry in school. When the sicko kick in the door the teacher can blow him away. It is better to traumatize a room of kids than have a room of dead kids.

I never liked lock downs. I always felt trapped and cornered. Several times there was a suspected psychotic in the school and we had to lock down. All I could think was that if he got through that door, we were all dead.

When I was in middle school, there was a suspected bomb left near an entrance of the building. The school officials decided to lock all the kids up in the auditorium. The door the supposed bomb was left in front of opened into the auditorium.

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No doubt that was what the plan called for, and no self respecting school administrator is going to question the plan.

If a hundred kids get killed because of a stupid plan, it is the plan's fault.

If only 10 kids die because the principal uses his head and saves the lives of 90 kids, he will be crucified for it.

When I was going to grade school (40 some years ago), one of the buldings we were in had a second floor fire escape similar to a slide. You went out the door and slid down to the ground. We had regular fire drills but they never used the second floor fire escape. I suspect they thought the kids would have too much fun on them and want to play on them all the time. The problem is that none of the kids knew how to use the emergency escape system, and in an emergency, there is not a whole lot of time to learn.

If there's a shooter in the building, I'm gonna get out of that building, and no locked door is gonna stop me. That's why God invented objects that I can throw through windows (including school officials, if necessary)...

Self-sefence spray may be banned, but what if you just happened to forget about that can of aerosol oven cleaner or long-range wasp killer you were on your way home with? Neither one is harmless, but you wouldn't go around squirting people as a joke. Not advocating assault with caustic chemicals here, but in a life-or-death situation the details could be sorted out later- better than your family attending your funeral.

Don't know if I would leave oven cleaner around the classroom with youngsters about.