Armed Guards? I picked up my nephew at his high school today,

[MineralMan]

to give him a ride home. I do that every day, since his working mom left his moron father. The Newtown shootings had me watching the school closely as it let out and I waited for my nephew. He got in the car, and we left the campus, very slowly, since lots of people were picking up their kids and the kids were leaving the parking lot. As we left, going out a back road, I saw a local police car parked in a space with two cops sitting in it. So, I asked my nephew if that was new.

He said that there were four cops every day at the school, all day. I asked if they were armed, and he said they were. I asked what they did at the school. He said that they mostly harass the students about stuff. Which students? The black kids, he said. They were always stopping them in the halls and questioning them about drugs and stuff. So I asked if there were a lot of problems at his school, fights, drugs, etc. He said not really.

What struck me most was that the two cops were just sitting in their patrol car on a side road, away from the mass of kids getting out of school. Had anything happened, they'd have taken a long time to get to the scene on foot. They couldn't drive, because the area is gridlocked for about 15-20 minutes after school lets out.

It's a large high school in a suburb of St. Paul, MN. I'd guess, from looking at the kids streaming out of the school, that there are a couple of thousand students attending.

Armed guards at this school would be completely helpless if someone decided to shoot up the school as it was letting out for the day. If you can imagine a couple thousand teenagers streaming out of the building into the parking lots, and all the cars jamming the campus roads, you can see that there's no way four cops could do much, especially if they're sitting in a squad car blocked by the traffic. Dozens and dozens of cars come to pick up kids, and nobody pays any attention to cars arriving and leaving. About 20 buses also contribute to the daily traffic jam.

Armed guards aren't the solution. Eliminating the firearms that can wreak mass havoc is the solution. Armed guards couldn't do anything to stop a massacre at that school if it happened when school was letting out.

[DollarBillHines]

1. MM, you are simply confusing reality with their bs rhetoric.

Stop letting the facts get in the way of ideology and profit.

Please, just stop it.

(I hope I don't need the 'sarcasm' thing, because I don't know how to do it)
DBH

[freshwest]

13. Just type in :sarcasm: in the body of the message.

Apply liberally as needed.

[MineralMan]

14. No smiley needed.

I got it. Thanks!

[CaliforniaPeggy]

2. As usual, you are the voice of reason.

There's nothing quite like looking at the scene of a school letting out to realize the futility and foolishness of armed guards.

Thank you.

[MineralMan]

3. You're too kind. I'm just reporting what I observed,

and have been thinking about it.

On the other hand, it was 10 degrees today at the close of school. I saw a girl come out of the school wearing very short shorts, bare-legged, with a t-shirt type top. High school kids are nuts!

[kelliekat44]

9. Reporting it here is the wrong place. Report it to school officials or board.

Taxpayers' money is not being used wisely.

[MineralMan]

10. Report what? That cops were in their patrol car?

No. The school has four full-time cops on duty. These two are probably on some sort of traffic duty to deal with the gridlock there, and to ticket people who drive badly and to deal with accidents. They're doing their job. It's just that protecting the kids from some random shooter isn't something four cops could handle no matter what they were doing.

[rustydog]

26. This was a high school...haven't y ou heard of resource officers?

beenaround for ages now. It sounds like the police dept sent a few other officers.

[freshwest]

19. We have lots of adults that do that here. Especially postal workers. In the snow.

They take their work motto very seriously!

[Scootaloo]

25. And there's nothing like having seen the police in action...

To make the idea of letting those thugs roam around school grounds send shivers up your spine.

[Bigmack]

4. I've posted this before, but...

The HS where I taught - upper middle class suburban district - had a cop stationed there permanently.

He was enormously popular with the kids. He was a handsome guy about 30, and the girls especially loved him.

He could be a real hardass... he even put a few kids in cuffs, but generally everybody loved him.

One day, I watched a group of young men - who all liked him - walking in a group around him as he was talking. I had a cold chill, when I realized any one - or all - of those young men could take his weapon.

I was a tiny bit nervous from that time.

Maybe my fears were the result of my time in Vietnam... don't trust anybody in close physical proximity ... when weapons are involved.

[MineralMan]

6. Thanks. Fortunately, most people have no harmful

intentions. We count on that, and when someone shows up who does, we're almost never prepared for it..

[bahrbearian]

5. Good Story Bro.

[MineralMan]

8. Yes, I thought it was worth telling.

Until I started picking up my nephew, I was never around a high school letting out since I graduated in 1963.

If you're being sarcastic, you're wrong. I don't tell stories that aren't true. I don't need to.

[bahrbearian]

11. Of Course !

I started to read then ,, some old shit.

[MineralMan]

12. Have a nice evening, won't you?

[Raster]

7. Oh My God....Logic and Reason!

"Armed guards aren't the solution. Eliminating the firearms that can wreak mass havoc is the solution."

[spanone]

15. i read they actually had two guards on duty that day.....

the nra is a sales branch for gun manufacturers.

[MineralMan]

18. Two guards can't do much

massacre prevention in a school building. It's too much to expect, really. If the security measures don't keep an armed person out, there's not a lot the guards can do if they're not where the shooter is.

[dkf]

16. If armed guards and self defense with guns don't work why do police need guns?

[MineralMan]

21. Police are not in the mass shooting prevention business.

Such things don't happen often enough. They're armed to deal with individuals in isolated situations, really.

A thorough system to prevent a mass shooting is way beyond the competence or capabilities of the typical cop. It's just not a practical thing to implement.

That's why the prevention has to be done on a wider scale, by making it more difficult for an armed person to have the arms and ammunition needed for a mass shooting. It's not a simple matter, and it's sure as hell not going to be popular with the RKBA crowd, I guarantee.

[dkf]

23. So you do acknowledge a gun can be of use in dealing with individuals in isolated situations?

[RomneyLies]

17. You don't even have to get rid of the arms.

Just reclassify semi-automatic pistols and rifles to be covered under the NFA.

Problem solved.

[MineralMan]

20. I'm not sure about the specifics of what's needed.

I'm really not qualified. Frankly, I can't think of any on-the-spot countermeasures in a school like the one I described that could be effective. This is going to require a broader solution, and I don't have the knowledge or expertise to suggest one.

[RomneyLies]

24. The NFA of 1934 required heavy licensing requirements to own automatic weapons

It's still in effect today.

Simply add all semi-automatic firearms to that. Pistols and long guns.

The pro-gun people make a lot of legitimate claims that there were too many loopholes in the Assault Weapons Ban. They are right. Let's just simplify things and get all of the weapons where you load a magazine and a round is fired for each squeeze of the trigger reclassified to be identical to automatic weapons.

Problem solved.

[jimlup]

22. If they put armed guards in all schools

it won't solve the problem. I guess we need armed guards in all movie theaters and public events too. While Newtown was particularly horrible it isn't like schools are the only reason we need to limit gun violence.

[OkieGranny]

27. Took my 8yo granddaughter to school

at 10:45 this morning after her dental appointment. We walked right in through unlocked doors and found the office empty, no adult anywhere in sight. I waited a few minutes, then went ahead and signed her in on the clipboard on the counter, sent her down the hall to her classroom, and left. If I had been carrying an assault weapon, there was no one present to challenge me or raise an alarm.

It's been bugging the crap out of me all day and the more I think about it, the more pissed I feel.

[2naSalit]

32. Just a thought...

that came to mind reading your post. Lots of school districts have been hatcheted, severely, in the past several years or more and I wonder how well staffed the school is to begin with, and if they might already have been dealing with some issue at the time that you arrived. And if the schools in your area have suffered drastic funding cuts, you gotta wonder how they would fund a security system and or keep security personnel on site.

[moondust]

28. Armed guards obviously can't be everywhere.

The shooters at Columbine went to school there. Adam Lanza had previously attended Sandy Hook Elementary. These guys knew the layout of those places and the general student schedule. The shooters at Columbine may have even done some advance planning so they would know the guard's routine.

I've heard that the incident at Sandy Hook only lasted 10 minutes. The odds are slim that an armed guard would be in just the right place at just the right time to carefully interrupt a mass killing that: 1) is a surprise attack by an "insider" with a plan; and 2) may only last a few minutes.

Somebody has watched too many cowboy movies.

[kestrel91316]

29. That's why every single student needs to be carrying a semi-auto

rifle. It's just not possible to make the school safe any other way under those circumstances.

[raquel69]

30. Our city deployed

police officers at all schools that day. I realize not all cities or towns can do that. We were pro-active - thank goodness. I read online that Mom Lanza was prepping to move to my state.

[dballance]

31. Wow, I Hadn't Even Considered the Harassment Issue

But now that your nephew mentions it I'm not surprised. Of course, not all officers would do that but if anecdotal news stories are any indication a fair number would. And let's think about the armed security guards who became security guards because they couldn't pass the tests to become police. I've know a few in my life who were pretty tightly wound. I feel for any kids who get astray of one of them with a power issue - like the Zimmerman guy in FL who shot Trayvon Martin. He failed the tests to become law enforcement so he became neighborhood watch and carried a gun. We see how well that turned out.

[DCKit]

33. It's the "School to Prison" pipeline they intend to fully implement. nt