Crimson847 wrote:You could try implementing stringent screening processes, with metal detectors and the like at strategic checkpoints, but then the shooter is given the obvious option of simply attacking the checkpoint. Any rigorous security screening is going to involve delays. Delays mean lines, and lines mean targets hanging around outside the secured perimeter.
This! Whenever I read suggestions of turning schools into impregnable fortresses, I think about this. How far out do we set the cordon for medal detectors and security? If the cordon is too close to the actual school, all it'd take is for a shooter to sit and wait until the busiest time of passing the checkpoint. Put the cordons much further out, and you'd better be prepared to buy up a lot of land in most inner-cities and lose a lot of efficiency.
For that matter, if schools are still operating like mine did when I was going, a bomb threat'd get a lot of bodies outside in the "safe area," which would actually make it easier to find a big target. If there's a shooter outside and a bomb threat inside, where do you run? (This question first occurred to me after we had a fire-drill at a university I taught at, just after some campus shooting in another state.)
As for armed teachers, especially in a bomb-threat scenario like above, what good is a teacher with presumably a hand-gun against a person with a rifle, especially one with a rifle that can fire 30 times before reloading? I'm sure our president would charge toward the sound of gunfire, but I'm equally sure I'd be, like, shit, where do I take cover until he has to reload.
The idea of teachers with concealed carry permits raises some difficult implementation questions vis-a-vis the idea of metal detectors: If you set up metal detectors, but teachers don't have to go through, is that really fair to students? Isn't that just infringing on one group's rights (i.e., 4th amendment) over another group's? And if "That's OK, because safety," then isn't the NRA's favorite Ben Franklin quote just another bit of bull used for rhetorical effect? If only some teachers are allowed to bypass the metal detectors, isn't that sort of a red flag about who's carrying?
It's always in the last place you look for it, unless you're the kind of person who keeps looking for it after you've found it.