How the Lessons of Columbine Saved Lives At Arapahoe High School 894
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Ray Sanchez reports at CNN that the handling of Friday's shooting at Arapahoe High School, just 10 miles from the scene of the 1999 Columbine High School shooting, drew important lessons from the earlier bloodshed. At Arapahoe High School, where senior Claire Davis, 17, was critically injured before the shooter turned the gun on himself, law enforcement officers responded within minutes and immediately entered the school to confront the gunman rather than surrounding the building. As the sound of shots reverberated through the corridors, teachers immediately followed procedures put in place after Columbine, locking the doors and moving students to the rear of classrooms. "That's straight out of Columbine," says Kenneth Trump, president of National School Safety and Security Services. "The goal is to proceed and neutralize the shooter. Columbine really revolutionized the way law enforcement responds to active shooters." Arapahoe County Sheriff Grayson Robinson credits the quick police response time for the fact that student Karl Pierson, the gunman, stopped firing on others and turned his weapon on himself less than 1 minute, 20 seconds after entering the school. Authorities knew from research and contact with forensic psychologists that school shooters typically continue firing until confronted by law enforcement. "It's very unfortunate that we have to say that there's a textbook response on the way to respond to these," says Trump, "because that textbook was written based on all of the incidents that we've had and the lessons learned (PDF).""
Re: police arive within 'minutes' (Score:4, Informative)
Feel free to live in a city/county with strict gun laws with a high violent crime rate while the rest of us with guns live in one with a low violent crime rate.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/larrybell/2013/05/14/disarming-realities-as-gun-sales-soar-gun-crimes-plummet/
But no amount of facts will convince you I'm sure, since you want to "believe" guns are bad.
A tragedy in any other country is success here (Score:5, Informative)
"Every country is unique, but Australia is more similar to the US than is, say, Japan or England. We have a frontier history and a strong gun culture. Each state and territory has its own gun laws, and in 1996 these varied widely between the jurisdictions. At that time Australia's firearm mortality rate per population was 2.6/100,000 -- about one-quarter the US rate, according to data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics and the US Center for Disease Control. Today the rate is under 1/100,000 -- less than one-tenth the US rate. Those figures refer to all gun deaths -- homicide, suicide and unintentional. If we focus on gun homicide rates, the US outstrips Australia 30-fold.
The 1996 reforms made gun laws stronger and uniform across Australia. Semi-automatic rifles were prohibited (with narrow exceptions), and the world's biggest buyback saw nearly 700,000 guns removed from circulation and destroyed. The licensing and registration systems of all states and territories were harmonised and linked, so that a person barred from owning guns in one state can no longer acquire them in another. All gun sales are subject to screening (universal background checks), which means you cannot buy a gun over the internet or at a garage sale.
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Australia didn't ban guns. Hunting and shooting are still thriving. But by adopting laws that give priority to public safety, we have saved thousands of lives."
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/dec/14/america-mass-murder-australia-gun-control-saves-lives [theguardian.com]
Re:Rule #1 (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Rule #1 (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Rule #1 (Score:5, Informative)
I think you're the one to misread the constitution:
"the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed"
This was clarified in District of Columbia v. Heller:
"The Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_of_Columbia_v._Heller [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution#District_of_Columbia_v._Heller [wikipedia.org]
Re:A tragedy in any other country is success here (Score:5, Informative)
The UK isn't gun free as many think - if you've got a need for a shotgun or a rifle (eg farmers, sport shooters) then it's pretty straightforward to get a license. The big, lifesaving difference is that we don't just have guns lying around. Speak to anyone who holds a firearms license and you'll find they have much the same attitude as a range safety officer in the US, rather than the attitude of somebody who keeps a loaded pistol next to the bed in an unlocked drawer - if a gun in the UK is not being used it's kept locked in a metal safe, bolted to the floor, with the ammunition kept in a seperate locked box. The idea that people can just have a gun without adopting some obvious and strict responsibilities is the main difference.
Re: police arive within 'minutes' (Score:3, Informative)
Ok, I'll call your bullshit. Do you realize the data you're pointing to does NOT validate your argument?
If you want to say that more guns = more safety, then compare more relevant data, like the number of homicides by fireweapon in countries with diferent approaches to gun control.
The UN Office on Drugs and Crime [unodc.org] has some interesting statistics. The latest data shows there's over 3 homicides by fireweapon per 100k population in the US per year. In Canada, Australia, and every single country in Europe, that figure is way below 1.
The very definition of violent crime is so different between countries that direct comparisons are not possible. The FBI defines violent crime [fbi.gov] as one of four offences (murder and nonnegligent manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery, and aggravated assault), while the British Home Office defines it [www.gov.uk] as a crime "where the victim is intentionally stabbed, punched, kicked, pushed, jostled, etc. or threatened with violence whether or not there is any injury".
I would expect a country that treats a threat of violence (even without actual violence) as a violent crime to be safer, but that's just speculation on my part. Feel free to disprove me, but with relevant data, please.
Re:A tragedy in any other country is success here (Score:5, Informative)
I think you should probably visit the UK and Australia before posting any more of these ridiculous statements.
Regarding daily life, they're more free. There are fewer laws, a less-corrupt police force, a better justice system.
Do you really think the US government would have any more trouble controlling citizens than the Australian government?
Re:police arive within 'minutes' (Score:3, Informative)
The fact is that US school shootings prior to the last couple of decades were... unheard of. It's a very recent phenomena.
Actually that's not really true - the earliest listed on Wikipedia was in 1764. [wikipedia.org] It is, unfortunately, not a new problem, although I'm certain it has received much more sensational news coverage in recent decades.
Re:Rule #1 (Score:5, Informative)
This is a common argument that stems from, I believe, not only a lack of historical context but also the absence of actually reading the plain language of the Bill of Rights or in understanding it's underlying architecture and design purpose.
Most people don't know the preamble to the Bill of Rights which starts:
"The Conventions of a number of the States, having at the time of their adopting the Constitution, expressed a desire, in order to prevent misconstruction or abuse of its powers, that further declaratory and restrictive clauses should be added: And as extending the ground of public confidence in the Government, will best ensure the beneficent ends of its institution."
For some reason, there exists a widely held belief that the Bill of Rights grants rights to the people when, in actuality, the Bill of Rights places specific restrictions on the government. The plain language of the individual amendments support the preamble:
Amendment I - "Congress shall make no law..."
Amendment II - "...shall not be infringed."
Amendment III - "No Soldier shall..."
Amendment IV - "...shall not be violated..."
The Bill of Rights is not a list of rights retained by the people but is rather a list of prohibitions placed upon the government so they don't misconstrue and, therefore, misapply, the powers the document granted to the government.
The overall architecture of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights does not in any way support the argument that the second amendment is a grant of power to state militias. In Heller, the U.S. Supreme Court finally acknowledged as such.
You should take this opportunity to read the U.S. Constitution and its amendments. You may gain an appreciation for the beauty of the document and what it actually means. You may even gain a better appreciation for the argument many of us espouse about the presumption of liberty.
Re:Rule #1 (Score:5, Informative)
Re:police arive within 'minutes' (Score:5, Informative)
Do you even read this stuff and try the laugh test before you post it?
Local tribesmen raided a school. Not someone at the school going off shooting, wild 'indians' raided it. Not the same thing at all.
And then the next item is a guy that shot a headmaster so abusive that the jury acquitted him. Sounds like an interesting case but barely relevant here.
That list doesnt actually get going until much more recent years.
Re:Rule #1 (Score:5, Informative)
If you take a tiny handful of small neighborhoods out of the equation (places like Flint, Michigan) the United States is actually an extremely peaceful place
Your statement is completely false. Take a look at the murder rate by state and you will find that the lowest rate state is New Hampshire. Guess what? New Hampshire still has a higher murder rate (barely) than Western, Northern or Southern Europe. 42 of the 50 states have a more than double rate. 37 triple. 28 quadruple. 18 quintuple.
So no, taking a couple ZIP codes out of the equation will not get us to where civilized countries homicide rates are.
Re:police arive within 'minutes' (Score:4, Informative)
Change 'hobby' to 'social drinking'. How about we take this logic and apply it to alcohol (as it relates to deaths due to drunk driving)?
In 2010 there were 32,885 [wikipedia.org] vehicle fatalities. 10,228 [cdc.gov] were listed as alcohol related. And those statistics are even skewed since if anyone involved, whether they were the cause of the collision or not, had any level of alcohol it's marked as alcohol related. The problem isn't drunk drivers. The problem is irresponsible drivers drunk or sober. If you're going to look at traffic fatalities address the real issue rather than the neo-prohibitionist agenda of certain groups. If you fix the maniacal driving problem and make people responsible for their actions when driving drunk driving won't be an issue.
Re:that's been tried. Rape is bad, m'kay (Score:5, Informative)
The problem with your statistics is that the gun culture in the UK was drastically different to the US before the ban anyway, as basically no one could ever be expected to be carrying a firearm on their person, and the increase in reported crimes comes hand in hand with a change in how crimes are recorded and reported, and increased immigration due to EU law changes.
Before the ban in the UK, firearms were still highly regulated and controlled - the police would visit your home to ensure you had a gun safe, and check to see you were correctly reporting your ammunition counts etc, and if they saw a problem then you had your license revoked. There never was a culture of people carrying guns around in their purses or coat pockets, so nothing changed there in potential threats to attackers. Concealed carry licenses are still available today, exactly the same as they were prior to the ban - you can still apply for one, and the rules haven't changed on whether you would get one or not.
Re: police arive within 'minutes' (Score:5, Informative)
What do you mean? Are you saying you combine all the US states but only consider EU members states individually so none of them get into the hundred plus million? Or do you really have no idea how many people live in Europe?
Here's the population of some of the larger countries. Slashdot won't let me post them all because of the spam filter. Total population in the EU is over 500 million.
Germany: 80,640,000
United Kingdom: 64,231,000
France: 63,820,000
Italy: 59,789,000
Spain: 46,958,000
Poland: 38,548,000
Romania: 19,858,000
Netherlands: 16,795,000
Belgium: 11,162,000
Greece: 10,758,000
Portugal: 10,609,000
Czech Republic: 10,519,000
Re: police arive within 'minutes' (Score:5, Informative)
Ok, so we let you cherry pick - you can remove the two regions with the highest murder rate - DC and Louisiana (whose rates are 150% of the 3rd highest state [wikipedia.org] - you get a rate of 4.11/100k
In fact, you have to remove the top 12 states before you get below the European level of 3.5/100k. But wait, if you get to remove your outliers, so do we, so I remove our top two - Greenland and Russia (Europe has really expanded since I left school) - which gives us 2.5/100k. The US would have to remove *half* of the states as "outliers" to get to that level.
However, I disagree with the gun control advocates - removing guns won't reduce your murder rate by much - you'd just find a different way to kill each other.
Re:Rule #1 (Score:4, Informative)
A slight correction. My numbers compared states to Western Europe only. North and South are slightly higher in homicide rates, but still well below US averages and below all but one or two of US states
Re:police arive within 'minutes' (Score:2, Informative)
I do not understand what you think is so wrong about that. I have hunted since i was seven and i participated in the school trap and skeet courses. We could and regularly did bring our own shotguns to school for use directly after or we could use the ones the school had. Most people opted for their own because the school's guns were not taken care of very well and considered junk by most students.
There was even a target proficiency course that used .22 weapons. These were all parts of the olympics and common in some schools just like track and field and ice skating and skiing.
Granted, our parents had to notify the school when we brought the guns in and were to take them home and they were stored in an equipment room with a security door and locks with the ammo in the office. We had no shootings at my school or any around us. This was also in the late 70's and 80s with the programs being canceled due to funding before any "safe zones" or 24-7 coverage of idiots on rampage in schools with no way of protecting students other than calling someone miles away to come and help after the fact.
I find your view of others to be more disturbing then what you try to paint them as.
Less guns, less suicides (Score:4, Informative)
You may find this article interesting: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/crime/2013/12/gun_ownership_causes_higher_suicide_rates_study_shows.html [slate.com]
Yes, less guns means less suicides, as everybody who has ever talked to anyone whose suicide attempt failed will understand.