Security varies in region’s schools
December 17, 2012 at 6:00 pm in Duluth News Tribune
Kristy Berdice had a tough time dropping off her 5-year-old daughter, Peyton, at Laura MacArthur Elementary Monday morning.
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Security varies in region’s schools
11 Comments
It’s disturbing that some insist on instilling a world of fear and division upon us. What good comes from the non-stop coverage and commentary? Nothing! We grieve, we can pray, we move on and refuse to let a random act of senseless violence define who we are or we can go down the road that will be chosen for us. Instillation of fear to send our kids to school or open events, fear to enter a mall, a ball game, or an outdoor festival, fear to do anything but maintain a shadow of existence. And again, the division that follows. We hate those that have guns and we hate those that want to take them away. We have been united in fear and by division we will fall.
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“The mainstream media vultures gather”
http://washingtonexaminer.com/hugh-hewitt-the-mainstream-media-vultures-gather/article/2516102#.UM6aA7RiF8y
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Let’s hope no jerk is planning anything in the Duluth area. The article just provided them with some information they wouldn’t have had concerning security at area schools.
The frustrating thing about such tragedies is that the cowards who commit them kill themselves. I’m for the death penalty in such cases–but a slow, cruel and unusual one. I guess I just can’t trust that their afterlife–if there is one–will be one of eternal fire and damnation.
My anger will pass. But our sense of security has once again been challenged and is now woven into the fabric of our lives in our country. Don R. is right–We can’t live in fear, but as a parent after such a tragedy, it is harder to drop off your kid at school this week.
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I think they should forget putting the police on this. What they need to do is bring our soldiers home and let them protect our children!
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Yeah right, another Obamanomic type of job creation. Hire 100,000′s of ex-military to police our schools and universities. That’ll make us safe for sure.
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How many returning soldiers have post-traumatic stress disorder?
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I’m beginning to understand now what Obama meant when he said “We need a civilian army just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded” and how he intends to build it. First let’s start with the fear of the airplane and then add 100′s of thousand of homeland security agents, next make the populus hysterical over school security and add 100′s of thousands of protectors there, next add….
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I listened to the full speech of the NRA response to the killings. It made perfect sense as did the suggestions that our schools need to be protected in the most rigorous way possible without compromising the educational process. It might take a little more courage that the general public possesses to have an armed security person trained to respond with a gun to something of this nature. It is almost a a statistical certainty that it will never happen but as we can see in hindsight, it could happen. The underpaid staff at that school showed great courage in the face of a brutal madman. At the very least we need security personnel . In school districts where the parents cannot wrap their minds around the thought of security personnel armed with a gun, there are highly effective devices that are less that lethal that that could be brought to bear in that situation. The adults who were killed showed more that enough courage to at least to have been able to use less than lethal weapons to fight back. They had no weapon to fight back with and fought regardless of their own lives. The monster who did this did not look like a fit or physically robust individual. What if that principal had had less than lethal pepper stray or some other robust system to confront the situation that took her life. It doesn’t have to be an in your face military style solution but its a problem that need a serious, grown up, thought out solution.
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There were 2 armed responders in the first minutes of Columbine. One was quoted: “There was an unknown inside a school. We didn’t know who the ‘bad guy’ was but we soon realized the sophistication of their weapons. These were big bombs. Big guns. We didn’t have a clue who ‘they’ were.”
The problem is that shootouts are rarely like in the movies, or in gunner fantasy.
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Exactly. And who’s to say that the armed police presence isn’t the first to be targeted. What about the size of the school? These new mega-schools are so spread out and layered that with 100′s of kids screaming and running it would be nearly a miracle to get any type of response.
Maybe we do need some changes, but rushed changes don’t need to evolve through timely hysteria and prophesied mayhem, but changes to my and your second admendment rights, guaranteed by our Constitution, need not be one of them.
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Perhaps it’s time for a way to secure individual classrooms to prevent entry is in order. A separate, but similar system of alarms (similar to the fire alarms) to alert the school to lock it down. At least then the classrooms themselves could be havens until the threat is dealt with. Most newer schools have already got fire doors to contain fires so smaller areas, so ideally just some reinforcing would do the trick enabling schools to contain the perpetrators.
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