Time for yet another "Mass Shooting" thread

If Plague, Inc. didn't bother anybody, neither will this.

 

https://thinkprogress.org/fox-news-school-shootings-water-cannons-8b35027728c7/

In “School shootings: This cannon fires unbelievable ammo to blast through walls and help rescue victims,” Fox News “defense specialist” Allison Barrie writes about a cannon called the “BCB Wall Breaker” that fires water cooler tanks at high velocities. Barrie suggests the cannon could help students escape mass shootings by blasting down walls.

So much winning... the ones that don't get shot fulla holes can get buried in gravel and shrapnel. Rock stuck in the skull like Denise McNair, maybe? Should be fun to see...

 

Do most schools not have windows in their classrooms? Talk about a solution in search of a problem.

 

I'd be surprised if most do. They sorta went to the "modern castle" look about 50 years ago. My HS was a reasonable size (around 2200 students) but had very few windows. English and science departments had none, IIRC.

Of course, that isn't the goal here. The goal is for cops to be able to jac- uh, use more of the weaponry our tax dollars pay for.

 

Man, that's sad. Every classroom I had until law school had windows, and my public schools were ugly (70s architecture at its finest) and shitty.

Every student needs to be able to look out a window and daydream about being anywhere but school.

 

That's actually one of the best reasons not to have them. Students need to be focused on their futures. Spend some time in the trenches teaching middle and high school and you'll see. Most of the students I taught couldn't have handled the freedoms my generation had. I'd hate to have to be a high school kid today, with someone needing a pass or parental permission for every little thing I wanted to do. He's a 3.5, he's in the building somewhere, that's all you need to know. I can recall when smart kids were allowed to do stuff outside class, skip class, work on whatever student-related extracurriculars we had going, because we were going to test well regardless. One of the rival schools let upperclassmen leave campus for lunch. We didn't have that right, but we just drove out thru a back road and nobody worried much. Our 45 minute lunches saw girls laying out on school grounds, guys throwing a frisbee or a ball, some folks brought kites... it was an experiment of sorts, I've come to learn since. But it's the sort of thing you can do only with smart kids from good families. Average kids need a leash.

Of course, we didn't have Trump, so we didn't have to worry about Becky calling the cops on us for being at some fast food place when she thought we should be in the school cafeteria. And we didn't have as many school shooters.

FWIW, all the schools I attended have had lots of windows except my HS.

 

While I don't disagree with the general premise of your post, this last bit seems a little bit self-serving. "Smart kids from good families" are just as capable of working the system and getting into trouble as anyone -- in my experience, they can be more likely as they know they're smart and either think they can get away with it or think they deserve some slack because they're so special. "Average" kids? So you're saying they're not trustworthy?

When I was in school - especially HS, the things we did on a daily basis would get parents tossed in jail today.

 

I'm saying that those of us who were able to handle the responsibility did not do shit that would have set us back educationally, and most were smart enough not to get their parents in trouble. We skipped class. We told classmates to tell the teacher(s) we were in the band room practicing (which we often were). We left campus... and returned. We did not fight at school or much outside of school, did not cause trouble of the sort that would alert the cops, we did not drink, toke, snort, that sort of thing. We did not carry guns around when we weren't hunting. I know of two girls who had babies while in school. Neither attended class while visibly pregnant. That's two, out of four years of over 2000 kids. Folks used protection because the biggest nightmare fear anybody in that group of students had was to get a girl pregnant. We did feel like we deserved some slack, and we got it. Nobody I know has been the worse off for it. OTOH, I know a few students who would have ended up in a brawl or something and the whole thing would have been shut down all over town because of them. No, they weren't all trustworthy in the sense that they could see the bigger picture of their school and the image it should project. Most were thoroughly decent, but not all could control their behavior- or their reactions when someone called them on it.

There's more stuff that'll get a parent tossed in jail today. I'd toss some of 'em in jail for sending their kid to school unprepared or with a bad attitude.

 

Shit I remember a girl getting pulled out of school at 13 because it was time for her to settle and start a family, according to parents. Saw enough crap from well off and not that I wouldn't trust either as far as all that's concerned. Biggest difference was advocacy. Those well off were usually able to get away with truancy or fights or drugs and alcohol while those who weren't, didnt.

Different time, I suppose. Different neighborhood.

 

That's not really going to help solve the prison overcrowding problem. Just sayin'.

 

Wait, what? I didn't think that was even legal. OTTOMH, you're required to attend school until your 16th birthday.

For that demo, I'm willing to build more.

 

You'd be right but how strictly enforced do you think that is? Cops got other things do than run down someone who is no longer in school. Considering how easy it can be to set up home schooling wouldn't surprise me if they claimed that if asked.

 

I agree that they do, but I'm thinking that law enforcement (truant officers) could maybe slack off on an upperclassman who skirts the attendance minimum long enough to drop the hammer on the parents of a 13 year-old girl who was allowed to quit entirely "so she could settle down and start a family", according to the parents themselves.

I'm not going to Google "minimum age for marriage", lest I get a bunch of email asking me to support this or that GOP candidate. But I'm pretty sure 13 doesn't fly anywhere in the US, even with parental consent. IOW, the very reason these folks gave is illegal. If they said this to any adult, that adult should have reported it to the police. She's not marrying a 13 year-old boy who's also dropped out. I can promise you that.

 

Actually the age of consent is ridiculously low if there is parental consent. Child brides is a huge problem in this country.

 

Oh and truant officers? I can't remember the last one I saw. Cops on campus to bust heads and keep the school to prison pipeline going? Sure. But not truant.

 

NYT columnist Nicholas Kristof wrote about this a couple days ago.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/01/...-left-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-left-region

One study by Unchained at Last estimated that there were nearly a quarter-million child marriages in the U.S. between 2000 and 2010.

Last year I wrote about Sherry Johnson, a Florida woman who had been married at the age of 11 to her rapist. After that article, many readers wrote to me saying that my facts were wrong and that their state had a minimum age of 18 for marriage.

Sadly, the facts were right. Yes, states set a minimum age of 18, but they also allow exceptions, such as with the approval of parents or a court, or when a girl is pregnant. Indeed, 20 states don’t set any minimum statutory age for marriage, according to the Tahirih Justice Center’s Forced Marriage Initiative.​

​

There are a couple other examples in there.

 

My middle schooler gets good grades & even he's tired of school at this time of the year. "14 days to go!" he told me on Friday. He's in a large school where they barely have time to think between clases. They monitor the halls pretty strictly. It's a lot more oppressive that way than when we were coming up.

My brother in the late 70s was so tired of school by late September that he used to smoke cigs on the front lawn of the HS or hang out at the 7-11 instead of going to class and nobody even cared. There was a patch of woods behind the HS where stoners gathered every morning to "prep" for the school day. He got his HS diploma somehow.

 

I remember the evil Santa Claus looking security guy at my high school would often hang out with a certain group of students and help them leave campus for lunch (one entrance had a gate) although we weren't supposed to. Me... I remember being sent to the office because I tried to get my violin out of my car during lunch.

 

They might have faced obscenity charges, tho it's not completely clear.

http://www.waff.com/story/23755637/family-speaks-out-about-sparkman-hs-students-suicide

 

“It fired”?? How did it fire itself?

There was a pretty good twitter exchange on this. Gun control advocate asks if this is one of those good guys with a gun the NRA keeps banging on about. Gun rights guy responds no, this is one of those “only the government should have guns” guys.

 

He did a backflip. Gun falls out. Goes to pick it up and it goes off nailing someone in leg

He has to be fired, right? And I don't live in Gunnutia. So is a butt holster common?

 

So presumably he took the gun into a bar with a round in the chamber? Pretty sure that's going to be some type of violation...

 

Since Friday. ???? That's all of 2days. What's the big deal.