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How the Lessons of Columbine Saved Lives At Arapahoe High School
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).""
We should be reading the text book on how to prevent this kind of tragedies. Treat cause and not sympthoms.
I don't see saved lives but 2 lost lives.
So sad the news is
Columbine really revolutionized the way law enforcement responds to active shooters.
instead of
Columbine really revolutionized the way society identifies and treats those in need of psychological support in order to avoid them turning into active shooters.
The way to deal with shooter situations is having a better emergency procedures? What about all the hidden surveillance and monitoring and CCTVs and metal detectors and RFID tags? What did they do to help?
Except for the fact that some of those shooters are simple psychopaths.
Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold - pretended to show promise after they attended the anger management classes, even writing a letter of apology to the van owner. At the same time, they wrote in their journal about their god-given right to break into a van in the middle of nowhere. Other bits of motive exist, with them generally claiming things persistent with narcissism.
Granted, most of the problems could be avoided by people paying attention. Obviously, the person providing the firearms should have known that something was wrong with purchasing a semi-auto pistol and a shotgun for two minors who had a questionable history.
"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
The constitution doesn't say "in a militia".
Do you Gentoo!?
Schools today treat the kids like goats staked out for lions to kill and eat. If I want to cause mayhem and kill, where do I go? A "gun free zone"!
Hey, everyone, come here and perpetrate your crimes, no guns here to worry about!
Yeah, that's why schools all around the world are, basically, the biggest crime zones with huge death tolls...
Oh, wait, nope, school shootings are mostly the proud US tradition, with shooting incidents from all over Eurasia for all time counting less than US shootings just in past decade.
"Solution to shootings? More guns for everyone!"
The lesson we keep ignoring is that the root of the overwhelming vast majority of these cases is the same: mental health. Our country continues to completely ignore the elephant in the room. Until we improve access to mental health care, and de-stigmatize the pursuit of mental health treatment, we will continue to have unstable individuals in our society who will do this to us. We don't necessarily need to lock them all up, many can be treated; but they all need access to help.
Our current health care system fails miserably at this. The Health Insurance Industry Bailout Act of 2010 (aka "affordable care act", aka "Obamacare") does almost nothing for this problem.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
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
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution#District_of_Columbia_v._Heller
If you post as Anonymous Coward, don't expect a reply.
The huge numbers of countries that have strong gun control are not suffering with school massacres being committed with bombs instead.
Where do you get a lot of people setting off home made bombs? Places where there are also a lot of guns. Iraq in the last decade. Northern Ireland in the 70s/80s. etc.
Bombs are not gun alternatives. Cutting guns does not increase bomb attacks.
Governments killed 20X the number of civilians as civilians killed civilians in the 20th century worldwide.
I think I know who to be concerned of thank you very much.
"But it shouldn’t require another Sandy Hook to make us realize something has to change. The school shooters are committing a grandiose form of suicide. Media, traditionally, doesn’t cover suicides, and is very careful when it does. It’s a long-standing custom, borne out of numerous studies from groups like the Suicide Prevention Resource Center and the National Institute of Mental Health.
“More than 50 research studies worldwide have found that certain types of news coverage can increase the likelihood of suicide in vulnerable individuals,” the NIMH concluded. “The magnitude of the increase is related to the amount, duration and prominence of coverage.”
Gently reply
Mexico has much stricter laws than Germany, what a gun-violence-free paradise that is eh?
and before someone repeats lie of certain BATF official, most guns in Mexico in fact don't originate in the USA.
Wrong. You ignore the elephant in the room. Take away the crimes of two inner city subcultures from the statistics and then the murder and violent crime rates are the same as Europe. You are focusing on a minute sliver of the pie of gun crime, and ignoring the real problem. Based on your myopic view, you would take away guns from people who have the right and ability to own properly own and use them.
"People going on a shooting spree are as much a victim of society as the people they kill."
With that statement, you simply assume that all people are good, and that no people are evil. And, that idea is so terribly naive, so stupid, that we shouldn't have to discuss it.
The FACT IS, evil little children grow into evil teens, who grow into evil young adults, who then mature into evil adults, and eventually evil old bastards.
You may pretend that no child is evil. You and society in general may pretend that all children are equal in all respects.
I'll go with Darwin, and survival of the fittest. Some kids are simply unfit to fit into society in any way, shape, or form.
And, I suspect that every member of Slashdot who happens to be a mother, or hopes to be a mother, will hate me forever now.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Well, that depends on how you look at it. You're restricting people's freedoms to stop a few people who abuse a tool, and barring extraordinarily catastrophic situations, I just can't get behind that.
So, around 10,000 homicides by gun EVERY YEAR, plus around 20,000 suicides by gun EVERY YEAR. Just under 3,000 deaths on 9/11 justified gutting the bill of rights, invading a country or two, but you don't think the 130,000 homicides by gun SINCE 9/11 is an "extraordinarily catastrophic situation"? How in the world do Americans become accustomed to such carnage? I guess it's true; we suck at putting things in perspective.
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.
They have them at home, but carrying them is highly restricted and ammo is well regulated. The Swiss aren't carrying around handguns like in the US.
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.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
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.
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
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 - 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.
It appears that the timeline is:
Shooter enters school and shoots 1 student.
Shooter kills himself.
Police respond.
Police claim credit.
Unless I'm missing something here, it doesn't look like the police response accomplished anything. They arrived after the crime was over and done with.
10,000 firearm related homicides, and a total yearly mortality rate of over 2 MILLION! Thats less than 0.5% of all annual deaths in the US. Most of those are probably due to gang warfare, which isn't going to stop even if you could magically remove all civilian firearms in the US. Speaking more directly to firearms. Most estimates say that there are at least 270 Million civilian firearms in the US, that means that only 0.0037% of firearms are misused each year. You want to penalize probably in the neighborhood of 100 Million people for the actions of less than 10,000. If you're really looking to save lives we need to fix hospitals, medical malpractice is estimated to kill almost 200,000 a year.