Our children's psyche is being damaged. This is not right, too much violence.

worrying about tests and homework and dates and zits.

NOT this.

ABSOLUTELY NOT this.

Just so some paranoiacs can freely have their massacre toys?

None of our kids deserve to have to deal with terror like this.
No kid.
Anywhere.

Last edited Wed Feb 13, 2019, 12:41 PM - Edit history (1)

drills we went through as children because its so much more personal. When are we all going to decide enough is enough? These sick people have to be stopped somehow.

the general annihilation of all around you by an amorphous entity far away is less scary than a direct attack by another single person.

At the age of six I had to duck and cover under my desk at school as the sirens blared. I remember one day that I felt very very angry as I cowered under my desk waiting for the siren to stop. I decided then and there that the grown ups in charge were not doing a good job. Why had they created these horrible bombs and then threatened each other with them so little kids had to be scared. I knew then and there that they were not to be trusted. That was my radicalizing experience.

least think of it as some great amorphos "them", while a guy with a rifle is so personally scary. I think this is so damaging to our children and the Repukes simply don't care. Guns and gun nuts are more important. I hate them.

Only because it's not happening to their kids schools' do repugs not prioritize stopping mass gun killings. Let one hit the pricey DC schools, or any high end private or Christian school where repugs' kids go, and it would be a total outrage. There would be no thoughts and prayers, just get rid of AR-15's and extended magazines TODAY. They just don't give a shit about working class or poor kids because their NRA $$ is more important.

Everything you say is why this problem hasn't been solved.

Of course, once they are touched by a tragedy and need to turn to a caring society, they'll pretend to be Democrats, or at least moderates. I certainly don't expect their vengeful god to let them enjoy their execrable lives.

We did have to hide under our desks during the cold war, but all in all we have become less civilized.

One of the readings in church last Sunday was when David snuck into his enemy's tent and could have killed him as he slept. Instead he took his spear to show that he spared his life. Yeah I know, David isn't the best example to use when talking about civility but still.

think this way. The fat cats in DC who took $$$$ from NRA and gun manufacturers should have to read this. It probably would not affect them, unless their own kids and grandkids are in schools that might be targets. Yeah, right. Private schools for their special kids. Greatest country in the world? I think not.

because there are people in this country who actually do love their guns and ammo more than they love their children. Or ours.

Little wonder those same nra clowns have no problem with the nra funneling russian money into the gop in 2016.

Treason is easy after watching your children being slaughtered over and over again while cleaning your AR-15.

be afraid of dying by gunfire, and neither should any of our citizens have to be afraid of a Second Amendment absolutist standing his/her ground against a perceived threat. Gun nuts actually believe that they have a right to be judge, jury, and executioner when they "feel" threatened.

The NRA and the GOA are terrorist organizations who promote vigilantism and violence.

This heartbreaking tweet says it all.

conversations about his plans if/when this happens at school. He feels the need to have an idea of where he might hide or escape depending on where he is in the building...whether he’s on the first floor or upper floors. It’s painful to talk about and consider but we do it because he wants to and afterwards he relaxes and can let it go for a while. He has defied the no cell phone rule at school because he feels like that would be his life line if something went down. None of this is okay in my mind and yet here we are.

Last edited Wed Feb 13, 2019, 03:49 PM - Edit history (1)

WTF! It can be incorporated into the survival chances for the children. Their shut down drills should include the use of cellphones during the emergency.

My iphone has a way of calling for emergency help by simply tapping the on button five times in a row. Something that no one will do accidentally. Kids are the best at using all the new gadgets!

On the UC Berkeley campus, which has its own police department there are special posts lit up with blue light where someone running from a criminal can call the police. They don’t even need to talk to the police since the 911 call will alert them. The police tell people to call and to keep running if they have to. Not to wait or an answer if it’s too dangerous. The police are on campus and can arrive in a few minutes.

Imagine if the police emergency system was lit up like a Christmas tree! Every on duty cop and fireman and paramedics and whoever else was included in the city would be alerted in real time.

Surely they’re incorporating these things!

I've gone to bat about the no cell phone policy at this particular middle school and nothing has changed. If anything, the policy has gotten more stringent. My son is an 8th grader and this is his last year there. The two times that the principal has caught him with his phone, he didn't have his phone out...it was spotted in his pocket. The principal called me I let her know that unless and until my kid feels safe at school and is preoccupied with the fear of dying in his classroom, he has my permission to have his phone on his person. If he has it out and is playing with it, he loses that privilege and he knows that. The principal doesn't like it when I tell her this but she doesn't fight me. I know other parents who have the same agreements with their kids...it takes the edge off their worry and they can concentrate on school. The high schools here allow kids to keep phones on them.

In all the school districts in my county in MI. The only rule now is to silence incoming calls/texts. Most students have them on vibrate or out on their desks.

I was ridiculed by members of this board from the UK about this very thing. It really, really upset me.

I’m so glad the school districts are doing this! If potential perpetrators know this it could also deter some or most of them.

Ignore people who feel the need to ridicule. They’re probably NRA paid shills or are gun owners. Every time a shooting happens they come out of the gungeon forum to fight the rest of us. One of their tools is to ridicule people. They’re good at it.

gun regulation will mean their guns will be taken away so they fight any sensible regulation. It happens here too.

It’s a good opportunity to sharpen your debating skills at least.

They are from the UK and were just laughing at the thought of kids having cell phones concerning school violence here in the states. They were completely out of the loop of what is going on here and not willing to empathize.

or gomer I will tell you it's a terrifying thing. To see someone with a small armory of weapons and stockpile of ammunition and realize HOW MANY of these whackadoodles are out there is beyond sobering.

Those poor kids. The anxiety they are living with is overwhelming.

non-existent "emergency" of illegal immigration and focusing on that stupid-ass wall.

It's the damn guns President Fuckwit! Wake up!

these drills are.

While school shootings are real, they are still very rare, and the lock-down drills -- some of which have been presented as the real thing -- do more psychological harm than good.

I will add that I do not have children currently in school.

That would be my first thought.

And doing a google search to try to find the article I read, I learned there are many, many such articles. You might want to do a similar search and read some of them.

I am not trying to downplay how terrible the school shootings are, but holding active shooter drills isn't really a solution. A real solution would be to get serious about gun control and actually take guns away from people, but of course in this country the right of some random stranger to have a gun and use it vastly outweighs the rights of others to live.

In any case, the actual leading cause of death in children is car crashes. Firearm related injury is number two, but in reality very few of those firearm deaths occur in schools. So the problem is not shootings at schools. The problem is guns.

They are terrorist acts.

Car accidents and accidental shootings are not considered crimes in themselves and they are not in the same category as deliberately shooting people. No one should be conflating these in their confusion.

School shootings, as terrible as they are, only account for a tiny percentage of the deaths from shooting every year.

See my point?

If you're equating school shootings to terrorist attacks, I get you. But my point is that remarkably few people die that way. Not that I'm excusing the deaths, but it's the overall availability of guns that's the true issue. And thousands of gun deaths occur every year outside of schools. We need to get worked up over all of them.

Meanwhile, remind me again of how many terror attacks we've had in this country since 9/11? None, really. A handful of incidents have been defined as terror attacks, but invariably they've been the work of a lone person, not a coordinated event involving multiple actors. Pretty amazing, really.

doesn’t mean they don’t count. My point is that it’s a mistake to lump all gun deaths into one category. Lumping the deliberate use of guns in murders with accidental gun deaths is not an honest statistical calculus. It make the murder from a terrorist attack seem liked it’s acceptable because it happens so much less.

It’s an easy way to minimize gun violence by lumping it all together.

Just to clarify, I am not against ownership of guns.

Lots of people are against ownership of guns by dangerous people and people that are careless with guns.

I am absolutely distinguishing between the school shootings and all the other gun deaths, including the 2 year olds who find a gun in mommy's purse and shoot her, or the 7 year old that finds the loaded gun in the nightstand on daddy's side of the bed and shoots his younger sister. Also the people who decide the ex can't have the kids and so shoot them and themselves. Or the person who, well you know what I'm getting at.

And frankly, gun violence is not minimized by lumping it altogether. Gun violence is minimized if you say, Oh, it's okay to own guns and oh, gosh, isn't that too bad that nearly 40,000 people die in this country each year from guns, but we only need to worry about the tiny fraction of that number that are school shootings. That minimizes all of the other gun deaths.

And I'm not sure the kid finding a parent's unsecured gun can rightly be called an accident. Not if the gun was loaded and there was no safety. That's sheer, wanton, carelessness.

I am against the ownership of guns. I know that's not going to happen in this country, but so long as people say it's perfectly okay to own guns, then they must be willing to say it's perfectly okay that nearly 40,000 people die each year in this country from gun violence. The two go hand in hand, and hand-wringing about mental illness and all of the loopholes in background checks are meaningless.

discuss this issue. I think we agree essentially. Every gun caused death is bad no matter how it happens. I agree about that and I get your point.

School shootings, accidental shootings at home. Both happen because of lax regulation on who can own a gun and no requirements that gun owners have to certify and recertify to own a gun. We have intensely more regulations on automobile owners that exist for gun owners. Both are needed, but one is virtually nonexistent.

Your point is well taken because it’s true.

And more guns definitely aren't the answer.

change catastrophe are far worse. We are dooming future generations to life on an inhospitable planet because of our inaction today on reducing carbon emissions.

It can be done you know.

What have we done to address THE biggest issue we face?

Because for every advance on the issue by the Democrats there has been a concerted effort nullify it by the Republican lobbyists. The money people.

If we’re lucky we’ll be able to get some real traction on the issue in 2020. Let’s make it a pivotal issue in who we pick to be President.

grandkids are the ones who are facing a dystopian future, they will demand the change as is happening across Europe right now.

In the 1970s, from President Carter on TV. It’s ridiculous that we are even in this position!

I think we humans are doomed.

are destroying the psyche of adults and children. And the NRA is still there.

putting our children at risk because some people want unfettered access to a phallic symbol to deal with their inferiority about masculinity.

Thank you!

Let's not lose sight of something else though...we have allowed children to be terrorized and raised in fear for thousands of years...religions teaching the dogma of "hell" and eternal torment? People who willingly allow their children to go to sleep at night with prayers about dying before they wake? People who turned a blind eye or kept silent about priest and clergy sexually abusing and raping children? Catholic or Protestant...makes no damn difference - they have done unspeakable things for centuries. Stories of vicious, retributive 'gods' striking them down to hellfire and torture because of what they are and who they are attracted to and love? Openly condemning homosexuals as deviants and miscreants - projecting their own hideous actions and desires onto others as a classic scapegoat move.

Even on the political front, I recall the Cold War and the nuclear war fears of the 1970's and 1980's..."The Day After"..."Wargames"...Atomic Bomb drills...Fallout shelters...bomb shelters. As the fear of nuclear annihilation has ebbed, it was just replaced by fear of dying by a mass shooter.

There are/were others....poisoned Halloween candy? razor blades in candy apples? Cyanide-laced Tylenol bottles? Child Abductors? Kidnappers?

We are a culture of fear and have been raised to fear....fear the other, fear death, fear god, fear, fear, fear, FEAR!!!

Buy doorbell cameras that call your ever present consumer alert and nominal communication device!
Home security.
Homeland security.
Border walls.
Picket fences.
Guns to fire at things that go bump in the night...like a child out of bed for a glass of water.

The sooner climate change accelerates and finishes us off, the better the universe may well be. We generally suck at identifying the truly important from the inconsequential.

We must enact meaningful gun control legislation.

No child should have to have these kind of fears especially at school!!!😡

How could we let this happen?

Or one committed by dark skinned or Muslim teens? Maybe we should see how they manage school safety.

How horrendous that our beautiful innocent kids have to attend class in this atmosphere of fear and hatred.

We have several young ones in our family, and it makes me sad to realize that these can't be the happy, carefree years that they should be. Little kids, experiencing very adult problems - how unfair.

How can anyone call these modern times "progress"? This is not progress at all. Our children are being stunted by the outrageous acts of others.

That's worked great so far. Since the Sandy Hook shooting, their thoughts and prayers have really protected everyone . . . who sells guns.

No child should EVER have to think about this. NEVER EVER. That is devastating.

Kids should NOT have to grow up this way. They should have playgrounds and mud puddles and snow banks to trick other kids into and spring times and summers of warm. And get giggles when the first snow falls, and Hanukkah candles or Christmas trees, dolls and stuffed critters, kitties and pups to pet, horses to ride. Beaches to surf.

This makes me SICK. Literally. Major hugs to all the kids out there anywhere.

LOST it.

FUCKING FUCKK FUK FUCK.

In a glitter kitty shirt.

THIS HAS TO STOP.

My 7-year-old great-nephew was telling me all about how you have to turn the lights out and go to the back of the classroom because the bad man is going to be trying to get in the door at the front of the classroom. He said it so matter-of-factly that I just couldn’t believe that this was our new reality. And it’s not just kids; after the Capital newsroom shooting in Maryland, my media company added layers of security, along with cops coming in to talk to us about active shooter situations. We’ll soon have drills in case some media-hating MAGAt decides to bring in a gun. It’s a reality you don’t want to think about, but you have to face in a gun-worshiping country like this.