This is a response. I guess it’s something you can do. But it doesn’t seem like it’s going to help much - it will have so many false positives cause kids, but not really be accessible in an emergency.

    • I do genuinely hope no teacher ever goes postal with a gun issued due to that rule, but I do wonder what the reaction would be to a tragedy like that - a new rule to issue guns to all students when they enter the school so that they can defend themselves? The mind boggles…

  • A summary of ideas commonly proposed by Republican politicians in response to school shootings:

    1. Harden schools against intruders by locking doors and installing bullet proof glass

    2. Reduce the number of entrances and exits to further harden schools against external attackers

    3. Install metal detectors to prevent students or visitors from bringing guns onto school property undetected

    4. Eliminate backpacks/ require clear backpacks to prevent students from concealed carrying weapons

    5. Arm teachers so they can kill school shooters

    6. Hire more armed peace officers/school police to respond more quickly to school shooters

    7. Require panic buttons to more quickly alert police to the presence of a school shooter

    Notice that all of these ideas are reactive, and that none of these proposed solutions extend beyond the bounds of school property. It is assumed that there are people with guns who will try to kill schoolchildren, and they aren’t going to even try to solve that problem. They just take the existence of school shooters for granted, as a though it’s an innate part of society or a naturally occurring phenomenon like earthquakes.

    That position would be a lot more defensible if the US wasn’t an outlier among developed nations for gun violence, and in particular school shootings.

    • I’m a teacher and a gun owner. I will tell off any administrator who tells me that I’ll be issued a firearm for my classroom and that part of my job is to eliminate an intruder.

      Ironically, the last district I taught at specifically told us to think about ourselves first and get to safety. We were told to run, even if that meant leaving the kids behind.

    • Because none of them want to solve the problem, until it’s their kids getting shot up. Like “thoughts and prayers” it’s a way to tell the victims to get fucked without being on record telling them to get fucked.

  • That’s great and all, but presupposes that whoever’s on the other end of that panic button will actually respond and do so effectively or in time. Uvalde and Parkland both had cops make it on site in a reasonable amount of time, but they were basically useless in both cases.

    • It also triggers a tweet asking for thoughts and prayers. Everyone talks about how useless it is when people send their thoughts and prayers after a school shooting. This way, we’ll get thoughts and prayers during the shootings!