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May 03, 2005

Sitting Ducks

In a much more serious vein...

The other day my daughter came home from school. "We had a practice lockdown today".

Lockdown? Sounds like the kids are in the slammer (see my "Abolish Grade School" post).

Now, the person in me who can't solve every damn thing, the person who grew up in a teacher's family, and who really doesn't have a lot in the way of non-public school options right now hopes that there's a rational reason for this sort of response to an emergency - and by "emergency", I mean "wacko with a gun moving through the hallways, shooting people". Maybe locking the doors and keeping the kids - and their unarmed teachers - penned up in their rooms until help arrives is the right idea. But after Red Lake, my enthusiasm for that answer is pretty feeble. Is telling kids and teachers - the ones that can, anyway - to make a break for cover any worse an idea than ordering them to sit behind easily-splintered doors, at the sufferance of the psycho that is stalking the hallway with a gun?

A few years back, right after 9/11 when doom impended around every corner, I asked a school administrator "what would you do if you got word that a chemical or radiological bomb had gone off in downtown Saint Paul". The answer was feeble in the extreme; I, a mere civilian, know vastly more about surviving such attacks than these administrators to whom I entrust my kids every day (heart firmly in throat). I have little faith that things have gotten any better.

Posted by Mitch at May 3, 2005 06:48 AM | TrackBack
Comments

Home schooling is looking better every day. At least there I know that both teachers are heavily armed.

Posted by: nerdbert at May 3, 2005 11:19 AM

hey mitch,
Have you thought about or looked into St. Agnes at all? Its only about two miles, it is supoosed to lean conseravative. I think it is on the less expensive end of the local tuition spectrum. I know its not free and its Catholic but if you're serious and I think you are, god knows I would be, you might want to at least look into.

Posted by: paddy at May 3, 2005 10:19 PM

I'm ambivilant myself on this one. The classic police/authority responce is to lock everyone in to control the situation. But that presumes that they have have the monopoly on force and don't want to lose it to numbers. But in this case, as you point out, the monopoly of force is with the killer. Since we have disarmed all the others and unless you luck into at least two or three strong and confident people who risk life and limb to oppose the killer as in, I believe Washington state, then you have just reenforced the target rich enviroment. The other reason to lock down is the theory that any one in the halls is now fair game, but that presumes a very cold calculas of how many dead are you willing to accept until your ready to go in. Since responce time in the best sitiuation is measured in larger segments of hours and not minutes it presumes a very high body count. Finally it presumes that the killer(s) would try to escape with other fleeing students if those students were not locked in. Now I have not studied in depth the various school and church shooting, nor even the workplace ones. But I can not recall this ever actually happening. Most all that I can recall die by their own hand at the scene.
I think a better plan would be to evacuate the way you would do in a fire. Actually a fire alarm may be the best responce. Empty the building as quickly as possible. It may reduce the death toll. Of course so would more people of courage.

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