School shooting Florida

[jimbob]

You make it sound like if there was information a kid was carrying a knife in a school or there was a fight whilst a police liaison officer was on the premises, they would not be involved.

The primary role is outreach, but it is also guard, watch and patrol, to preserve life and protect property. That part does not stop at the school gate.

Yes, but the situations where police officers are tasked with a long-term secondment to a school for law enforcement are pretty rare.


Saying that outreach officers are not intended for enforcement is true. The fact that they are still on duty is a given.

The police close the local road for the Remembrance Day parade - I'm sure if they saw a crime being committed, that would take priority, but it *really* isn't their *intended* role at that time.

 

[The Great Zaganza]

How about a couple of SWORDS (Special Weapons Observation Reconnaissance Detection System) with M-16s (no need to go overboard with a M240) roaming the halls of a school?
Tracked combat drones make everyone feel safer...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foster-Miller_TALON

 

[Jack by the hedge]

I may have been the first one on this Forum to say "It feels different this time", and I've heard it from several quarters since then. I'm thinking now of 50 years ago, 1968, another time of great upheaval for civil rights and the Vietnam war.

To this distant observer what feels different this time is the coverage of the anger of the kids who survived rather than just the grief of the victims' families. They probably engage much more profoundly with their own generation than grieving parents do.

Nothing may change immediately but this might be a generational shift. Someone remarked many pages back that young people don't vote. They do eventually.

 

[3point14]

To this distant observer what feels different this time is the coverage of the anger of the kids who survived rather than just the grief of the victims' families. They probably engage much more profoundly with their own generation than grieving parents do.

Nothing may change immediately but this might be a generational shift. Someone remarked many pages back that young people don't vote. They do eventually.

I like the optimism.


Sadly, I don't believe that this time it's different. Absent a sea-change in US politics, if there hasn't been change with the umpteen events before this one, this one isn't going to make a difference.

 

[Andy_Ross]

NRA fight back. FCC chairman Ajit Pai has recieved a handmade rifle and the NRA's "Charlton Heston Courage Under Fire Award" for overseeing the net neutrality repeal.

 

[alfaniner]

I have a question:

How sanitised is the reporting in the US media. How explicit are the pictures of bodies leaving the school?

Do you think unsanitising them might have an effect on the US consciousness?

We are shown pictures of dead kids on the other side of the world on the news all the time. Why not our own?

A Dad of one of a. Parkland student was so miffed that CNN wouldn't let his son read the long speech he wrote for him instead of the prearranged question that he faked an email to make CNN look bad:

Oh. That explains the FOXNews headline blurb that the questions were scripted by CNN.

 

[jimbob]

To this distant observer what feels different this time is the coverage of the anger of the kids who survived rather than just the grief of the victims' families. They probably engage much more profoundly with their own generation than grieving parents do.

Nothing may change immediately but this might be a generational shift. Someone remarked many pages back that young people don't vote. They do eventually.

I think this might be the largest school shooting of social-media savvy teens.

Earlier ones have bee too early or of kids that are too young.

NRA fight back. FCC chairman Ajit Pai has recieved a handmade rifle and the NRA's "Charlton Heston Courage Under Fire Award" for overseeing the net neutrality repeal.

Surely the optics of that are particularly bad at this time? It certainly seems like it to me - on many levels.

ETA: crass and easily spun as an attack on free speech

 

[Andy_Ross]

Wouldn't the kid in hospital who sheltered his schoolmates and got shot multiple times be a better recipient of a 'Courage Under Fire Award'?

 

[Nessie]

To this distant observer what feels different this time is the coverage of the anger of the kids who survived rather than just the grief of the victims' families. They probably engage much more profoundly with their own generation than grieving parents do.

Nothing may change immediately but this might be a generational shift. Someone remarked many pages back that young people don't vote. They do eventually.

They did not care about the other school shootings over the past year or so. They only cared when it happened to them and a few have come out in sympathy to protest.

Many more kids live in NRA households, as the NRA has c5 million members and double that in terms of supporters;

https://www.nraila.org/articles/20170707/remarkable-finding-from-pew-survey

That self centred, me only, approach and the large section of people who stand against them (well organised and funded) means the chances of any success is small.

Add that to the size of the task, the sheer number of guns and each state having its own laws (a few states with lax laws ruins efforts by the rest) and it back to snow ball in a blue moon chances of success.

 

[Jack by the hedge]

We are shown pictures of dead kids on the other side of the world on the news all the time. Why not our own?...

I suspect the question was about how graphic the TV news actually is. In the UK, TV news avoids showing dead bodies. They'll tell us what's happened but won't show gruesome pictures of it. I suppose that makes the rare exceptions more shocking.

 

[3point14]

Wouldn't the kid in hospital who sheltered his schoolmates and got shot multiple times be a better recipient of a 'Courage Under Fire Award'?

I suspect he has the wrong political outlook for that.

 

[3point14]

I suspect the question was about how graphic the TV news actually is. In the UK, TV news avoids showing dead bodies. They'll tell us what's happened but won't show gruesome pictures of it. I suppose that makes the rare exceptions more shocking.

Yes, this.

I feel that if the actual, rather than the sanitised, cleaned up effects of people being shot were shown then people would be much less enthusiastic about actually putting rounds into flesh.

 

[Darat]

Yes, this.

I feel that if the actual, rather than the sanitised, cleaned up effects of people being shot were shown then people would be much less enthusiastic about actually putting rounds into flesh.

Would that be enough to alter the perception generated by the majority of the media we all consume?

I've said it before part of the USA issue in regards to violence of all kinds (and this is not unique to the USA) is how violence is portrayed in pretty much all media - i.e. unrealistic and sanitised which normalises the idea of violence.

Violence in the media does not create violence but it does affect how we perceive violence.

 

[William Parcher]

I feel that if the actual, rather than the sanitised, cleaned up effects of people being shot were shown then people would be much less enthusiastic about actually putting rounds into flesh.

Are you suggesting that insane people with homicidal urges will not fire a gun at anyone if they are previously shown photos of gore?

I don't know if you are saying that, but I will mention that Nikolas Cruz is notorious for taking dead animals and killing animals and then cutting them open so that the guts would spill out. He was fond of that.

 

[Henri McPhee]

Trump is in the pay of the National Rifle Association.

 

[paulhutch]

Wouldn't the kid in hospital who sheltered his schoolmates and got shot multiple times be a better recipient of a 'Courage Under Fire Award'?

No way, he did nothing to promote unrestricted gun access, gun possession or use, the only considerations for that award.

By eliminating net neutrality Pai has made it legal for ISP's to take all requests intended for pro-gun control web sites and redirect them to anti-gun control web sites. That could advance the NRA's position far more than some kid being a hero without using a gun.

BTW - this makes me sad but it is the unfortunate reality of the current political climate in the US.

 

[3point14]

Would that be enough to alter the perception generated by the majority of the media we all consume?

I thinks so, or, at least, it has a chance.

"You'll take my file when you pry it from my cold dead hands" has a subtly different connotation when contrasted with a child bleeding out from their shattered internal organs in the background.

A sanitised picture of the same child once they'd been cleaned up to look all acceptable has a different effect, I feel.

I've said it before part of the USA issue in regards to violence of all kinds (and this is not unique to the USA) is how violence is portrayed in pretty much all media - i.e. unrealistic and sanitised which normalises the idea of violence.

Violence in the media does not create violence but it does affect how we perceive violence.

As you mention, the violence in the media is unrealistic and therefore appealing. If we - and I heartily include the UK in this - show the realistic, rather than the Hollywood results of firearms then, at the very least, people would have a better idea what they're talking about.

 

[3point14]

Are you suggesting that insane people with homicidal urges will not fire a gun at anyone if they are previously shown photos of gore?

No.

I don't know if you are saying that, but I will mention that Nikolas Cruz is notorious for taking dead animals and killing animals and then cutting them open so that the guts would spill out. He was fond of that.

I don't think it would have the slightest effect on the nutters that do the shooting. I think it may have a massive effect on those who are on the fence or even somewhat opposed to firearms regulation to see what a file bullet actually does to a child.

 

[Craig4]

I like the optimism.


Sadly, I don't believe that this time it's different. Absent a sea-change in US politics, if there hasn't been change with the umpteen events before this one, this one isn't going to make a difference.

It could be different this time but only if we stop talking to lawmakers and go with an initiative process. Florida has a petition process to change the constitution (which is how medical marijuana passed). That could close the gun-show, private arms transfer loophole. Even in gun-loving Florida, mandatory background checks are popular by wide margins.

Then you have to fix how we do the background checks and what databases are searched.

 

[Ranb]

It's too bad the police officer in question never entered the building to assess the scene and even find out whether or not the shooter was wearing any vest of any kind.

What was he trained or expected to do in this kind of situation? Unless he was trained to counter a school shooter, then I would not expect him to live up to anyone's expectations if they assumed he would enter the school and subdue the shooter.