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Earl[_68_]

ESAD wrote:
On 12/16/12 8:33 AM, wrote:
On Sat, 15 Dec 2012 17:41:41 -0800 (PST), wrote:

"There is no pattern, there is no increase," says criminologist
James Allen Fox of Boston's Northeastern University, who has been
studying the subject since the 1980s, spurred by a rash of mass
shootings in post offices.

Grant Duwe, a criminologist with the Minnesota Department of
Corrections who has written a history of mass murders in America,
said that while mass shootings rose between the 1960s and the 1990s,
they actually dropped in the 2000s. And mass killings actually
reached their peak in 1929, according to his data. He estimates that
there were 32 in the 1980s, 42 in the 1990s and 26 in the first
decade of the century.

Chances of being killed in a mass shooting, he says, are probably no
greater than being struck by lightning.

Still, he understands the public perception - and extensive media
coverage - when mass shootings occur in places like malls and
schools. "There is this feeling that could have been me. It makes it
so much more frightening."

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It was a tragedy, and our hearts go out to the victims and their
families.

However, it seems that the sky is not falling, no matter what our
resident naysayers spout. Our mass media makes it seem so much
worse now, eh?

Witness the brutal, knife, hatchet, and machete attacks on children in
China.

Bottom line is that children (and others) need protection wherever and
whenever they are vulnerable. Armed school resource officers,
teachers, and administrators would have made this tragedy much less
sever. You will never prevent attacks, but you can make them more of a
suicide than a murder.

Do you have any evidence that demonstrates that arming "school
resource officers, teachers and administrators" would make these
tragedies less severe? I don't mean the specific tragedy in Newtown,
but these sorts of tragedies generally.

I recall reading that there was an armed and trained officer on the
premises during the Columbine tragedy. He was no help. In fact, there
were some reports he fled the scene. Handing out firearms to teachers
and principals is not a solution when you really think about it. How
many of them, even if they could shoot safely, would have what it
takes to kill another human. These are sensitive people, and they're
not trained to handle that job.

I read that we have about 600,000 trained police officers in this
country and about 150,000 schools. There aren't enough police to
patrol the schools and even if one officer were assigned to every
school, most schools are large structures, and one officer wouldn't be
enough.

A partial answer may be to hire more trained therapists to work in our
school system, along with more full-time school nurses. Most of our
school shootings are perpetrated by students in those schools.
Teachers are the frontline of defense...they often are the first to
notice that certain students are "off." If those teachers could get
the "off" kids in to be evaluated by an on-staff professional, some
help could be arranged for these troubled kids that become shooters.
But, for the most part, we don't do that. The Newtown school had a
staff psychologist, which seems rare. She was one of the victims. Of
course, the shooter wasn't a student at the school anyway.

I don't see where further arming the populace is going to do anything
to chill our violent culture.

I can't disagree, deadbeat, you certainly know more about therapy than
most people.