High School Active Shooter Alarm Button-Thoughts?

I'm having a hard time deciding how I feel about this. Anyone have any thoughts on it?


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world has changed, school shootings are looked at as a natural occurrence just as a hurricane or earth quake now. A school is no longer a safe place, children are told that there is a possibility somebody could walk in and start shooting people and are given instructions at a what to do if this happens, showing them at such a young age of what a scary and violent place this is, and that no where is safe and when they see a class room the first thing that pops into their mind is hiding places.

It is odd because going to school for me was always frightening and for everybody else it was not, but now other people are starting to see going to that building as scary too.

luckily there is almost no risk of school shooting in the UK, unlike the U.S.A

No, school shootings are not looked at as a natural occurrence such as a hurricane.

Schools still are safe places. Of course safe is a relative term because nowhere is truly safe, however if you look at the probability of dying in a school shooting you could make a very good case for schools still being safe.

Alarms like this do two very bad things and one mildly helpful thing.

1:  Let's imagine a kid has a bad day at school and he's walking through the corridor after class and he sees this alarm, what kind of thoughts do you think come into his head then?
I would bet my life that alarms like this will drive the numbers of school shootings upwards.

2: It perpetuates fear in the most over-the-top fearful nation on the planet. A nation so terrified that they think their own government is going to turn against them.

And I only say that the helpful thing is mild because most school shootings these are very much contained to a small area of a building where an alarm is absolutely no good to you.
Yes it alerts others in surrounding buildings, but it's rare that these people away from the initial action who would benefit from an alarm don't survive without one anyway because shooters aren't strolling around so much like Eric and Dylan did.

ROFLMAO, the hurricanes and earthquakes remark is preposterous. Also, schools are safe places, as much as these tragedies are sad, statistically there is very little chance of someone dying in a school shooting. This schools as war zones tripe although with good intentions, fuels unnecessary paranoia and might even give some angsty teens unnecessary ideas.

The fact we are living in a time where a "Active Shooter" button is even needed is very sad.

Tuga wrote:

ROFLMAO, the hurricanes and earthquakes remark is preposterous. .

I said they are looked at like that, not are. It was a response to what Tom Mauser said in the Active Shooter documentary, how he use to do duck and cover as a kid in school, now they do it for shootings instead. Doing a drill for shootings is going to be a common place in schools, they need to prepare for the worst.

Most of the kids doing earth quake drills will never experience one too. That feeling of "oh it wont happen here" is exactly the places where it does happen. I highly recommend you watch that documentary, it may be a wake up call to you.

spidEr wrote:

Tuga wrote:

ROFLMAO, the hurricanes and earthquakes remark is preposterous. .

I said they are looked at like that, not are. It was a response to what Tom Mauser said in the Active Shooter documentary, how he use to do duck and cover as a kid in school, now they do it for shootings instead. Doing a drill for shootings is going to be a common place in schools, they need to prepare for the worst.

Most of the kids doing earth quake drills will never experience one too. That feeling of "oh it wont happen here" is exactly the places where it does happen. I highly recommend you watch that documentary, it may be a wake up call to you.

I don't have a ''it won't happen here'' view, I look things from a statistical and fairly rational point of view so I'd say ''the chances of it happening are very low'' for this type of disaster in particular. The chances of you being murdered, raped etc. are also fairly low so I don't feel like I need to own a firearm like so many muh guns people. As for the earthquake stuff, certain regions like Japan, Turkey, Iran etc. are more prone to earthquakes so one would expect and find it very reasonable to see commonplace drills for earthquakes, but other regions not so much. The second largest city in my country experienced a very large earthquake once upon a time but it we've never had earthquake drills, or fire drills or anything like that. We did have lessons about landmines because I grew up in a post-war social environment, but they would be completely unnecessary in some place like Iceland perhaps.  Also worth noting earthquakes are a natural disaster, mass shootings are a man made disaster so the quality of such an analogy is very questionable. I suggest you look up Erin Runnion, mother of Samantha Runnion who was kidnapped, raped and murdered by a stranger. She was interviewed for Penn and Teller's Bullshit TV Show. They were in awe of the way how she approaches the topic of Stranger Danger from a statistical and rational point of view even though she experienced the ultimate loss. In her particular case, she points out that most child abuse, kidnapping, rape, murder etc. you name it is committed by a person the child knows so the stranger danger stuff is mostly paranoia fuel.

I think it's a good invention, because it is nowadays a serious threat.

Nah, it won't work.

Moved thread to "Other Mass Shootings".

Germany has an "Amok-Alarm" in many schools. They were installed after Winnenden.
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