At 7:20 am, PST, Douglas Chanthabouly entered Foss High School and murdered 17-year-old Samnang Kok. The suspect was found and captured without a struggle later on, and is reportedly cooperating with Tacoma police. Much has been made about how Douglas snuck a gun unto his school bus, into the school and committed murder. Now, district officials are running around trying to figure out how to not let this happen again. Too bad it's already too late for Kok.
The school district has set up a narc hotline, so students can call in when they see guns or other weapons that are brought to school. I don't know when the whole "code of the schoolyard" thing started, where you don't tattle no matter what, but I think that time has passed.
The problem is that the hotline does nothing. The gun is already there at school. The district feels good because they think they've taken steps to prevent the problem, but they haven't.
Solving this problem will require money. Spending money isn't popular, but how many more students have to be cut down in a spray of bullets before people decide that it's time to lay out some green? I see no problem with metal detectors at every entrance, vetted police officers roaming the halls, and teachers who can actually command respect--and possibly even fear--in the classroom.
Until these changes are made, we'll just be spinning our wheels.
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3 comments:
You see no problem with it because you're not a student.
Making our schools more of a hassle to get into than an airplane doesn't solve the problem. Neither does a hotline, for that matter.
It's cliche, but the problem is with the parents. Why blame Mom and Dad? I dunno. Whose job was it to teach the kid how to deal with problems? To deal with other people? Obviously, they didn't, so the kid reverted to basic insticnt: Thog not like. Thog smash. Or, in this case, Thog shoot.
Makes me wonder how many parents that are expressing their outrage are ignoring their kids at the same time.
Making it harder to get guns into the schools completely solves the problem of school shootings. Have people stationed at all school entrances who are there to search bags, coats and other stuff, just like you see at stadiums or Disneyland.
I was a student, and there are just some people who don't know how to control themselves. Those are the people that shouldn't have guns. Sure, parents are screwing up, but you can't just lay the blame at the feet of the parents. That gun had to come from somewhere.
Comments from all sorts of radio programs (left, right and center) are quick to say that gun control isn't the answer; that kids need to be sat down and engaged in dialog. I don't think that solves the problem of keeping guns out of schools.
Even without going into philosophical reason, there's 3 reasons why I don't feel this will work...and please remember I have experience with both school security and checkpoint security.
First, it's just a deterrent to "casual" people. It just encourages people to find innovative ways to beat the security, and someone is determined to do so will. Like, maybe, tossing your backpack through an open window or over a fence, bringing it after hours, or just plain shooting the guard (stress over being a "primary target" of a thwarted terrorist is a large reason why I left TSA). It'll take away a fair amount of swiss army knives, I'm sure, but won't do much to stop any intelligent attacker.
Second, many schools are not the "brick house fortresses" you occasionally see in colder climates. Many schools down here in California use an open-air design, the classrooms leading directly outside. I respond to security alarms at schools, and so far, only one school (the oldest one in the area) has any significant interior hallway. While security can work at some schools, many are simply not designed with security in mind, and it is very difficult to set up access point when you're open on 4 sides.
Third, while it may keep the gun out of the school, all that does is make sure the kid shoots the guy somewhere else. If he's made the decision to do it, the though process isn't gonna go "Oh, well, I can't do it at school, I'll just put this gun back". He's gonna do it on the bus, or outside school.
The problem is not guns in schools, it's guns in the hands of teenagers who do not fully understand the consequences of using them (in which case it's the fault of the parents who didn't raise them), or know full well the consequences (in which case they're psychos, and you can't really blame the parents...but they probably should have noticed)
Oh, and "that gun had to come from somewhere"? Exactly. Guess where it comes from more times than not? Dad's gun closet.
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