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Teachers unknowingly shot with plastic pellets during active shooter drills

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Re: Teachers unknowingly shot with plastic pellets during active shooter drills

#61
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Er, no "most guns are illegal" is not at all true in Canada. Canada's gun laws are arguably looser than some US states. Plenty of "assault weapons" are non restricted rifles in Canada: https://tillsonburggunshop.com/Firearms-guns-Rifles-Shotgun-... You just need a PAL to buy them. No background check at the time of sale, and no registration. By comparison, here in California owning most of these guns would get you a…

AFAIK If you have PAL license, RCMP runs background checks on you daily and revoke the license as soon as anything comes up.

That kind of background checking would not have stopped many of the mass shooters.

Re: Teachers unknowingly shot with plastic pellets during active shooter drills

#62
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Er, no "most guns are illegal" is not at all true in Canada. Canada's gun laws are arguably looser than some US states. Plenty of "assault weapons" are non restricted rifles in Canada: https://tillsonburggunshop.com/Firearms-guns-Rifles-Shotgun-... You just need a PAL to buy them. No background check at the time of sale, and no registration. By comparison, here in California owning most of these guns would get you a…

AFAIK If you have PAL license, RCMP runs background checks on you daily and revoke the license as soon as anything comes up.

Confirmed daily checks. Source: http://www.rcmp-grc.gc.ca/pubs/fire-feu-eval/apph-eng.htm

Re: Teachers unknowingly shot with plastic pellets during active shooter drills

#63
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AFAIK If you have PAL license, RCMP runs background checks on you daily and revoke the license as soon as anything comes up.

That kind of background checking would not have stopped many of the mass shooters.

And yet it did and continues to. Let’s not be defeatist and actually try instead.

Re: Teachers unknowingly shot with plastic pellets during active shooter drills

#64
post #45
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not. I don't know anyone that's ever been through an active shooter drill. The closest I know of is the college my wife taught at had an optional hour long seminar for teachers.

Sadly you're mistaken. Not many current American adults experienced them growing up even though school shootings have been happening for decades, but in recent years they've started to become as commonplace as fire drills in American primary schools. "Nine out of ten public schools now drill students and teachers to respond to mass shootings, according to the National Center for Education Statistics." [regrettably vi…

The problem is that these mass shooting drills are taken to the extreme, way beyond what is necessary to prepare them. If they were treated more like fire drills, it wouldn't be nearly the impact on students and faculty as they currently are.

Re: Teachers unknowingly shot with plastic pellets during active shooter drills

#65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That kind of background checking would not have stopped many of the mass shooters.

And yet it did and continues to. Let’s not be defeatist and actually try instead.

And yet it did and continues to.

Sorry, but your logic doesn't hold up. You said, "Probably because most guns are illegal so we don’t need them." Since Canada has ready availability of semi-auto long guns, has relatively relaxed gun laws, and even licensing and daily background checks would not have stopped all mass shooters, your logic that such drills are therefore not necessary is empty and illogical.

You cannot prove a negative. I hope for your sake, you're just trolling with deliberately faulty logic.

Re: Teachers unknowingly shot with plastic pellets during active shooter drills

#66

"During active shooter drill, four teachers at a time were taken into a room, told to crouch down and were shot execution style with some sort of projectiles - resulting in injuries to the extent that welts appeared, and blood was drawn. ... The Indiana State Teachers Association is lobbying lawmakers to add language prohibiting teachers from being shot with any sort of ammunition to a school safety bill working its…

I'm pretty sure existing criminal and civil laws in most jurisdictions adequately address shooting people with projectiles without consent and outside of reasonable self defense, or conspiring with, soliciting, or procuring others to do so, whether or not in the context of an employment relationship.

And if they don't in Indiana, then a limited fix for teachers isn't the solution needed.

Re: Teachers unknowingly shot with plastic pellets during active shooter drills

#67
post #33

Controversial opinion from someone with extensive experience with assault weapon violence. GOOD The current "shelter in place" model of active shooter drills KILLS CHILDREN. In combat we had another name for "shelter in place"... "die in place". People must be taught to fight back or flee. They must because it is not instinctive. Most of us were raised in relatively peaceful societies and have a school yard/Hollywood…

What if you have a gun on you and no place to escape, do you attack right away, or wait for the shooter to come in and take him by surprise?

It depends. If immediately rushing the shooter would result in fewer casualties, maybe that's the best choice. However, if that would only result in your getting mowed down, then setting up an ambush and waiting for the shooter is arguably better.

My recommendation, if you are in this situation, is to think one more time about your chance of escape. If there is truly no chance of escape, and if there are willing confederates, create a situation where the shooter is distracted and you can get the drop on him. (If possible, such that your confederate stands a chance of escape. They could distract by running and ducking into a doorway in the other direction, for example.)

If there are multiple, determined, trained shooters, it's probably best to run.

Re: Teachers unknowingly shot with plastic pellets during active shooter drills

#68
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if you have a gun on you and no place to escape, do you attack right away, or wait for the shooter to come in and take him by surprise?

“Violence of action” is the military version of our beloved “Zero to One”. What you lack in skill you make up for in aggression.

This applies most in the situation where there is no escape and no one other than the shooter has firearms. If one is able to use tactics to even or upend the odds, then do that. Aggression is just the tactic of last resort.

Re: Teachers unknowingly shot with plastic pellets during active shooter drills

#69
post #34

I'm from Europe. I mostly clicked on the link to find out what a shooter drill is. I'm baffled by the article and the comments in this thread. Having to have drills for school shootings is apparently considered a normal part of life in the US.

It's not. I don't know anyone that's ever been through an active shooter drill. The closest I know of is the college my wife taught at had an optional hour long seminar for teachers.

Ask a current middle or high schooler if they have. Probably, the answer will be yes. Source: I know an awful lot of teachers. IMO the drills are dumb as hell and indefensible considering how traumatic they are (reports of teachers breaking down crying afterward, let alone students) and how unlikely mass indiscriminate shooting[0] is at a school, even in the US. The old less-insane and less "real" teacher-only drills were probably enough, considering how harmful this alternative is.

[0] A distressingly large percentage of students will be near some kind of gunfire while at school, yes—a whole lot smaller percentage will experience the sort that these drills address. The more common variety that way more will hear or see are targeted (gang, grudge, whatever) shootings on or near school property, not the mass shootings these drills are designed to prepare them for.

Re: Teachers unknowingly shot with plastic pellets during active shooter drills

#70
post #33

Controversial opinion from someone with extensive experience with assault weapon violence. GOOD The current "shelter in place" model of active shooter drills KILLS CHILDREN. In combat we had another name for "shelter in place"... "die in place". People must be taught to fight back or flee. They must because it is not instinctive. Most of us were raised in relatively peaceful societies and have a school yard/Hollywood…

What if you have a gun on you and no place to escape, do you attack right away, or wait for the shooter to come in and take him by surprise?

As someone who carries a firearm every day and is not law enforcement, it's situationally dependent.

If my family is with me, my first objective is to get them to safety. If that's not possible I'm certainly not leaving them to "hunt" the shooter.

If someone is actively engaged in shooting innocents and I'm alone, I'm going toward them under cover or concealment. I'm going to try my best to be as accurate as possible, and accuracy is proportional to the time taken to take the shot. The best resolution here would be firing before I'm seen and preventing the shooter from being able to continue their assault. That said, most mass murderers don't intend to survive to be captured, and someone returning fire is often enough for them to cut their massacre short through suicide to avoid that - so if I don't have a means to get closer, taking a shot that is unlikely to be effective is better than waiting and doing nothing. Even if they attempt to return fire at me, that means that innocents being targeted by them have more of a chance to reach cover.

Finally, and by far the most likely, I wouldn't be close enough to the shooter to immediately stop the situation. In that case I would keep my firearm holstered and try to help others flee to safety.

For what it's worth, I don't see any of this as being at all likely. On any given day I'm extremely unlikely to need a firearm; over the course of a year, a decade, or a lifetime, that chance goes up to merely "unlikely". By far the most likely circumstance I will ever use a firearm is self-defense is demonstrating the ability and motivation to defend myself, probably by merely preparing to fire by reaching for the gun.

I'm 36, and this has held true in the handful of situations I've encountered thus far; I've had one instance where I made the decision to draw and fire, and in the second or so before I had drawn and began to pull the trigger my assailant had stopped their assault and began to flee.

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