My son's Seattle preschool (goes up through 5th grade) holds full annual lockdown drills, and has security codes on the doors.

coming soon: metal detectors and unscalable perimeter fences. prison nation.

And yet the narrative I've seen over and over again today is how "unthinkable" this shooting was. Except there were drills for it?

About that...

I'm 26 and we did drills for situations like that when I was in 6th grade. It's not new unfortunately.

Of course, I went to elementary school in a building with a fully stocked fallout shelter in the basement, so I guess who am I to talk about terrorizing children?

Won't stop someone who knows what they're doing, though.

Sorry, but security is mostly an illusion.

Duck And Cover (1951) Bert The Turtle Civil Defense Film

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKqXu-5jw…

"Only in America" ?
There are no school shooting drills in Europe, where there have been shootings at schools?
Or how about suicide bomber drills in Israel? Any of those?
Or fighter jet attack drills at schools in Palestine?
Or wedding-bombing attack drills in Afghanistan?
The list could easily continue.

But they are not common. Not at all. I think this was maybe the second one this year. Out of maybe 100,000 or more schools in the US.

While there maybe things we as a country need to do about gun violence, there is pretty much nothing that individual schools need to do to 'prepare' or otherwise concern themselves with this risk.

Driving your kid to school is a much bigger risk.

You want to know what truly terrorizes children?

When their parents or pastors tell them that if they don't believe in god and Jesus, they'll go to hell and burn in a lake of fire for eternity.

Why don't we ban that? Why don't we make it illegal for anyone to tell children they'll go to hell if they don't believe in god? Why aren't we talking about that?

I remember that we started doing lockdown drills in high school immediately after Columbine.

The office building I work in had a safety training for all tenants a few months ago, and I attended as a representative from my firm. They just added a new training category for "active shooter."

Welcome to the new normal, folks. Along with fire drills and earthquake drills, we get to routinely prepare for shooting sprees.

(As an aside, did you know that if you're confined in a room with an active shooter, you're actually supposed to bum rush them instead of hiding? They trained us that if we're probably going to die anyway, better to die on our feet. What a world we live in today!)

I teach in a local high school and we just did a lockdown drill on Tuesday - the day of the Oregon mall shooting. They have been standard practice at my high school for at least four years, but probably even longer.

The most useful thing we can do is drills that work during earthquakes and fires, quite frankly.

Or teach kids to watch out for cars driven by people talking on their cells or texting.

Curtailing the freedom of gun nuts to express their right to bear arms? Too high a price to pay. Turn schools into prisons? Sure, why not?

Yes we should never drill for possible disasters when we can flip a magic switch that will make the nations 300 Million + firearms disappear.

Drill and preparedness have saved more lives than your idiotic fantasy rants ever will.

Our children die for your hobby.

That's what is the disgrace in America:

Get another fucking hobby that doesn't kill thousands of American children every damn year.

(In 2008 alone, 2,947 children and teens died from guns in the United States .)

@19
Maybe i will take up driving a sports car, that never kills anyone.

Also keep in mind that your stats are padded with suicides and teenage gang members who still count as "children."

@19
So you do not like that the majority of voters in America want to keep their guns.
And you believe that the majority of voters in America should change to suit you.
Good luck with that.
It's probably not going to happen.
But you can feel Good knowing that you are a Good Person who shares their grief porn with the world.

@21

Civil rights works the same way. We don't let the majority decide to have whites only drinking fountains. Not that your faith in a gun loving majority is likely to pan out.

Your information comes from the same loons who thought Romney was going to win. They thought the Super PACs could buy the election, just like they think the NRA can buy politicians. You're in for a rude awakening.

You're the same guy who thinks we can't keep guns out of the hands of crazies unless we win 51% of the vote your imaginary national plebiscite, right? Sad. Civics is for sure your weakness. What country are you from?

#19
Owning a firearm is not my "hobby" you dumb fucking bint. Bearing arms whether it's a Rifle, Pistol or a Katana is as much a right of every American as you exercising your right to spew your worthless drivel here on this sad-sack blog.

@23

Yeah, yeah. Hobby it is. Stop pretending.

We did lockdown drills in my middle school (pre-Columbine). We did have a school shooting in a neighboring town, so people took it moderately seriously.