Those locks on classroom doors
In discussions of what happened during the Uvalde school shooting, the issue of doors and locks has come up several times. In my research on previous school shootings, I noticed that in a lot of those cases the classroom doors had no locks, and the teachers and students were reduced to piling up tables and chairs in front of the doors and trying to hide. As we know, however, the classrooms at Robb Elementary had locks.
I found this informative article that explains quite a bit about the history and types of classroom locks, and even sheds some light on the mechanism by which I think the classroom doors may have locked in Uvalde:
In the aftermath of the Sandy Hook tragedy in 2012 [where the classrooms did not have locks], the Sandy Hook Advisory Commission recommended in its final report that all classrooms have doors that can be locked from the inside.
“The Commission cannot emphasize enough the importance of this recommendation,” its report stated. “The testimony and other evidence presented to the Commission reveals that there has never been an event in which an active shooter breached a locked classroom door.”
Later, however, in the 2018 Parkland shooting – as I discovered from my reading – the shooter shot his victims through the windows of locked classroom doors.
More about the lock recommendations after Sandy Hook:
“You have to balance security, safety and accessibility along with convenience,” said Lori Greene, Codes and Resources Manager for Allegion…For example, some schools have a policy allowing teachers to leave their doors pre-locked and then use a magnet to prevent the door from closing all the way. This allows for easy re-entry while also being quickly bypassed in the event of an emergency.
It’s also unfortunately against the fire safety code (if the classroom doors are fire-rated). And in at least one school shooting, the assailant removed the magnet and closed the locked door, preventing school staff from entering the classroom.
In that shooting the gun jammed after one person was killed, allowing other students to jump the shooter, who was their classmate. So it was nothing like the situation in Uvalde; the shooter was stopped quickly and no police were involved.
More about locks:
Devising the perfect classroom lock has been, as Cook said, “a balancing act.” Teachers needed to be able to lock their classroom doors: (1) quickly and easily; (2) without inviting student tampering; and (preferably) (3) without needing a key or other tool present.
When schools first started implementing classroom door locks [some had them considerably before the Sandy Hook shooting and recommendations], Cook explains, they used so-called “office function locks,” which locked from inside the room with the push of a button. As any parent could guess, this setup led to mischievous students locking their teachers out of the room. So what is known as the traditional classroom lock was developed, which can only be locked with a key. It also can only be locked from outside the classroom.
However, after the Columbine school shooting in 1999, it became clear that requiring teachers to open a classroom door in order to lock it was no longer a safe option.
Finally, a solution: the classroom security function lock was developed. With this lock, a key on either side of the door could lock the outside lever while the inside lever remains unlocked. This lock allows free exit from the room at any time while also keeping locking power in the hands of authorized personnel. While still requiring a key, this lock successfully met the first two criteria.
I had been puzzled by what one student who survived Uvalde said in an interview, which was that the teacher couldn’t find the key to lock the door in time. This makes me think that this arrangement, the classroom security function lock with an inner key, was in place in Robb Elementary classrooms.
As usual I have questions. At what point did Robb Elementary implement its key policy, and what type of locks were in use, and did this affect the problem police had finding the correct key and getting into the classrooms? It certainly may have affected the problem the teacher had in locking the door, if that girl’s description is accurate. If so, this points out how difficult it is to design a fail-safe system.
If the room had been locked in time, I doubt the perp could have gotten in; at least he would almost certainly have had great difficulty in doing so. Would he nevertheless have been able to shoot through the doors (or windows in doors if they had them in Uvalde, as in Parkland?). But at least he would have been more accessible to police if he’d been forced to stay in the hallway to shoot, because he couldn’t open the classroom doors. The terrible irony at Robb Elementary is that the locks that were meant to protect the children ended up protecting the shooter in those two classrooms.
I haven’t read anything that addresses the question of whether the second classroom’s outer door was locked in time by the teacher there. I’ve concluded the second classroom probably was locked in time, but I don’t know for sure. I have read from several sources – including an interview with the male teacher who was wounded but survived – that the way the perp entered that second classroom was through an inner door that connected the two classrooms. I would guess that that inner door was not locked and that perhaps it wasn’t even lockable. I have read that it was a door to a bathroom for the two classes, and I think you wouldn’t ordinarily want small children to be able to lock themselves in the bathroom.
Who would ever have envisioned this horror-show scenario in real life, whereby only one unlocked door could make two classrooms vulnerable? Granted, I don’t know whether that’s the way it happened, but that’s the only thing that accounts for all the facts I’ve heard so far. Of course, there’s a lot we still don’t know, so my opinion could change.
Has nobody heard of a simple wedge? I used to see ads in the back of newspapers for travelers or apartment dwellers to secure their doors with a wedge or similar mechanical method. With a wedge, the harder the assailant pushes on the door to get in, the more secure the resistance. There is God’s own plenty of “doorstops” out there. Why not require those?
Main disadvantage: no vast budgets of consulting and approved vendors.
If I were a teacher, I would carry a handful of those in my day-pack. Along with the body armor and other war-gear.
This:
https://rtstactical.com/products/rts-ballistic-armor-whiteboard-panel
Level III+ whiteboard on lockable wheels that blocks the door and makes it bulletproof.
Chases Eagles @ 2:54: Very nice. On previous (unfortunate) occasions to deplore the slaughter of schoolchildren and other innocents, I had asked “what about ballistic shields held at the principal’s office and used by trained teachers and other personnel to form a “phalanx” and box-in or otherwise frustrate a shooter?” This is a nice variation on that theme and, that price point, pretty much a no-brainer. Put a dozen or so in the most vulnerable classrooms; or just hold a bake sale “Let’s Up-Armor Sally’s Home Room This Week!”
Not that difficult in principle but what happens in practice? I sense the problem is not budget, not technology, not expertise, but simply *ownership.*. Make somebody in each school the “owner” of this stuff, throw him or her a few thousand bucks to get started, and let’s see what we can do.
Schools with staff packing heat haven’t had these problems. Locking doors seems like a good idea. Keeping locked doors closed seems like a better idea. No amount of hardware will fix faulty implementation. How about reducing mandatory age of school attendance to 16, and encouraging students to test out? Fewer students means fewer disgruntled, former students.
Owen. Due to hard experience, doors in public buildings are supposed to open outward.
Now, suppose a guy doesn’t want to splash for a rifle. He gets a Pepsi two-liter and a buck’s worth of gas, and a wedge.
Equipment is not the issue.
Owen: As Richard notes, in public access buildings, doors fairly generally open to the outside, for fire code reasons. It best allows/assists people fleeing the structure in a hurry.
}}} If so, this points out how difficult it is to design a fail-safe system.
And Neo, also: Add to this the requirement that all doors must allow easy exit in case of a fire. This adds another constraint to the “locking” capability.
As usual, there is a confluence of conflicting problems to be solved, and the perfect solution for one often creates issues for the other. Deciding on the balance which solution is optimal depends on what problem you consider more likely to happen — a fire, or an attack, for example — which leads to weighting one issue higher than the other.
This unfortunately means you will inevitably be better prepared for the wrong event, as Murphy’s Law is inexorable.
}}} Owen. Due to hard experience, doors in public buildings are supposed to open outward.
Now, suppose a guy doesn’t want to splash for a rifle. He gets a Pepsi two-liter and a buck’s worth of gas, and a wedge.
Richard — The fact is, evil will do evil with whatever is available, and, offhand, I can identify (I refrain from making any suggestions to anyone) that there are no less than THREE ways to attack schools and schoolchildren which are far far more horrific and terror-instilling than a FULL AUTO weapon, much less a semi-auto.
These means could and would result in far more horrific results than the potential gunshots of anyone walking around with multiple pistols, rifles, and associated magazines (note: anyone who uses the word “clip” in this context should be pre-marked in your head as an ignorant parrot who has no actual knowledge of weaponry. While there are a very few exceptions, ALL modern guns use magazines, not clips. There is a distinction, and it’s nontrivial.)
I personally hope and pray that no one with the will-to-do ever thinks of these things on their own. And, to be honest, you increase the likelihood that someone WILL think of them when you remove the “easy” idea of a gun, which is generally putting a much lower limit on the resultant horror.
This isn’t because I’ve wanted to think of ways, but, as a software tester, it is my nature to think of “how to break things”, and this works towards thinking about pen testing and the creation of general schrecklichkeit as well. In order to stop or prevent something, it has to occur to you in the first place. The worst disasters occur when we fail to anticipate how things can go wrong. And yes, an attack on a school is “how things can go wrong”. So, you have to be willing to go to those dark places, if only to identify them, so you can figure out how to stop them.
As I suggest, above — the fact that it is possible to do some moderately horrific stuff with a gun may actually be protecting us all from something even more horrible.
Re: windows. Some (many?) institutions require windows into offices, etc. supposedly to preclude any hanky-panky ‘twixt the weak and the powerful (however you want to construe that in any given context).
This horrible event was made possible by at least a couple of unforeseen problems — the outside door that usually locked on closing, and didn’t, and then the inside door that locked from the inside, and for which no key was available for far too long.
At the very least, we can hope all public schools around the country are reviewing their security procedures and especially making sure that emergency keys can be readily found.
There are simple, low cost solutions to securing room doors.
After Sandy Hook, my niece, who is a teacher, came up with a simple system, portable and easy to retrofit into any classroom.
It’s called PALS (Portable Affordable Lockdown System).
Since it’s portable, it’s only installed when a lockdown call comes from the principal. While it is sturdy enough to prevent a regular forced entry, it can be breeched by a mechanical aid.
http://www.lockdownsolutions.org/?fbclid=IwAR2RicgHOLZy2LwISKGsbtVdAiBv71qW-gsXoCieHdUx2ioCK6g0mWNJQqU
Brian E: an interesting, and simple idea, well worth looking into. It could delay a shooter long enough for him to decide to go somewhere else. Several of them could delay him long enough for the arrival of LE.
This is from the article referenced in the post:
“She’s also seen instances of schools with unsafe “DIY” practices every time there’s another school shooting, such as putting firehose tubing around door closer arms in an attempt to keep the door closed against a threat (also against the fire safety code and the Americans with Disabilities Act).”
Is she saying that teachers/students attempting to secure a door against an active shooter should be worried about violating ADA regulations or fire codes?
Eva Marie:
No. As I interpret that sentence, it means some sort of permanent tubing they put up after they’ve heard of another shooting having recently happened at another school.
Kate:
The witness interviews and the audio recordings of shots being fired point to a situation in which the perp had shot the teachers and students before the officers ever got to the hallway in front of the classroom door. If the officers could have gone in immediately and killed him, it would apparently only have saved any students or teachers who were not killed instantly, and whose wounds were not fatal, and who died only because they bled to death in the hour delay. We don’t know how many people, if any, that would have been.
Locks are for honest people. In the unlikely event that a basically fool proof method for locking down classrooms and schools is developed, school shooters will shift their focus. Using explosives or targeting school events where students are massed together outside the school.
Adopting technical ‘solutions’ is treating the symptom, rather than the disease. The school shooting problem is cultural and the left is blocking addressing the source of the problem through political opposition and the use of lawfare. While engulfing America’s cultural landscape with ever greater depravities aimed at the young.
Murphy’s Law intersects with the Peter Principal, what ever can go wrong will go wrong and leadership will advance to its level of incompetence and both happened with terrible results. Hind sight and lots of thinking after the event will never bring those poor innocent people back. Each of these sorry sad events kind of stands on its own and they will happen as long as we have these ferry,l sorry assed kids, who have nothing to believe in and nothing to lose while their only hope is to make their mark as a disaster person.
Just thinking out loud here about door locks. Recognizing that there is no perfect solution, that simple is better than complex, that human operation and facility are weak points, and that the school environment contains multiple random input generators which operate in widely varying modes (aka “students” and to some degree, “teachers”), it’s a difficult challenge.
First, the classroom security function lock in the piece neo linked to: I have no experience with it but the concept seems pretty good. I’d offer a couple ideas about it: first, all keys should be double-bitted so there’s no “right side up/upside down” issue that takes time to resolve (if your car uses keys it’s almost certainly a double-bitted key); second, different lock cylinders on the inside and outside of the door requiring different keys; third, the door must be openable from the inside even when security locked, and; fourth, some very obvious and easily removable teacher-controlled physical restriction to temporarily prevent opening the door even when locked (children are, well, “children” and they frequently do dumb things, one of them may decide for whatever reason to open the door despite the declared threat, and there’s always the possibility of someone accidentally bumping into the interior handle and inadvertently opening the door. And in high schools and colleges, there’s always the possibility of a confederate on the inside).
Opening the door from the outside could be controlled by the second – unique – key so an empty classroom can be secured, a copy of that key held by the teacher whose classroom it is, and which can be overridden by a master key that opens all classroom doors.
Key management becomes a training and disciplinary issue, for all personnel levels. Women’s clothes frequently do not have pockets so it is common for women, and many men, to leave their keys on their desks, or in their purse or briefcase. Seconds count, so the interior locking key must be right at hand; most schools now require all employees wear IDs, and they’re usually on neck lanyards, so that’s where the keys go. Should an intruder gain control of a teacher’s key set, the exterior door key opens only that teacher’s classroom so the intruder will not be able to access any other classrooms.
There are other security considerations, all of which will cost money, sometimes lots of money, and be considered inconveniences by staff. Staff will deliberately or not deliberately, seek ways to reduce inconvenience. This is a training and disciplinary issue.
ObloodyHell (above) makes a good point – as a software tester his job is to deliberately break software to identify the weak points that need to be corrected. The same is true about security – one finds the weak points that need correction by thinking like an attacking criminal. It’s a basic tenet of building security that one needs to know how to break in to a building in order to figure out how to prevent break ins. The same is true of violent or personal attacks. People who have never considered criminal activity have no way of determining, or even imagining, what criminals can, and will, do.
And allow me to repeat myself: Recognizing that there is no perfect solution… means there will be instances – Black Swans, per Nassim Nicholas Taleb – in which every protective measure fails; even maximum security prisons have had escapes. The goal is not to try to establish zero negative events, that’s not possible on this planet (too many humans, too many variables, see “maximum security prisons” above), but to make this building/event/person more difficult and expensive (for all values of “expensive”) to compromise than that building/event/person.
And have a Plan B, and a Plan C, and a Plan D (one aspect of which, much to the discomfort, and disdain, of the Left, and those on the Right who have not seriously thought about it) involves armed personnel, like teachers, and probably some parents, in schools. I will stress that arming (some) teachers is one security measure, it is neither the only security measure nor the first security measure, just one element in the security matrix). A truly warped and disturbed mind, one that is not rational, and operates with an irrational value structure, will be the most difficult to defeat because irrationality will overrule whatever potential consquence may exist; threatening a suicide bomber, or a school shooter who expects to die in the act, with death is no threat at all, one has to actually accomplish the task to be effective and do it at the right time, something that strong words and stern looks are incapable of accomplishing.
@ Richard Aubrey > “He gets a Pepsi two-liter and a buck’s worth of gas, and a wedge.”
Or something a bit more complex.
https://www.ldsliving.com/the-astonishing-true-stories-behind-the-cokeville-miracle-movie/s/79933
Probably the most intense disaster movie I’ve ever seen.
Knowing that all the children survived is not a spoiler – it makes it possible to watch the film at all.
My gym uses mag locks and key tags to get in the building.
So maybe heavy duty mag locks that can be activated from multiple places in the classroom or school by tapping the teachers key card/ID on a disguised reader on the teacher’s desk or chalkboard or near the door or all of the above (disguised so that if a shooter gets the ID he can’t lock himself in with everyone unless he knows what he is looking for.. Not sure what this would look like in practice just yet). The idea being that the teacher can lock the room immediately without wasting time walking to the door while also preventing the crazy person from simply shooting the glass and reaching in to turn the handle. Fireman and police IDs could also open it.
And make the exterior doors like an arctic entryway in AK with wide doorways for emergency egress. I can’t count the number of times I’ve walked in a building in Fairbanks AK where the outer door to the arctic entry is unlocked but the inner door is locked; just the act of pulling open two doors slows you down. (I’ve also heard that there are some banks and jewelry stores that will lock a robber in such an entry on their way out of the building.). In any case, the odds of both doors into the building failing to lock would be lower.
Don’t know if the ideas are worth a shit, but redundancy generally works to combat complacency so…
There is a metaphor I wish I could recall. It’s funny, exasperated and clever and it refers to people who step over dollars to pick up pennies. It’s probably rude to the OCD community. If I think of it, I won’t post it.
But let me approach it by saying, its not the gun. It’s the gun when we have a non-whirte perp, though, and racism when we have a white perp. But it’s not the gun.
As I’ve said before,these things are planned. It may be that the planning process itself is part of the sick fun.
Ramos saved or otherwise accumulated enough money–possibly only a down payment–to get the weapon and ammo. He had other things on which to spend his money which would strike most of us as more fun. He had to defer gratification. Then he bought himself a weapon.
The Buffalo shooter had a manifesto of 180 pages. Unless it was double-spaced, that exceeds most likely my entire high school total of composition.
I once mentioned that a shooter could have a heck of a kill sack at a high school football game. I was told by a guy whose profession requires a high OCD component that they don’t let guys with AR into the stands.
I kept my balled fists in my pockets, not wanting to break his brain by pointing out that people can’t get into the stands without being outside the stands first. Nobody lives there permanently.
I’m charitable like that.
We’re H. Sap. We solve problems.
Stephen Paddock (Las Vegas) wanted a meat-filled kill sack. He knew his way around Vegas, but it took some detail work–needed to overlook the venue on an evening when there was a performance, get the right room, schlep the weapons and ammo up to the room without being caught–all requiring substantial prior planning. Which, I submit, might have been part of the fun.
Does anybody think that, had one or another necessity been denied by circumstance, no one would have died by his hand in the next couple of months? He’d have thought of something.
Zillion-dollar locks and staff obsessed with same to an extent satisfying keyboarders who have no need to worry about any other factors and…the bad guy highballs his truck across the lawn when the students are leaving the buses to enter the school.
It’s not the gun. It’s not the locks.
I think it all comes down to training and preparation. Uvalde obviously thought it could never happen there.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/classroom-door-chair-video-uvalde-shooting-b2090786.html
Dennis Sundermeyer:
It’s not at all obvious that Uvalde thought it could never happen there. The reality is that in any community the chance of it happening is very small and yet real. Uvalde gave every indication of understanding that by having locks on the outer doors, classroom doors that locked, lockdown trainings, and a school police force. That it wasn’t a perfect preparation and that it couldn’t prevent the occurrence has little to nothing to do with whether Uvalde (the town? the police? the school administrators?) “thought it could never happen there.”
Neo @ 8:02 p.m.: Yes, I know, and I don’t think my comment said otherwise. It is possible that some lives could have been saved had a key been available earlier, hence my comment that facilities should be reviewing key access in case of emergency.
Richard, you are right that it’s not the gun or the locks that’s the problem it’s the crazy person. Nevertheless, the goal is to buy time. And no, asshat Vegas shooter would never have been totally stopped, just delayed, but it would have give people around him time to get wind of his plans and turn him in. Better physical security would have slowed the Dickless Uvalde shooter down. All that teacher needed was 5 seconds apparently to get her door locked. All the cops needed was… what was it? Three minutes?…
And yes, maybe he would have built a bomb instead or lit the building on fire. Doesn’t mean you don’t put sprinklers in and test them periodically. .
I think part of the driving force for this shit is that these guys want to be remembered. That’s why I refuse to use their names.
have we found out the identity of the teacher who propped open the door that led the killer in?
avi:
And this is important? Because ….?
Megan. The LV shooter had no plans anybody needed to know about. He’d reportedly scoped out another venue in another city. And there’s no benefit to anybody we can figure…money, dead Trump voters (CW concert). So he keeps himself to himself over the months.
The Uvalde guy might have been slowed down.
OTOH, the Tsarnaev clan, using pressure cookers and old fireworks, would have done a lot worse in a shopping mall instead of a major event with lots of trained First Responders and Boston’s top-end medical establishment.
The Uvalde guy saw the door was unlocked–had to be pretty far open to be seen from what distance?–but if he had thought from the start it was locked he’d have headed off someplace else and…how secure is the front door? See Sandy Hook.
Not saying we shouldn’t take precautions. But, to use the sprinkler example, it works all the time pretty much without human decision making in the process. An anomalous intruder, or guy hanging around….who do you call, when, and what happens? Suppose it’s another Lyoya? Cop wants to engage right away, right?
Richard Aubrey,
Yes it’s the person filled with rage/evil that commits these acts, not the gun, but the more I think about it, raising the age to buy the .223/.556 or even 7.62 semi-automatic rifles to 21 might reduce the sheer carnage when these events happen.
I bought a 22 magnum semi-automatic rifle a few years ago and they already had enhanced background checks, at least in Wash. state (the rifle was considered an assault weapon!).
The shooter at Uvalde probably would have used the pistols he brought with him instead, but the wounds inflicted might have been survivable with a pistol round.
The Sandy Hook shooter also used a .223 rifle.
While the .223 round can be used for deer hunting up to 100 yards, it’s really a varmit round or home defense round. Raising the age would not impact this use.
avi:
I saw the teacher’s name published in a newspaper somewhere. I don’t find it to be an important detail for me to know, since apparently the teacher did close the door after.
One commenter mentioned mental health. That’s what a lot of this is. I don’t know much about the Vegas shooter (does anybody ?) but the school shootings have been by kids who gave off warning vibes. The Parkland shooter especially. The Columbine shooters had parents that seemed to have ignored some strange stuff. Somebody has commented about absence of fathers and that may be a factor. This kid in Uvalde seems to have had as dysfunctional a family as the black church shooter in Charleston SC. Maybe it’s the general dysfunction of society now.
One commenter mentioned mental health. That’s what a lot of this is.
Dunno. John Derbyshire offered that he wasn’t motivated to discuss cause-and-effect in these cases, because he thought in this cases you’re in the realm of chaos.
Mike K:
The Columbine shooters both had involved fathers and loving intact families that appeared to be functioning fine. Both teenagers had been identified for a theft (I forget the details) and had been through a law enforcement program for juvenile offenders and had passed it with flying colors, writing essays at the end about how they now understood how they had harmed people and they had learned their lessons. They, especially Klebold, had had treatment from the mental health establishment for various emotional problems. Harris was a classic psychopath as far as anyone can tell from his journals whereas Klebold’s problems were different.
I have written a post about the myth of the school shooter and the uninvolved father. These shooters do not have uninvolved fathers for the most part. See this.
For Ramos in Uvalde, his parents were divorced but he had regular contact with his father – who had a significant criminal record – until some time during the COVID lockdowns when, because of a job and an elderly ill father’s mother, his father was less accessible. Ramos was somewhat angry about that. One month before the shooting, Ramos stopped talking to his father at his own initiation, not the father’s. I believe that Ramos was a psychopath. I didn’t take the time to find the link for this information about the father, but I read it in an article with an interview with him.
On the other hand, I agree with you that the breakdown of families and values in general is a factor.
Yeah you have to be 21 to go hunting? And the purpose of the Second Ammendment is hunting (in the realm of King Jay)?
Brian E., you may not hunt any big game other than cougar with less than 6mm in WA (WAC 220-414-020).
I think the popularity of the AR in .223 is the result of liberals being ostentatiously incontinent at the very thought!, the pistol grip!, the thing that goes up!, the bayonet lugs! the scary black rifle weapon of war!
If you had a clue, you’d know the M16 round has half the muzzle energy of the M14 7.62. You want energy to be effective and SCARY.
But these guys don’t have a clue and are hearing the libs and….so free advertising for the AR 15 platform.
The Colorado theater shooter scoped out a number of targets until he came to one which was a gun-free zone. And he rigged a bomb to go off when his apartment door was opened, leaving the radio on loud to generate a noise complaint requiring the door to be opened and the resulting explosion drawing first responders to that side of town.
When you protect people with a perimeter, speaking geographically or figuratively, what’s outside the perimeter? People waiting to get in or people coming out.
It appears the background check does not include juvie records, which is a benefit for guys like Cruz and possibly Ramos. And P.R.O.M.I.S.E. keeps them from having records in the first place. But the USAF had neglected to put the name of the Sutherland Springs shooter into the data base and a Pentagon spox said they were at least a thousand names behind.
I would think the best that can be done is to either reduce total casualties, or at least they wouldn’t all be together in a school which adds to the horror compared to having them spread out.
When I was in public school, the bus stops were maybe every four blocks. Half a dozen kids on each, for a mile or so in our subdivision area. Could a guy be flying along in his mom’s SUV, firing out the window? How fast does the word get out? Now, with cell phones, the word can get to 911 pretty fast, but then what? As I say, it took fifteen minutes for the cops to get to Sandy Hook. General alert to all cell phones within a square mile to…do something?
We’re H. Sap. The great predators who tormented us and our dimmer ancestors are either extinct or on the endangered species list. Some are hunted for sport.
School kids and distracted educators are not going to be a problem, even if some obstacles are erected.
Doing what in military affairs is called “rivet counting” about locks may be a calming exercise but will avail us little. And by “locks” I mean practically any physical barrier of any type.
om,
A .223 round wouldn’t be a good choice for hunting (other than varmints), even in the states it’s legal. It’s a home defense weapon, that unfortunately has a Rambo vibe.
Chases Eagles,
According to the web, a .223 round is legal in 39 states (up to 100 yds).
Also keep in mind that the AR-15 is a very versatile platform and comes in the following alternate calibers (some of which are obviously more than 6mm):
.204 Ruger, .22LR, .22 Nosler, .224 Valkyrie, 300 Blackout, 300 Hammer, 350 Legend, .375 SOCOM, .450 Bushmaster, .458 SOCOM, 6mm ARC, 6.5 Grendel, 6.8 SPC II and probably some I have missed.
Chases Eagles:
All those “assault rifles” and “weapons of war” have some differences? How can that be?
When some psychopathic nutter that is older than 21 years old does the usual psychopathic nutter thing, what will a reasonable politician demand? King Jay, he’s reasonable?
om,
In general, would a pistol round be more survivable than a rifle round inside a classroom?
Sandy Hook, Parkland and Uvalde shooters used a .223 chambered rifle and the casualties were very high.
At Columbine two shooters, one using a 9mm carbine and the other a shotgun killed fewer people, but wounded more.
Here’s what a radiologist looking at wounds from the Parkland shooting had to say:
“Heather Sher, a Fort Lauderdale-based radiologist who examined CT scans from some of the victims of the February 2018 Parkland school shooting, wrote about the effects of AR-15 rounds for the Atlantic:
Routine handgun injuries leave entry and exit wounds and linear tracks through the victim’s body that are roughly the size of the bullet. If the bullet does not directly hit something crucial like the heart or the aorta, and the victim does not bleed to death before being transported to our care at the trauma center, chances are that we can save him.
The bullets fired by an AR-15 are different: They travel at a higher velocity and are far more lethal than routine bullets fired from a handgun. The damage they cause is a function of the energy they impart as they pass through the body. A typical AR-15 bullet leaves the barrel traveling almost three times faster than—and imparting more than three times the energy of—a typical 9mm bullet from a handgun.
…The high-velocity bullet causes a swath of tissue damage that extends several inches from its path. It does not have to actually hit an artery to damage it and cause catastrophic bleeding. “
Brian E:
You are talking about what psychopathic murderers have done to innocent victims and citing a physician with an agenda.
Regarding weapons that the psychopathic murderers choose to use, well when the next one pops up but chooses to kill with a handgun and headshots what do you say, Those folks aren’t normal after all.
And as to the 5.56 x NATO (or 0.223) scary black rifle consider the 5.7×28 FN P90 PDW, expressly developed to deal with body armor:
https://fnamerica.com/products/rifles/fn-p90/
50 round magazine, semiautomatic, and there is a pistol version by KelTec. That would be the psychopathic murderer’s weapon of choice, except it may not have much exposure in video games.
We aren’t talking about normal reasonable humans after all.
Brian E:
In addition, quite a few of these killers make sure to shoot their victims in the head. So that’s also part of what’s going on. Even a pistol would tend to be quite lethal with a head shot at close range.
The Virginia Tech killer in particular was like that, and he did it all with 2 handguns. He killed 27 students and five teachers, 32 in all, and 27 of his victims were shot in the head. There were also 17 wounded (probably not shot in the head, but I don’t know).
The original M16 was designed with reduced rifling. So the round was not revolving as fast as bullets usually do and thus lacked gyroscopic stability. This allowed it to “tumble” in the would instead of boring straight through, increasing the severity of the wound.
I heard, after I got out, that this made it a lousy brush-buster and hurt its accuracy at a distance and so more rifling was introduced.
No idea when this happened and how long it took to replace the originals. Point is, there’s a lot to this sort of thing which may or may not make a difference.
As to pistols: Years ago, a kid shot up a Paducah high school. He used a pistol and had a stunning series of head shots. Turns out he had a video game where you shoot a laser from a pistol thingy at a screen containing the targets or figures or whatever. By the worst possible luck, the pistol he got for the school shooting had the same “point” in his hand as did the video game’s toy. So he had ten thousand–or some other huge number–iterations in his muscle memory.
The reason I talk about planning is that a potential target which is hardened can be….discarded in pursuit of an easy mark. They have time, they have at least some resources…cars, for example, to get where they want to go. They have money to purchase weapons or can take their family’s–see Jonesboro or Adam Lanza.
And, I submit, they enjoy the planning and anticipation.
Hey, guys. If fate has you doing something heroic, wouldn’t you want all the girls you knew in high school to know about it? Multiply that urge by a thousand and change it to evil and all those people you didn’t like and who didn’t like you…..
Going off on a sudden whim doesn’t give the same fun. Which is why I say the efforts involving physical protections are not as useful as could be desired. Active protection is the answer.
neo:
This is a particularly grim, evil, and dark place for normal people.
I did not remember those details of the VA Tech murderers. I have a niece who was a student there when it happened.
om:
Yes, it is.
I know the details because after Uvalde I did lot of reading and refreshed my memory on quite a few of these mass killings. Along the way, I realized that, at least if I’m any indication, the Virginia Tech shootings were less well-remembered, although they were very horrific. I think one reason is that it wasn’t young kids who died, although it was certainly young people and extremely horrific and tragic. Another reason is that attention was quickly diverted to the actions (or inaction) of the university vis a vis the killer, who was a student there who had given signals of possible violence and had gone to counseling there.
Ever since I was quite young (maybe 12 or 13) and read a Clarence Darrow speech he gave to the jury in the Leopold and Loeb trial, I’ve had an interest in trying to learn what makes the mind of a youthful murderer tick. It is so frightening, but it seemed important to try to know.
The P90 gained some fame as Stargate Command’s standard rifle for the entire run of the (SG-1 sub) franchise.
Context strongly suggests that they considered it better than the Pentagon’s more common AR platform, but it’s not something the show is explicit about. They are explicit that it’s better than the alien weapons they’ve scavenged, but that conversation would only superficially change for any modern military rifle.
In video games, P90s (and weapons that look like them) are more often portrayed as chambered for pistol ammunition and therefore statted out as submachineguns rather than rifles. As much as it’s an image thing, bullpups rarely factor into the scene.
The CRASE (I think it’s an acronym for Citizen Reaction to Active Shooter Environment) is pretty thorough. And it covers VA Tech in detail. Among other things, you learn that casualties decreased in direct proportion to the time the students had to prepare defenses.
It’s generally presented by a cop as part of a security arrangement for an institution such as a church or school. But if you see it being presented in public, it’s worth attending it has a lot to say about what to do when you’re out by yourself in a restaurant or such.
Generally leads to a discussion.
Has recorded phone commo from a Columbine librarian.
Lots of good info and gets into things like theater stampedes even without some gunplay.
Boobah:
It is grim that the P90 is oot and aboot in the virtual shoot em up gaming world. Sigh.
The KelTec pistol is a bullpup sort of, with a barrel about as long as a P90. Very high velocity compared to your usual pistol IIRC.
My video gaming ended decades ago after getting hooked on “Descent;” flying a little spaceship in a 3D mine fighting non-anthropomorphic robots.
From Wikipedia:
“The AR-57, also known as the AR Five Seven , is available as either an upper receiver for the AR-15/M16 rifle or a complete rifle, firing 5.7×28mm rounds from standard FN P90 magazines. It was designed by AR57 LLC[3] was produced by AR57 of Kent, Washington, United States. The company is now defunct. The AR-57 PDW upper is a new design on AR-15/M16 rifles, blending the AR-15/M16 lower with a lightweight, monolithic upper receiver system chambered in FN 5.7×28mm. This model is also sold as a complete rifle, supplied with two 50-round P90 magazines.[1] The magazines mount horizontally on top of the front handguard, with brass ejecting through the magazine well. Hollow AR-15 magazines can be used to catch spent casings.
Unlike the standard AR-15 configuration which uses a gas-tube system , the AR-57 cycles via straight blowback.[4] A full auto version exists and was marketed as a competitor to the P90 and other personal defense weapons.[5]”
Richard Aubrey:
At Virginia Tech, in some classrooms that had a bit of extra time, the students and teachers had successfully barricaded the doors with tables and the like. The shooter shot through doors but couldn’t get in, and the students weren’t injured in those classrooms.
There’s also Liviu Libescu, a renowned professor at Virginia who managed to save many of his students, who gained time to escape through windows (jumping from the second floor; some injured their legs in the jump) while he held the classroom door closed and was shot four times. The shooter killed him on finally entering. Librescu was 76 years old and a Holocaust survivor. The story of his life is well worth reading. An extraordinary man of great accomplishment on so many levels. See also this.
neo. CRASE diagrams out the defenses. Librescu was certainly a hero.
“You are talking about what psychopathic murderers have done to innocent victims and citing a physician with an agenda.”- om
OK, how about this:
“Compare the damage an AR-15 and a 9mm handgun can do to the human body: “One looks like a grenade went off in there,” says Peter Rhee, a trauma surgeon at the University of Arizona. “The other looks like a bad knife cut.””
The kenetic energy:
“A bullet with more energy can do more damage. Its total kinetic energy is equal to one-half the mass of the bullet times its velocity squared. The bullet from a handgun is—as absurd as it may sound—slow compared to that from an AR-15. It can be stopped by the thick bone of the upper leg. It might pass through the body, only to become lodged in skin, which is surprisingly elastic.”
“The bullet from an AR-15 does an entirely different kind of violence to the human body. It’s relatively small, but it leaves the muzzle at three times the speed of a handgun bullet. It has so much energy that it can disintegrate three inches of leg bone. “It would just turn it to dust,” says Donald Jenkins, a trauma surgeon at University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio. If it hits the liver, “the liver looks like a jello mold that’s been dropped on the floor.” And the exit wound can be a nasty, jagged hole the size of an orange…”
https://www.wired.com/2016/06/ar-15-can-human-body/
If a bullet hits a vital part of the body, even a .22 LR is lethal. But to other parts of the body, you’re more likely to survive a .22 bullet than a 9 mm bullet. A .223 round inflicts considerably more damage.
Brian E:
All very interesting in a macabre sort of way. Not.
You do remember the reason why a normal person shoots another person with a firearm and not a Nerf gun? You do recognize the difference between lawful use of firearms and murder by a normal, criminal, much less by a psychopath or a Che?
Something about never pointing a gun at anything that you don’t want to destroy. So when your non-law abiding person shoots you with his .22 Short he really doesn’t intend to hurt you? It isn’t an AR-15 after all. You shouldn’t mind, barely an inconvenience. The muzzle was against your temple? Details, details, deceased.
The gun bill recently passed by the House would raise the age to purchase an AR-15 style rifle from 18 to 21.
I think this is a reasonable response.
I don’t know what else the bill contains, but I would support this part of it.
Brian E:
What about a Ruger Mini 14, for just one example? They have been down that reasonable road before.
Why not raised to 22.3 or 27 years? All “reasonable.”
Reasonable you are with your rights, not mine.
om,
We’ve already restricted handgun purchases to 21 from a gun dealer, so the age isn’t particularly arbitrary.
We’ll deal with rifles like the Ruger Mini 14 if young people start using them to commit mass murder.
Who is this “we?” The minions of the DNC and Olympia?
Always advance the agenda one “reasonable” step at a time. Yesterday it was all about how evil the bullets used in the AR-15 are.
Brandon has told the “we” how evil and dangerous the “high caliber” 9 mm bullets are.
The “we” never pause when using a mass murder to advance “reasonable” infringement on individual rights.
The “we” are all in on disinformation management too. Another one of those individual rights that needs some “reasonable” control. For the children, or climate, or equity, or public health, or … Reasonable.
Regarding mass murder Brian. You do remember the Las Vegas mass murderer was not a young person, nor was the shooter of Republican Congressmen playing softball, nor the Brooklyn person of color?
Why are you discriminating against young people, doesn’t sound “reasonable?”
The “we” must do something.
It seems the D “wees” weren’t weely weasonable after all. A wascally wabbit (Cornyn) eludes Senator Elmer? (McConnell)
https://redstate.com/bonchie/2022/06/16/senate-gun-control-legislation-crashes-on-the-rocks-after-gop-negotiator-walks-out-n579614