School Shootings

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this kid's assalt weapon jammed



Student, 13, fires assault rifle in Missouri school

JOPLIN, Missouri (AP) -- Fascinated by the Columbine bloodbath, a 13-year-old boy in a dark green trench coat and mask carried an assault rifle into his school Monday, pointed it at students and fired a shot into a ceiling before the weapon jammed, authorities said. No one was hurt.

"Please don't make me do this," he was quoted as telling administrators before police arrested him and thwarted what they called a "well thought-out plan" to terrorize his school.

Police said a note in the student's backpack indicated he had planted an explosive in the school, but no bombs were found.

Lt. Geoff Jones said the boy's motives were unclear. School officials said the student had no major disciplinary problems.

The seventh-grader, whose name was not immediately released, pointed the gun at two students inside Joplin Memorial Middle School but was confronted by an administrator who tried to talk him into putting the gun down, Jones said.

The boy refused and fired a shot into the ceiling of an entryway, police said. He tried to continue firing but the rifle jammed, according to Jones. The student then left the building.

"We don't believe he was trying to fire at administrators or students," Officer Curt Farmer said.

Officers arrested the teen behind a nearby building. Police described his weapon as a Mac-90, a replica of an AK-47 assault rifle.

Superintendent Jim Simpson said police told him the boy had a fascination with the Columbine High shooting that left 15 people dead near Littleton, Colorado in 1999.

The student was wearing a trench coat -- like the student gunmen at Columbine -- and had a T-shirt over his head with eye holes cut out, Farmer said.

Farmer said that along with note indicating an explosive was placed in the school, the boy's backpack held military manuals, instructions on assembling an improvised explosive device and detailed drawings of the school.

"This was quite well thought-out," Farmer said. "He had been planning this for a long time."

Jones said the gun belonged to the boy's parents, who kept the weapon in a safe at home. The parents told police their son apparently knew the combination to the gun safe. Farmer said it is not uncommon for people in the area to own assault weapons.



some of you American parents might want to think about getting life insurance for your kids instead of buying lotto tickets
 
(AP)The Amish community grieving the loss of five girls shot in a schoolhouse say they have been overwhelmed by gifts from the outside world — about $700,000 in donations so far.

The money is expected to go toward short- and long-term medical bills, transportation costs, counseling and other needs. At the request of Amish leaders, a fund has also been set up for the gunman's family.

Charles Carl Roberts IV, a 32-year-old milk truck driver and father of three, took 10 girls hostage at the West Nickel Mines Amish School on Oct. 2 and shot all of them, killing five and seriously wounding the others before committing suicide. One girl is not expected to survive.

Members of the Amish have not sought the gifts, in part because their religion teaches them to care for themselves. But they also believe that giving is a way of grieving and say they do not want to deny others that experience.

They believe "it would be un-Christ-like to deny other people the blessing that comes from giving," said Herman Bontrager, a Mennonite businessman who is serving as a spokesman.

"There's still a reasonable possibility that a couple of girls might have needs for a long time to come, if not for the rest of their lives," Bontrager said.

On Monday, church bells tolled in memory of the attack a week earlier and the fire department delivered donated flowers, stuffed animals and school supplies to an undisclosed site that will be used as a temporary schoolroom.

"Their objective right now is to get back to life, as normal as they can," Bart Township Fire Company spokesman Mike Hart said Monday.

Amish officials have not yet decided when classes will resume at a new site, or when the community might raze the one-room schoolhouse. Some wonder if the students or their families may want to see the old school at some point.

"They want to make sure that everyone has as much closure as they need," said John Coldiron, a Bart Township zoning official.

The five girls buried last week were Anna Mae Stoltzfus, 12; Marian Fisher, 13; Naomi Rose Ebersol, 7; and sisters Mary Liz Miller, 8, and Lena Miller, 7.

Bobbi Roschel, 24, an emergency medical technician who treated one of the victims, stopped to pray at Middle Octorara Presbyterian Church in Quarryville.

"The hardest part is you just wanted to pick them up and hold them," Roschel said. :(
 
Is this the future of all schools? Maybe

By Greg Toppo, USA TODAY


Each morning, the 16,000 students in the Spring Independent School District in suburban Houston swipe their ID tags as they climb onto the school bus. A radio frequency tag tracks them, as it does when they arrive at school and as they leave the building.

Nearly 1,000 cameras watch them all day. Every visitor — parents, volunteers, the guy who fills the Coke machine — must surrender his or her driver's license to a secretary who checks it against a national database of sex offenders. This fall, nearly one in three schools literally trap visitors inside a "secure vestibule," a bulletproof glass room, until they're checked out.

Welcome to the brave new world of school security. In an era when deadly school shootings seem to happen like clockwork, schools are hardening up, trying unconventional means to deter violence and keep track of students and adults.

President Bush convenes a school safety summit today in response to a spate of shootings. But schools have long been beefing up security — often in the face of diminishing funding — creating "crisis plans" and investing millions in systems they hope will deter the next deadly incident.

"If somebody's really determined to get into a school and they have a high enough caliber weapon, they're going to get in," says Alan Bragg, chief of Spring's school police. But ID checks and the like are "a huge deterrent" to most would-be criminals.

And though shootings like those at Columbine High School in 1999 prompted schools to be on the lookout for violent students, safety experts say kidnapping and molestation cases also have forced them to pay attention to adults on campus.

Florida and California now require criminal background checks for anyone working or regularly visiting a school.

"People need to realize that the day of the open campus is changing," says Allan Measom, CEO of Raptor Technologies, a Houston firm that sells the visitor tracking system that Spring uses.

Schools in 19 states use it to stop registered sex offenders at the front desk. Since the school year began, Measom says, it has ID'd more than 100 offenders, about seven a day. States lost track of about 20 who fled without telling police.

Raptor actually was born from the collapse of Enron. Measom's firm had built a Web-based system to track visitors at the Houston energy company, but when Enron, amid financial scandal, went belly-up in 2002, Measom and a partner adapted the technology.

They're now in 2,020 schools in 212 districts. After an initial investment of $1,500, schools pay $432 a year to access the system.

Schools — most often it's the secretaries at the front desk — scan a visitor's driver's license. The system transmits the visitor's name, date of birth and photo to Raptor. If the data match those of someone in the sex offender registry, Raptor e-mails the arrest photo to the school, lining it up next to the driver's license photo. An onscreen prompt asks: "Is this the person registering?"

If the photos match and the secretary clicks "Yes," police get an e-mail or text message. In most cases, the visitor — often a parent — may simply get restricted access. Many offenders have been stopped from working or volunteering at schools, and in a few cases, police have tracked down offenders and arrested them.

More schools may get the technology soon; the U.S. Justice Department recently chose Raptor as a pilot program for schools nationwide.
 
WildHoneyAlways said:

I'd still like someone to explain how not teaching ID can be linked to school shootings. :eyebrow:
Or how that has anything to do with evolution, nature red in tooth and claw where only the strongest survive lacks nuance and is invalidated by the evidence. Cooperation and mutualism are powerful factors, sexual selection. Evolution is differential reproductive success; not killing off the weak.
 
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