Active shooter, a term that is all too often heard on the campuses across our great country. It’s a student, parent, administrator, faculty and members of the community’s worst nightmare come true. Someone has entered the campus with a loaded firearm, has an objective and wreaks violent, unforgiving havoc on innocent victims. It has become a growing epidemic as well as a growing concern for school administration, faculty and students, as well as law enforcement. The need for an Active Shooter Emergency Plan is at its highest. There must be a plan to prevent, mitigate, respond to and recover from an extremist incident, as seen in recent and not so recent history. For the College of Coastal Georgia and colleges alike, below is a plan to help prevent, mitigate, respond and recover from an extremist incident.
The plan to prevent should start with the needs and requirements to protect the school, the students, administration and faculty. There are different ways to plan, one way could be to figure out who the possible targets are. Are they the Dean of Students, the Financial Aid, the Registrar’s Office, a group of minority students, a professor, an activist or religious group? Establishing whom the potential target(s) is/are, is the first step. What would the motive be? Is it religious motivation, state-sponsored, or politically motivated? These are questions the prevention team and campus police would need to consider. There are also needs and requirements that can be put into place physically and socially, by the administration, faculty and students. These needs and requirements could be found in the Twenty Five Techniques of Situational Prevention. Here are a few examples of the possible techniques that can be used to prevent an...
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... potentially protect the administration, faculty and students, as well as keeping casualties minimal, if any.
Works Cited
(4/8/2014) Retrieved from www.dhs.gov/active-shooter-preparedness
Matthew Harwood (8/10/2012) Researchers Offer New Solution to Active Shooter Mitigation, Retrieved from http://www.securitymanagement.com/news/researchers-offer-new-solution-active-shooter-mitigation-0010209
http://www.dhs.gov/active-shooter-preparedness
Katherine W. Schweit, J.D. (5/7/2013) Addressing the Problem of the Active Shooter, Retrieved from http://www.fbi.gov/stats-services/publications/law-enforcement-bulletin/2013/May/active-shooter
Now Is The Time: The President’s plan to protect our children and our communities by reducing gun violence”, Retrieved from http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/docs/wh_now_is_the_time_full.pdf
Peters, Jeremy. "Months After Massacre, Obama Seeks to Regain Momentum on Gun Laws." New York Times. N.p.. Web. 3 Dec 2013. .
So, the Lake County High School student body was told today by Jimmy Snyder, that we will be having a school shooting drill sometime in the month of November. Therefore, be prepared for it at any given time of the school day. These people know about the upcoming drill: Parents, Staff, Policemen, and the
Although the families of those affected and the American people watching at home believed in the security of our Nation during the Sandy Hook school shooting, we as a Nation have not put in the recognition needed to see the restraint that has blinded us from noticing we aren’t doing enough for the safety of our children when it comes to gun violence; therefore, President Barack Obama wants the American people to see this as it is and to begin to resolve this issue, beginning with gun control policies.
Richman, Sheldon. "The Seen and Unseen in Gun Control." The Freeman 1 Oct 1998: 610-611
"Written Testimony of the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence." Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence. N.p., n.d. Web. 2 April. 2014. .
The history of school shootings has shown an increase in mass school shooting. The very first known school shooting in the United States occurred on July 26, 1764 in present-day Greencastle, Pennsylvania. As part of the Pontiac's Rebellion, four Lenape Native Americans entered the school house and started shooting, killing the schoolmaster Enoch Brown and about nine students. Only two students survived the massacre (“History”). Since the 1700s the United States society has changed in many ways. Schools have become more than just one room school houses and each grade has its own teacher. Furthermore, the problem of school shootings has not decreased but rather increased over the years. On the one hand, reports from the Centers for Disease Control showed that in general school violence decreased from 1992 to 200...
It is a sad time in American history when one can easily recount recent school shootings in their own area. This ease stems from a sharp increase in the number of firearms brought into elementary and middle schools across the country, with an intense focus on the issue beginning after the shooting of 20 children from Sandy Hook Elementary in Connecticut. Most school shooters are male, white, and often upper middle class. They are also more, often than not, under some type of mental stress that is causing them to create this type of violence in our communities. In fact, many school shooters are never suspected of doing any harm to their peers and teachers until it is much too late.
Paul Mountjoy, “Gun Control and Mental Health,” The Washington Times, March 28, 2013, sec Communities.
Imagine being forced to crawl and hide with gunshots near your ears. Imagine seeing people shot to death in front of you. Believe it or not, scenes like these occur on a daily basis in America. In the first 320 days of this year there were 325 mass shootings in the nation, defined as where there were more than four victims at each shooting. (Mass Shooting Tracker). This egregious level of violence is unacceptable in a developed country and major reform in gun legislation to improve the tragic state of public safety in the United States today. Although critics of expanded gun legislation incorrectly argue that easier access to guns increases safety and that gun laws are unconstitutional, it is imperative that America adopts stronger gun control legislation because heightened regulations reduce crime rates and have successfully improved public safety in other developed countries. In a country like the United States, no one
The teacher rounded up my entire class and ordered us to be completely quiet. We were just informed that we are now under a lockdown, and I don’t think this is necessarily a practice one either. My phone just started to vibrate. As I glanced down at my phone, I heard a distant ‘pop’, ‘pop’ coming from inside the cafeteria. The sound reminded me of popcorn popping in the microwave. Most of the people in my class started to become very unsettled, and then it hit me. The emergency notification on my phone was just another confirmation that there were active shooters in my school. The shooters turned out to be troubled students that thought the only way to get their point across was to take it into their own hands. This is just one of the many scenarios when people that shouldn’t have access to guns find a way to get weapons inside their grasp
Retrieved November 1, 2013, from Info Please: http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0777958.html Levin, J. (2012, December 19). How to prevent school shootings. Retrieved November 1, 2013, from The Boston Globe: http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2012/12/19/podium-newtown/8RBiAPBjlYG9N9LyC2RVyM/story.html Robertz, F. J. (2012, December 12). Deadly Dreams: What Motivates School Shootings? Retrieved November 15, 2013, from Scientific American:
School shootings have altered American history greatly over the past two decades. From 1997 to 2007, there have been more than 40 school shootings, resulting in over 70 deaths and many more injuries. School shoot-outs have been increasing in number dramatically in the past 20 years. There are no boundaries as to how old the child would be, or how many people they may kill or injure. At Mount Morris Township, Michigan, on February 29th, 2000, there was a 6 year old boy who shot and killed another 6 year old girl at the Buell Elementary School with a .32 caliber pistol. And although many shootings have occurred at High Schools or Middle Schools, having more guns on those campuses would not be a good environment for children to grow up in. However, on a college campus, the pupils attending are not children anymore; the age range is from 17 to mid 20’s. Therefore they understand the consequences associated to the use of weapons and have gained more maturity. In April 16th, 2007, at Blacksburg, Virginia, there was a shooting rampage enacted by Sung-Hui Cho (23 years, from Centreville, VA) who fired over 170 rounds, killing 32 victims, before taking his own life at the Virginia Tech campus. Colleges and Universities would be a much safer place, for student and teacher, if guns were permitted on campus for self-defense purposes.
Although most security measures passively make schools safer, it is not nearly enough to prevent an individual who intends on creating mass violence from completing his or her task. State representatives, national organizations, school staff, and parents need to come together to figure out the most reliable ways to prevent an active shooter situation from occurring in their schools. One solution that has been active is many schools have partnered with local law enforcement agencies to provide a police officers to patrol school grounds....
One concern mentioned about guns was the fact that campus police will not know who the shooter is within the chaos of an emergency. In this scenario, all members of the school will be panicking. Students will run in different directions. The officers will not know where to search. Skorton
In this article Emmett Tyrell informs us about gun violence in schools and what the NRA has proposed to stop the gun violence, and mass shootings across America. While the gun control debate rages, many schools have become war zones, and all school zones are vulnerable. The National Rifle Association's has come up with a 225-page report contains dozens of recommendations to improve safety in our nation’s schools. The NRA’s National School Shield program will train and enable school personnel to carry firearms to protect our nation’s children.