I just hope they make these big enough to shelter even the huskiest of 12 year-olds:
The Bodyguard Blanket, made by ProTecht, is a bulletproof 5/16-inch pad that the company says is made from the same materials used by the U.S. military.
Steve Walker, a podiatrist who conceptualized the blanket, told The Oklahoman that the idea came to him after two tragedies: the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, and the tornadoes in Oklahoma. He said the idea was to “stop that blunt-force trauma when that rubble is falling down on a child.”
None of this is funny in the slightest but mockery may be our best weapon.
Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader
It seems at least as sensible as a group of children bullrushing a shooter.
Belafon
As useful as hiding under a desk in a nuclear war.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
I though kevlar is useless against blunt force trauma and that’s why cops put metal plates into their vests?
catclub
@Belafon: Why is hiding under a desk sufficient for nuclear blasts but not for tornados? Both of them are effectively wind/pressure events.
BruinKid
So the Ron Paul fan I know who’s actually the campaign manager for a “liberty” candidate for Congress here in Southern California posted after the Las Vegas shooting, and had this to say:
These people actually think it. And FYI, this guy is an Iranian Muslim. Not your typical Ron Paul fan.
(His candidate is running in a district that gave Obama 65% of the vote in 2012, and will probably lose by about a 2:1 margin. But if the race gets a bit closer, I’ll have a treasure trove of oppo research to give the Dems on the guy’s campaign manager.)
japa21
Well, possibly as protection from falling debris, though I can’t really see it helping much if the debris is heavy.
But those kids seem pretty vulnerable to bulltes flying low, richoceting off the floors, etc.
What they really need are something similar to bullet proof hazmat suits as school uniforms.
schrodinger's cat
@catclub: radiation poisoning? Only lead can stop gamma rays.
Ash Can
In the event of a tornado and the flying debris it kicks up, including glass shards, this is clearly better than nothing — assuming it doesn’t act as a sail and end up just getting the kids blown around.
c u n d gulag
Uhm…
Kind of bass-ackwards, no?
And why bright orange?
Why not a variety of colors for parents to choose from, including cammo, to better match the background of wherever their children may go to?
Is it because if the blankie doesn’t work, does it make it easier to find the children’s bodies, afterwards?
Cassidy
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: It diminishes the impact of smaller, high speed projectiles. It will do nothing for large chunks of concrete falling at slower speeds into a child’s body.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
I think the replies to the link to article have won the snark on this already
Jennifer
Same company is working on an undergarment version of this for Catholic kids, to be called the CockBlocker.
evodevo
They look pretty useless to me – a tornado will blow it off (better to get under that desk if you ask me) and they won’t stop any but the weakest bullets. I’d say an invisibility cloak for hiding from school shooters. Or give them those ceramic plate body armor outfits ….. Go, Klingons !!
schrodinger's cat
Isn’t this blanket too tiny and shouldn’t it cover you completely? May be someone should design a Darth Vader like cape instead.
danielx
First thought: reminded me ever so much of elementary school during the hottest parts of the Cold War, when they drilled us all on how to get in the hallway to duck and cover. I was in my late teens when I realized that duck and cover, in the event of a megaton explosion, was about as useful as a screen door in a submarine. Any rescuers would have found us all curled up there, medium rare, like rows of Chicken McNuggets.
shelley
Sweet Jesus, so when kids go to do their school shopping in August, along with their pencil boxes and knapsacks they’ll have to get their bullet-proof blankies.
This country has truly gone insane.
cleek
this will be very effective against shooters who think that they can’t see kids who can’t see them – your bugblatter beasts and such.
pluege
clearly as depicted, this provides no protection whatsoever from a shooter.
Whether or not it provides any protection from debris flying around at high velocity would also seem questionable.
This is clearly destined for Sky Mag.
Botsplainer
@Cassidy:
Glass, stone shards and splinters were my first thought.
Seanly
There are so many things wrong with this.
1) Kevlar reduces the kinetic energy of the bullet by making it deform the Kevlar. A falling block of concrete will still crush the child.
2) Most vests are very tight & other bulletproof applications like car windows are hard & rigid. Will a blanket be as effective?
3) Couldn’t the shooter just aim under the blankets?
4) Wouldn’t it be easier to have sensible gun laws?
shortstop
Kay had a good summation of this yesterday. With straight faces, they’re putting the onus of safety on the victims. Next up: best way to avoid drunk drivers is to stay off the road.
ETA: Can’t I link to a comment in another thread? Or did I just bollox it up?
Amir Khalid
These blankets will be useless against a shooter — not because they can’t stop bullets, but because the shooter will have done his worst before anyone can give them out. They will obviously not protect anyone from falling chunks of masonry or roofing. They were thought up by a podiatrist, who (to put it mildly) seems well outside his realm of expertise.
CONGRATULATIONS!
Maybe we should put all the kids into their own individual rooms, made of concrete, with steel doors, and everything would be locked all the time. The room could even have its own toilet, so that the child wouldn’t have to make the dangerous journey to a bathroom.
That would be just like something else, but the name escapes me at the moment.
c u n d gulag
@danielx:
Yeah, I remember those drills at my public grade school, in NY City, the 60’s.
Even as kids, we knew it was pretty useless – especially in NYC.
When we were in 4th and 5th grade, we heard some of our older siblings and cousins say that the duck & cover drills we were practicing, ought to end with, “And stick you head between your legs, and kiss your ass goodbye!”
For you ‘yunguns’ out there, watch some clips from “Atomic Café.”
bing.com/videos/search?q=atomic+cafe+youtube&qpvt=atomic+cafe+youtube&FORM=VDRE
Or, download the entire movie.
kindness
We need a pic of a child praying (facing Mecca of course) to Allah on those blankets. Then the assholes who thought this was a good idea would never be elected again.
Use their bigotry against them.
shortstop
@Jennifer: Well played.
Betty Cracker
@Jennifer: Tee hee!
The Dangerman
I’ve got a better idea; instead of a blanket, how about a zippered protection device? We’ll call them Body Bags! Think of the added efficiencies if the child doesn’t survive.
Amir Khalid
@catclub:
It isn’t, of course. You must know that.
Amir Khalid
@kindness:
Well, they’re generously sized for prayer rugs, but why not?
H.K. Anders
Well, I guess if keeping guns away from crazy, violent people isn’t an option, and it sure doesn’t seem to be, then mass shooting-prevention entrepreneurship is another way to go.
But, damn.
WaterGirl
Baud posted a link to this last night in the “Parsing” thread. I look at that photo and it seems like painting a target on the kids, and then the shooter gets to shoot them all like ducks in a row.
I don’t see how anyone could think this is a good idea for a shooter situation. Tornado, maybe, because the color makes you easy to find in the debris. But for shooters? They have lost their minds.
Scott S.
These clearly violate the Holy Second Amendment. Why is this company trying to keep the People of the Gun from shooting first-graders?
Jennifer
To be serious for a moment though – I can’t see any useful application for this. As others have noted, in the event of a shooting, the damage will be done before anyone can get the blanket, and even if they do get it, if you look at the photo, just by aiming low a gunman would still be able to shoot them. As for tornadoes, a tornado is going to lift those right off. A better solution for tornadoes has already been found – build tornado shelters into the schools, which is what they’re doing in new school buildings here, as well as retrofitting existing buildings with shelter areas.
Gin & Tonic
@WaterGirl: Tornado, maybe, because the color makes you easy to find in the debris.
I haven’t lived through a tornado, but from what I recall they involve very powerful winds. What makes anyone think that a grade-schooler and this orange sail will be in any proximity to each other afterward?
Helmut Monotreme
@Amir Khalid:
For what it’s worth, no one was suggesting that hiding under a desk would be any use against the fireball of a nearby nuclear explosion. What it would be useful against, is the flying debris from the shockwave which would cover several times more area than the fireball itself. It makes just as much sense as hiding under a desk in an earthquake. It would be useful against small debris and pointless if the building collapses.
Villago Delenda Est
@Belafon: DING DING DING DING DING!
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@Villago Delenda Est: I think they would be of some use during a tornado.
Keith G
Obviously, this is not going anywhere, but questions remain:
Issued one per child like a spelling book and carried around rolled up like a camping pad? Or thirty in each classroom, 300 in the cafeteria, 150 in the library, 500 in the gym (for the potential shooter at the assembly), a few hanging in each restroom?
Can the costs be defrayed by sponsorship, advertising, naming rights?
srv
Clearly, somebody has really fucked up with the strategy here. These kids could quite easily implement one of McMegan’s swarm maneuvers to overwhelm a shooter.
FlipYrWhig
@Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name): they also might be helpful during a dinosaur attack, because if you’re a stationary object, you’ll get left alone.
Villago Delenda Est
@cleek: My suggestion is that the kids all do some ghost dancing every morning to protect themselves from stray rounds fired in the streets outside.
Villago Delenda Est
@FlipYrWhig: “Objects may appear more distant than they are”
Roger Moore
@Helmut Monotreme:
It would be more helpful than you’d think if the building collapses, especially a single story building. The biggest danger if the roof collapses is from being hit by debris as it falls. If you get under something that can take the brunt of the hit, you have a decent chance of winding up relatively unscathed in a air space under the debris. Depending on how heavily constructed the building is, you might be able to push your way out. It wouldn’t be as useful as a designed shelter, but it beats the hell out of a direct hit from a falling roof.
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@Roger Moore: That was my thought as well.
Applejinx
Who profits by selling these to schools?
Makes me angry. Weeee, let’s turn child death into a profit center!
Xecky Gilchrist
a bulletproof 5/16-inch pad that the company says is made from the same materials used by the U.S. military
Scraps of armor scavenged from Iraqi landfills?
Roger Moore
@Xecky Gilchrist:
Infinite quantities of money.
Villago Delenda Est
@Applejinx: Well, our health care system is nothing but a profit center.
The worship of Mammon is the undoing of mankind.
Amir Khalid
@Keith G:
I don’t know how many kids go to the typical-sized American school; I would guess it’s in the low- to mid-hundreds. (This guess is probably way off.) At US$1,000 each, you’d be talking about half a million per school. I don’t think it’s affordable.
Tractarian
Why not just make all the kids’ clothes out of this stuff?
(Reminds me of Seinfeld’s old gag, “why don’t they just make the whole plane out of the black box?”)
catclub
@Xecky Gilchrist: depleted uranium, too.
I also thought of the bugblatter beast of Traal. The dinosaur protection was a nice touch.
rikyrah
wouldn’t it be cheaper to just pay one time for the tornado shelter?
catclub
@rikyrah: Cheaper isn’t better if you are asking the blanket supplier. Lost blankets, upgraded blankets. Much more opportunity for grifting.
ericblair
If it’s to stop bullets, just screen-print Ronald Reagan’s face on it. Shooting a kid through a picture of Reagan would be like stomping on the American flag. Or maybe a picture of Jesus, but that guy was kind of a commie hippie if you think about it.
dmsilev
@Amir Khalid: Over a thousand students typically. My high school was ~1600, and it wasn’t particularly large.
Villago Delenda Est
@rikyrah: A longer term value, to be sure. More effective. However, the long term is for chumps. Take the money and run!
Roger Moore
@ericblair:
But you’re forgetting that all the mass shooters are actually liberal Democrats, so shooting pictures of Reagan and desecrating flags are their favorite pastimes.
Jack the Second
@schrodinger’s cat: I was going to make a quip about lead paint, but it looks like you’d need around 3,000,000 coats of lead paint to stop gamma radiation.
The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik
As I said before when I liked to the MoJo article on this: the very existence of this thing is damning. It’s a damning indictment of our culture that this is supposed to be a fucking answer to shootings.
CONGRATULATIONS!
Given what ballistic fabric costs, I’m sure these little blankies of futility would run about a grand each or so.
Someday gun control will win the day on the only merit Americans give a shit about: it’s cheaper.
ericblair
@Roger Moore:
Oh, right. Better whip up some Mao and Alinsky ones then.
Amir Khalid
@dmsilev:
US$1.6 million for the typical-size high school, then. Nope, still doesn’t sound affordable.
Roger Moore
@Amir Khalid:
ITYM, “Yep, sounds highly profitable, then.”
The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
But shelters and gun control legislation FEELS more expensive than personal ballistic blankets, don’t you see?
Also, I hope to god that I’m not the only one immensely pissed off at the repeated meme of how ‘gun-free zones are to blame’ for this kind of shit. You know, the claim that somehow, gun-free zones are like bait to a gun toter since they somehow know without guns, the place is like a free shooting range, without the godly ‘good guys with guns’ to protect it. I swear to god, I don’t know how many times I’ve seen someone claim that supporting gun-free zones is somehow akin to literally wanting people in those zones to die.
Gin & Tonic
@Amir Khalid: Elementary schools do tend to be smaller, more in your several-hundred range. It’s middle schools and high schools, and especially combined MS-HS (i.e. grades 6-12) campuses that are in the thousands. The largest high school in Mass, for instance is around 4,000.
Gin & Tonic
@The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik: Wonder why the US Capitol building is a gun-free zone then.
The Thin Black Duke
The way things are going in America lately, what’s going to happen is parents will be home-schooling their children themselves because it’ll be too fucking dangerous to send them to school. But hey, as John Lennon so wisely observed, “Happiness is a warm gun”, right?
wenchacha
Great. Shooting at a school in Oregon right now. Still active.
Helmut Monotreme
I’m going to go on record as saying this will never work. Not because the idea is ridiculous from the start, not because it is expensive, impractical and asinine, but because it is defensive. Americans have internalized the “the best defense is a good offense” bit of faux wisdom. Before you see school districts buying this for their students, you will see some school in Texas arm each and every student with a handgun.
skerry
Active shooter in Portland, OR. High school on lockdown
Hope those blankets come in larger sizes for the high school kids
ETA: Just saw wenchacha got there first.
GHayduke (formerly lojasmo)
Active shooter currently at a school at Troutdale, Oregon (close to Gresham, east of Portland)
FFS.
ETA: Beat by Skerry
The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik
@wenchacha:
Sweet Jesus. The past few weeks or so have been concentrated crazy.
shortstop
@Amir Khalid: Of course it’s affordable if your priorities are in the right place (why do you hate children?). We’ll just eliminate any remaining semblance of science education to balance the books.
wenchacha
I’m gonna predict a change in gun assholery by the time we reach 3 separate school shootings/day, and not a minute before.
big ole hound
How big will backpacks have to get to carry this useless crap around.?
Who is selling the school boards on this scam?
Roger Moore
@Gin & Tonic:
And why the NRA convention doesn’t allow people to carry loaded weapons.
Julie
Live updates on the Reynolds High School shooting in OR, here.
Mnemosyne
@The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik:
The shooter at Seattle Pacific University was stopped by a guy with a can of pepper spray. The Tucson shooter was wrestled to the ground when he stopped to re-load, as was at least one recent shooter. The Tennessee Unitarian Universalist Church shooter was stopped when one of the church members sacrificed himself by stepping in front of the gun, which gave other people the chance to tackle the shooter.
And note that Tucson was not only not a gun-free zone, but there were at least two people with concealed carry permits nearby who decided not to draw their weapons until they could figure out what was going on.
So, as usual, the people you know are full of shit. ;-)
Belafon
@WaterGirl:
This reminds me of the Chinese finger puzzle. So, our problem is that guns can kill, and people have brought guns to school and kill kids. Well, how about we lock down the school during the day (they’ve done this at my kid’s school, and there are three doors you have to go through just to get inside)? But the shooters can still get inside. Well, we could give the kids bullet proof tarps? But that just makes the kids targets (hopefully someone will realize that lining up the kids for a shooter is a bad idea).
We’d completely like to avoid the problem causing all of this.
And you know, when I was a kid, we did not worry about this. There were guns, though they weren’t as relatively cheap as they are now, and automatic and semi-automatic guns were expensive and frowned upon by society. The door to every classroom at my elementary school opened up to the outside.
What has changed? One thing: Minorities are ending up in places that only whites were allowed before. Otherwise, responsible gun owners would be walking up to idiots and taking away their guns.
Mnemosyne
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
Gymnastics mats would probably work better as protection from flying debris, and the school probably has them on hand already. Heck, those things are thick enough that they’d probably stop a small caliber bullet pretty easily.
skerry
Life-line helicopter has landed in field next to high school in Troutdale (near Portland), OR. 3 shooters. 2 fled the scene. 1 in custody. Others unaccounted for.
If I prayed, I would be doing it now.
shortstop
@The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik:
I’ve been told more than once — by people with straight faces — that declining to own a handgun is arrogantly and recklessly putting my family at risk. Why don’t I love my family and want to protect them? I dunno. I just don’t, I guess.
PurpleGirl
@danielx: How well I remember duck and cover under my desk at school; a forearm across your forehead and the other arm/hand holding your back neck. I always thought it would be better to go up in that mille-second with the Empire State Building being ground zero.
I figured that after the blast, if your survived, food would scarce and houses might not exist. Not being cynical or a pessimist, just practical. (I watched a lot of adult talk show TV.)
Betty Cracker
@skerry: I wonder if the dude who was disparaging school administrators for lockdowns and implying that we were screechy, hysterical broads for worrying so much about school shootings in the thread yesterday will have the nads to show up in this thread. Probably too busy stroking his muzzle. Fucking asshole. “Reasonable gun owners” like that are the MRAs of the gun control debate.
shortstop
@Betty Cracker: We’ve seen that dude before. He ONLY shows up in threads in which gun control of any sort is mentioned. He earnestly waves his TruLibrul bona fides and assures us he’s for “sane” gun laws — but nothing ever proposed seems to be sane enough for him. Creepy concern trolling fuck.
skerry
@Betty Cracker: Local news is reporting 2 fatalities. They are moving the students to a nearby grocery store. They must have the shooters under control.
It will be interesting to see if “Steve ….” (don’t remember his nym) has any comment.
I hold all gun owners responsible for this. Including those in my own family.
Ronald
We can call them “Second Amendment Blankets”
Belafon
@Belafon: I did a lousy job on that last paragraph:
What I wanted to imply was that whites have gotten so afraid of their privilege taken away that they think guns is their last line of defense: If we can’t keep minorities out of our places, then we’ll scare them away.
Got in too much of a hurry to hit send. Sorry.
Steve from Antioch
Those Bodyguard Blankets are just dumb as a sack of hammers, but they will probably appeal twosome school administrators who are interested in security theatre.
Roger Moore
@shortstop:
You might counter with the statistic that people in households with guns are many times more likely to be victims of gun violence than people in gun-free households. People in general are far more likely to suffer violence at the hands of people they know than people they don’t know, because people they know have more motive and opportunity. Adding a gun into the mix just gives violent people a method of committing worse violence.
beltane
Wow, I go and do some errands only to come back to another school shooting, er Freedumb Festival. Millions of “responsible” gun owners must be quietly fapping away in support.
shortstop
@Roger Moore: Of course I have said all that. The slack-jawed response? Why don’t I love my family and want to protect them?
Bob In Portland
Shooting reported at a Troutdale, OR school this a.m.
mike with a mic
@Belafon:
I more blame the war on drugs. When was in high school back in the 90s we had the crack epidemic. Drug related violence and slayings were almost constant when it came to inner city DC schools and areas where kids congregated after work. A lot of this violence spilled out and resulting in muggings, robberies, assaults, and a slew of other idiocy that started to effect the upper class people who worked in the city, and their children started to get robbed when going into the city to buy drugs. Not only was DC the nations capital, we were the murder capital as well.
Not that long after kids in the suburbs who bought drugs in the city where carrying guns as well. Largely to keep up images. But we all were wearing hoodies when vandalizing things and robbing stores to avoid security cameras. Preppy kids you’d never guess had handguns in their cars as a mark that they could actually score the right things. After a few minor violent incidents in 1% areas combined with the fear of people who’d been robbed going to work downtown, everybody armed themselves over night.
The war on drugs is the cause of many problems. It needs to end.
The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik
@Mnemosyne:
Thankfully, that shit is stuff I see online more than hear from people I actually know.
The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik
@Roger Moore:
This presumes that statistics will actually convince them, instead of gut feeling.
D58826
@Bob In Portland: The bottom line on the CNN story ‘This is a developing story’ check back later for details’./ Surely by now the news organizations must have a template for these kind of things. Just change the name of the school/church/etc and the number killed and wounded and your good to go, The story never changes just the names of the victims.
Roger Moore
@shortstop:
So the problem is that they don’t want to understand. Not much you can do about that.
Mnemosyne
@Steve from Antioch:
Maybe you should talk to the school administrators in Troutdale, Oregon, about how their fears of a school shooting are overblown. You’ll have to wait until the police clear the shooting scene, though. I’m sure they’d love to hear your thoughts about how rare school shootings are and how foolish it is to even try and prevent them.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@Mnemosyne: A .22 LR bullet, about the smallest and most low-power bullet you can find, will go through a foot of solid wood, no problem.
A gym mat wouldn’t even slow it down.
The best bulletproof item out there? Sandbags.
For a horrifying/edifying education of what bullets will and won’t go through, Google up “the box of truth”. Not extremely scientific, and oddly, in spite of that, probably some of the most useful educational material on the power of firearms out there.
chopper
@skerry:
“why is the school on lockdown? that’s just disruptive and stupid! why not just have a cop manning the front door? why don’t people value my opinions?”
Mnemosyne
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
Insert a sheet of Kevlar, and problem solved! ;-p
ETA: The point is more that if school administrators want some kind of “disaster blanket” that the kids could cover themselves with in a tornado, a gymnastics mat would probably do the job better than those stupid things.
skerry
@chopper: You forgot “kids are resilient”
Starfish
So a shooting in an Oregon school today
Anna in PDX
@wenchacha: Apparently they got the shooter and the kids are all evacuated now. Geez. One of my co-workers was there outside while her son was inside, he is safe and we are all relieved but why do these things have to happen? We need a modern day Wyatt Earp to confiscate people’s guns before they come into town, I swear.
Amir Khalid
@Helmut Monotreme:
Remember Crickett Firearms, the makers of “My First Rifle” for children? They’d be more than happy to develop a Back-to-School Special pistol.
CONGRATULATIONS!
Minidick Steve from Antioch sure had some bad timing this morning.
Steve from Antioch
@CONGRATULATIONS!: How so?
shortstop
@Roger Moore: No, except amiably agree that the only explanation is the lack of love and protective feeling I have for my family.
There is a certain comfort in just letting go in some of these situations. Some crazy is just too entrenched to reach, particular the kind that comes with searching for wacky emotional appeals to justify positions already desperately clung to. Since I struggle with control freakery, it’s not a bad thing to learn.
The Thin Black Duke
@shortstop: Yes. One of the most important lessons I learned is to never argue with people who have already made up their minds. That’s a rabbit hole with no bottom.
shortstop
@The Thin Black Duke: I still sometimes believe they’ll be convinced if I JUST EXPLAIN IT BETTER. But not as often as I used to. ;)
Amir Khalid
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
This Steve from Antioch chap, does he by any chance work in the place where they make the Holy Hand Grenade?
wenchacha
@Anna in PDX: Anna, I’m happy for your friend. Waiting outside for a child locked inside makes me scream inside my head.
At least there are grassroots movements to address the gun violence. There is no way ever to round up all the guns: too many guns, too much money involved, etc., etc.
We need a clear majority of Americans to demand a change, out loud, every day, until we, as a nation, can agree that guns do not solve problems.
wenchacha
@shortstop: “Explaining better” sounds so reasonable to me. But I have been disappointed by results as well.
PurpleGirl
@shortstop: Another scenario is you’re holding the gun on an intruder and said intruder manages to take it away from you. Intruder then uses your gun on you.
ETA: This is when you better be able to shoot to kill because you get one chance before the intruder does you in.
Steve from Antioch
@Amir Khalid: You’re thinking of my brother Maynard.
D58826
@wenchacha: explaining louder maybe?
Roger Moore
@Mnemosyne:
Climb down off your high horse. He isn’t saying that fear of a school shooting is unjustified; he’s saying that these are not a solution to the problem. “Security Theater” is a term used to describe measures intended to make it look as if people are doing something even when their actions aren’t productive. I think that covers those blankets pretty damn accurately.
Mnemosyne
@Roger Moore:
You need to go back and read the thread from yesterday, where he was telling Betty that her daughter’s school being on lockdown because of a neighborhood shooter was “security theater.” There is a history here of Steve from Antioch being an obstructionist asshole.
ETA: Here’s the thread from yesterday. Sorry, but Steve doesn’t get to show his ass in one thread and then show up the very next day still pretending to be “reasonable.”
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Roger Moore:
Maybe not today, but our latest responsible gun owner was saying that yesterday. School lockdowns are security theater, too. Also something about people here screeching before I pied him.
Just because a troll can write actual English sentences doesn’t make him less of a troll.
Steve from Antioch
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism:
Yesterday I questioned whether it made sense to lock down a school because there was a shooting _a mile away_ just because the shooter was reported to be moving in the “direction” of the school. I stand by that. It seems to be an overreaction to me when weighed against the possible psychological damage it might do children. But the parent whose child was involved seemed to think the school district did the right thing so that’s that.
Obviously, if there is a shooting at a school lockdown measures are appropriate.
What I object to is the sort of reflexive idiocy employed to justify and further security theatre. Yesterday in the other thread some moron said, “But, but, don’t you know that bullets can travel miles???” Think about that a second. That would mean that anytime there is a shooting anywhere in the middle of San Francisco, all of he schools in the city should be locked down because a rifle bullet fired in the middle of the city could reach just about anywhere. Same with New York. A shooting in Midtown, well time to lock down the schools from Battery Park to Harlem and we might as all include Weehawken just to be safe.
I really don’t understand what motivates these clowns to stake out extreme positions and then defend them no matter what.
Mnemosyne
@Steve from Antioch:
Wow. The distance from Battery Park to Harlem is 8 (eight) miles. The shooter near Betty’s child’s school was 1 (one) mile away.
It’s not just basic physics that’s beyond you, it’s basic math. Tell me, if a bullet can fly between half a mile and 3 miles, and the school is 1 mile away, is it mathematically possible for that bullet to hit the school? Or does the magic shield of your total ignorance magically protect the school?
Mnemosyne
Swiped from the other thread: starting next year, gun fatalities will exceed automobile fatalities. The difference, of course, is that we were actually allowed to do something to reduce automobile fatalities and weren’t blocked by screeching man-children who didn’t want their toys taken away.
Gin & Tonic
@Steve from Antioch: A bullet is far more likely to be able to travel a mile in Florida than in midtown NYC. Even if it could, that would get it from 42nd St. to 62nd St. Or 22nd St. Far away, still from Battery Park or Harlem.
Steve from Antioch
@Mnemosyne:
I don’t know where you get the ideal that a bullet can only fly 3 miles. Common rifle calibers can go 3 or 4 miles and some can reach 5 miles.
So if you have a person shooting a gun in Midtown, their bullets could easily reach Battery Park or Harlem. See you have to envision a big circle with the shooter standing in the middle of the circle and the the radius of the circle is the distance that the round can travel.
You have a fantastic blend of ignorance and condescension that I bet makes you a sought after dinner companion.
Sherparick
@Seanly: A kind of stupid solution to a godawful mess. Some our liberal friends (Ed Kilgore, Kevin Drum, and others) somehow are still under the impression that the men and women grifters who make up Conservative Media and the Conservative Political Movement might react to Los Vegas shooting (followed by the Oregon shooting and preceded by the Georgia shooting) by toning down their “rhetoric” about liberals and the “Gubmint.” As my dear old Dad would say, there is always some so ‘n so who never gets the word. After a 10 day span of creating a lynch mob for SGT Bergdahl and his family, Digby is quite right that these folks at Faux, the Weekly Wanker, Rush (drug addiction is okay when you are rich and nothing says family values then 4 marriages and sex with underage prostitutes in 3rd world countries) are just evil, soulless, sociopaths for whom the strangers who get whacked because of their politics and rhetoric are just props for the “cause.” digbysblog.blogspot.com/2014/06/freedom.html
Steve from Antioch
@Gin & Tonic: @Gin & Tonic: I dont think that is correct.
You could stand in Bryant Park with a standard 30-06 deer rifle and turn one way and have a round hit Battery Park and turn the other way and have a round hit Marcus Garvey Park. If you shot, say, a 338 Lapua you reach even further.
This just illustrates the inanity of the argument is that whenever there is a shooter within range of a school that you have to lock down the school.
Mnemosyne
@Steve from Antioch:
You mean like this woman in Chicago who was killed when a stray bullet came through the wall of her office? Or this little girl, who was killed when a bullet came through her bedroom wall when someone was firing at a car thief?
But, hey, we can’t actually do anything to stop people from shooting at random, so some people will just have to be sacrificed so you can keep your precious toys.
ETA: Somehow the wrong poster was in the Reply section. Weird.
chopper
@Steve from Antioch:
it would be much more logically consistent to just take everyone’s guns away. yours first.
Kurt Larson
@catclub: Actually, the primary destructive force from a nuclear device is heat.
Gin & Tonic
@Steve from Antioch: You could stand in Bryant Park with a standard 30-06 deer rifle and turn one way and have a round hit Battery Park
You have rounds that can travel through buildings and around corners? I’m impressed.
Let me guess. You’ve never been in New York.
Paul in KY
@Gin & Tonic: I think he means firing it into the air like a howitzer or something like that.
Anna in PDX
@Steve from Antioch: The scenario of a shooter outside and the kids locked in happened during my son’s tenure in high school here in Portland. He went to an urban high school with a sort of open campus (in that the gym and track were not contiguous to the school and lots of students left for lunch, etc) and I think if there is a shooter nearby and they don’t want the kids to get into his/her path why not do a lockdown for that short amount of time? It is just a method to minimize the possible contact between school kids and shooter. I am not pro-“security theater” – I think a lot of the things they do in airports are stupid, counterproductive and have nothing to do with safety, for example – but in this scenario I can see value in keeping kids from leaving their campus.
Steve from Antioch
@Paul in KY: Yes. The issue arose because some wing nut was arguing yesterday that whenever there is a shooter within shooting range (measured in miles) of a school, then it is prudent to lockdown the school.
@Anna in PDX: I’m not an absolutist. Are there times that schools should be locked down? Yes, certainly. This just arose in the context of a post yesterday where a school was locked down because there was a shooting a mile away and the shooter was heading in the general direction of the school. That discussion, fueled by some wingnut logic, expanded to whether or not you should lock down schools that are within theoretical ballistic range of a known shooter.
Shortstop
@Steve from Antioch:
Your imitation of an earnest liberal who’d just like to have a frank discussion about gun laws would be much more convincing if you didn’t keep blowing your cover linguistically.
Betty Cracker
@Shortstop: Heh. I had the same thought. Everyone knows we’re moonbats!