Mass shooting prevention

Yup. The difference between a mass shooting and a single or attempted shooting, is the preparation of the intended victims.

I would like to see the issue of school shootings solved on a local level. Local school systems are where the responsibility lies in providing on-site deterrents. We can protect the people who work in our courthouses via armed guards and x ray machines checking every person who enters. We can protect those who fly commercial airlines. We can protect workplaces and the folks who work there (I had to go through explosive and metal detectors at work for 30 years). Yet we cannot or will not protect our greatest resource, our children.

By trying to solve the issue on a federal level we limit the ideas, methods, and means to that which congress and the president will agree on. Instead, let's have more people involved finding and implementing solutions that fit their particular situation. Continuing in the mindset that we need a national solution is leaving our children at risk. Local leaders need to step up and say "not at my school," and take the actions necessary to protect the children in their school(s).

18 school shooting so far this year, and we are only half way through February.

yes and also there are a lot of unanswered questions yet

how did the shooter gain access to a school wearing a gas mask and weapons , when he had been expelled

why didn't the FBI take reports seriously

why didn't the school secure it's building

there is some definite negligence on the schools part for not having a secure building or someone let the shooter in in which case there can be 2 trials for 17 counts of murder.

survalence video should clear up many of these questions , and if no such video exists , that in it's self is a liability.

we have gotten to a time when you secure your building

you cover all the doors with cameras



any good plan starts with creating the barriers to entry to know when an entry is happening , the intelligence to know who and where , then the response

we had the law in the state legislature this year that would have allowed carry on school grounds that would have given people the potential to shoot back .

and everyone should know that it is withing the power of the state legislature to grant that power to CCL holders who have passed a background check

we do not need to wait for some federal law to change , federal gun free school zone law does not prohibit the state from granting exceptions to those licensed to carry.

so talk with your state rep and senator , in Wis it was SB169.

Some believe the answer is to ban "assault rifles."

How do you go about doing that?

Mike

Got a link for all 18 of those?

Mike

http://www.politifact.com/wisconsin/stat...so-far-2018-an/

One is one too many

Thank you. Much as I suspected.

A little more info behind those stats...

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.usatoday.com/amp/343100002

Mike

Don't disagree.

Mike

I am right there with you!

It takes money, tax dollars. Our local district has one resource officer for 5 buildings. 20% of time at each building on average. Would be great to have a couple at each building, adding funding for 9 new officers in our district alone. Going to take budget prioritization and changes to make this reality.

Things have to change and it can't be a single prong approach...I think this young man who survived yesterdays shooting summed it up well:

"Why? Because at the end of the day, the students at my school felt one shared experience -- our politicians abandoned us by failing to keep guns out of schools.
But this time, my classmates and I are going to hold them to account. This time we are going to pressure them to take action."

https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/15/opinions/florida-shooting-no-more-opinion-kasky/index.html

Typical unrealistic goal. How many freedoms you going to restrict and how much money you going to spend to never achieve this?

We have that bill going through congress right now. I believe it will pass.

I agree with his sentiment... Kids shouldn't be shot at school.

But I also agree that it is a sentiment. And not a realistic one. Nor is there a practical way to make it a reality.

Mike

That is always the big question.

Good link. Typical fake news to further an agenda.

If ever there was a shooter that could have been stopped days before the shooting it was this one, LE epically failed on a local and national level.

Go door to door, property to property with dogs and confiscate all firearms, ammo and ammo making supplies.

Microchip each student, microchip will open gates that surround the school by 100 yards.

How about some simple things to start

Free back ground checks to any one wanting to buy sell or loan a firearm, with this goes the accountability that if your weapon is used in a crime you are held responsible unless you've done a good faith effort to prevent such. ( notice I didn't say mandatory )
Enforce current laws on straw purchases, felons with guns, children with access to weapons etc.
Minimum sentencing for weapons violations or failing to report proper info to the back ground data bank
Set orders of removal of firearms for certain crimes with time limits for court appearances and penalties for prosecutors/law enforcement actual jail time and $$$ if firearms are lost/ damaged or time limits not meet ( due process set in stone with penalties for government failure )
Nation wide CCW

I know these will cause some up roar, however if done correctly I think some could actually be done.

homeschool everyone.

problem solved.

I would think that keeping guns out of the hands of mentally ill people would be a start.

fake news.

It's more like 3 school shootings....still...in a month and a half.

Teachers are the first defense. Let those who are license and trained and willing be armed.

Why restrict children's access to weapons? My daughter has full access so if someone breaks in when she is home alone she has the ability to take out the perp. Back in the day dang near every high school boy had a gun in their truck on campus. If some wacko would have pulled crap like this he would have most likely been taken out in short order. Got to eliminate these free fire zones and like Charlie said allow people to shoot back.

Will never stop until they make schools gun friendly areas and not gun free areas. If gun free is such a great idea make court rooms gun free, not the police or anyone carries.

But the mass shootings will never end until there is armed security in schools, employ veterans? Off duty police? Arm the teachers. However you do it then this ignorance and violence will end.

Second, make it illegal to prescribe mood altering psychotropic meds to kids.

Exposed.

https://pjmedia.com/video/sharyl-attkisson-explains-tedx-talk-origins-2016-fake-news-narrative/

Same thing for accessible weapons as with background checks not mandatory but your beld libal if something happens with your firearm. You still get to make the choice for yourself and house hold however should something happen set pecialties for not controlling access to your firearms. I mean criminally and financially

If you guys think about it you'll figure out why its happening, and as always its due to liberal thinking. not saying why till people smarter than me make the changes needed to stop it!
RR

people aren't naturally stone cold killers without practice . lots and lots of practice ,tactical practice

I don't see the connection to liberals.
If that was the case places like Sweden wouldn't have any schoolkids left.

Blaming liberals for everything is a form of mental illness.

Being a liberal is a form of mental illness.

What i don’t understand is i hear so much about using retired police, retired military, and arm the teachers, etc. While i don’t have a problem with a teacher carrying a gun i don’t feel it is their responsibility, it’s also not the responsibility for folks that are retired. After all, they are retired. They served their time and it’s their opportunity to enjoy their life and not work. People pay taxes, use the money and protect our children, ( although it’s looking like LE really dropped the ball on this last shooting on our dime). The govt requires your children to go to school but they don’t feel obligated enough to protect them while their there, explain that.

Hard to blame the schools.

WHAT CAUSES THESE SCHOOL SHOOTINGS???????
When people go back to parenting their children instead of keeping them drugged to control bad behavior, maybe then the number of these shootings will drop. When I was a child we didn't get drugs when we did something wrong we were punished. And I don't want to hear "they won't let me correct my kids". You don't have to beat a child to teach them right from wrong.

But Prozac, Zoloft and Luvox are not the answer. Just a few examples.

Eric Harris age 17 (first on Zoloft then Luvox) and Dylan Klebold aged 18 (Columbine school shooting in Littleton, Colorado), killed 12 students and 1 teacher, and wounded 23 others, before killing themselves. Klebold’s medical records have never been made available to the public.

Jeff Weise, age 16, had been prescribed 60 mg/day of Prozac (three times the average starting dose for adults!) when he shot his grandfather, his grandfather’s girlfriend and many fellow students at Red Lake, Minnesota. He then shot himself. 10 dead, 12 wounded.

Cory Baadsgaard, age 16, Wahluke (Washington state) High School, was on Paxil (which caused him to have hallucinations) when he took a rifle to his high school and held 23 classmates hostage. He has no memory of the event.

Chris Fetters, age 13, killed his favorite aunt while taking Prozac.

Christopher Pittman, age 12, murdered both his grandparents while taking Zoloft.

Mathew Miller, age 13, hung himself in his bedroom closet after taking Zoloft for 6 days.

Kip Kinkel, age 15, (on Prozac and Ritalin) shot his parents while they slept then went to school and opened fire killing 2 classmates and injuring 22 shortly after beginning Prozac treatment.

Luke Woodham, age 16 (Prozac) killed his mother and then killed two students, wounding six others.

Andrew Golden, age 11, (Ritalin) and Mitchell Johnson, aged 14, (Ritalin) shot 15 people, killing four students, one teacher, and wounding 10 others.

TJ Solomon, age 15, (Ritalin) high school student in Conyers, Georgia opened fire on and wounded six of his class mates.

All schools should have a big concrete fence built around with one way in .Station armed guards there and every body's checked we do it at airports , army bases ,court houses ,federal building and so on . Is there not a fence around White House with guards .

Ok so you propose that the meds are the cause. Can you prove that or just create a correlation? Who is to say that the mental instability that lead these young people to the doctors that prescribed the mess didn’t cause the behavior. Basing beliefs on loose correlations is dangerous. Example. The more churches a community has the more incidents of violence in that community. This is a fact. However when you look closer larger cities have more church’s thus more people and more violent acts. It’s has nothing to do with the church’s. Kids have been on Ritalin since I was in school in the 70’s and things weren’t getting shot up.

Rather than rely on the federal government to solve the problem, what about leaving it to the local level of government?

If a local school district wants to pay for armed guards in the schools, and tax the property owners accordingly, why aren't they already free to do so?

Jim

I don’t think the pharmaceuticals can be ruled out as evidence if in fact all these madmen are on certain medications.

X2 retireddude...........prescribed meds are given out like candy and it's perfectly legal . Many prescribers make an exceptional living

Rather than rely on the federal government to solve the problem, what about leaving it to the local level of government?

If a local school district wants to pay for armed guards in the schools, and tax the property owners accordingly, why aren't they already free to do so?

Jim

I agree this would be better handled through state and local govt, but i also feel like the federal govt has forced its way into the public school systems so much that they shouldn’t be able to get out of this. They wanna be the boss until it cost money!

BAN SCHOOLS

problem solved

There are still several "one room" school houses in this area... No idea how old those buildings are. But I would bet they were funded by the members of each community.

We were educating children long before the feds and Dept. of Education came along. Not sure when and why we handed control of the whole mess to bureaucrats hundreds or thousands of miles away.

Mike

One room school and voluntary education has never attracted any mass killings that I'm aware of.

Compulsory attendance and consolidated schools are a large part of the socialist design of a new world. Force the genius to learn at the same rate and level of an imbecile and give both equal honors.

The school I have the most memories of was actually three rooms, 1-4, 5--8 and a lunch room. Had about forty five students at the time. But Mama taught in a couple of one room schools.

Your kid is much more likely to die in a car crash. Quit obsessing. Arm yourself. You folks are letting yourselves be led around like puppies getting lead broke. INSANE PEOPLE DO INSANE THINGS. LAWS WON"T STOP THEM. THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS PREVENTING OF MASS SHOOTINGS.

Sounds great, but who gets to define this?

Like any complex issue there is not just a single cause but rather a number of contributing causes. That also means there is not a single solution. This is well recognized by most folks both on the political right and the left. However, many on the left are anti-2nd amendment and are using the issue to again try to disarm the populace. They know it will not stop the shooting but they don't want any other solution implemented because then they will loose their most effective talking point. This approach ensures our children remain at risk.

The answer to this is what James, Keystone, and I have advocated in this thread - implement deterrents on the local level. Parents need to challenge their school boards, superintendents, principles and administrators to take action to make sure it can't happen IN THEIR SCHOOL. Stop expecting a national solution and implement what will work for your community school. Protect your children.

Great insight-thanks for sharing!

Yet the data show they happen at much higher rates in this country

Lebowski you need to volunteer to confiscate privately owned firearms.

P.S. up date your statistics chart to include assault with any weapon.

I'm in Dannys camp on this one! If you want to outlaw guns, you better get you a horse, caus cars are next.....or at least should be with that mentality!

read this
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2018/02/16/flo...l-shooting.html
her theory gets my vote!
RR

The liberals like to use the chart below. Many of those other countries have banded guns so they use bats, knifes, cars ect...
The violent crime rate is lower here. Check it out.
https://www.criminaljusticedegreehub.com/violent-crime-us-abroad/

got a chart on the relative Freedom or Constitutional protections of those countries, versus the US?

for example, Singapore endorses public "caning" for minor offenses.

How much Freedom does your average Chinese person have?

X2

Spot on

Concentration of many targets in a small confinement sure makes it easy for the nuts. If you insist on incarcerating your children, you really should consider de-consolidating and dispersal.
It looks very much like the kids are meant to be a target of mass killings, why else the overcrowding of "consolidation"?

Keystone,
Where do people get the silly idea that the federal government can pay for anything? The federal government does not have money, they use yours and mine to pay for things, so federal funding just comes from a different one of our pockets than state and local.

other than the guy who shot up the Amish school.

Crazy people have been around forever!!!!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath_School_disaster

I get the silly idea the govt can pay for things because i happen to make my share of donations to them. I would much rather my tax dollars be used to protect innocent children at schools from being gunned down for no reason at all than pay for hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants welfare and healthcare. The money is there, our govt is just to stupid to spend it wisely!! I just saw an article about a woman with 15 kids by 5 or 6 different fathers. That’s where our tax dollars are waisted, could you imagine how much the total bill would be to have 10 kids at a hospital, the food, the healthcare, the housing, the utilities, etc. That woman should have been fixed when she had her first kid on welfare.

keystone I think walleye's point was why send your tax dollars all the way to DC to be doled out?

Wouldn't you rather spend your money locally to benefit your local school in a manner that seems fit to you?

Mike

I would rather spend my money locally but the money is already being sent to DC. That’s my point, the money is already there, they are just terrible at distributing it. These school shootings are a sore subject for me, the solution is so simple yet the system makes it so complicated. GUN FREE ZONES ARE SET UP FOR KILLERS, it seems that even local and state govt can’t figure that out.

Tragedy like these always bring out the foot stompers who think making more rules or having more government involved will fix things, it has not yet and will not later on.

This country does not live a century ago but likes to think it can. People need to get up to speed with whats going on around them and pay more attention to those around them and their kids.

This Cruz kid had 30 or so flags raised and all were ignored for one reason or another, now the law is going back over everyone of them to, they feel escape blame, by making others the cause of it. Hows that make y'all feel, I don't like reading about pass the buck playing !

Mental problems with others flagging them need more help, than schools need more security !

Perhaps we need that money to stop going to DC... And local schools should tell the feds to soak their heads and take a serious look at rescinding the "gun free zone" mandate.

Mike

Media is really going all out on this along with the anti-gun sell outs. Lots of good true memes coming out too just ashame the media can get away with the fake news they put out there and nothing happens to them!

Our small community school which has a attendance of about 200 in the high school and 400 in the elementary school has all doors locked down during the day and you have to ring a buzzer and identify yourself and reason for being there. And we also have a resource officer at each school

Students have to get on the bus at the end of the day, thats when the shooter entered and pulled fire alarm. Authorities were warned about this disturbed sob, and did nothing....but what can you really do? This kid was an adult, they could of locked him up, but what could they do to a minor other than expel them, they cant arrest him.

I agree with a lot of what Grit Guy said. To me, saying the govt. Should install metal detectors at schools is ludicrous. This is a district matter. The school districts should pay for it but, metal detectors, resource officers, lifting bans in school zones, arming teachers. These are not going to prevent the shootings. These are deterent measures not prevention measures. This country has become so freaking politically correct it's sickening. How many people said this kid was not right, he was a little off. The signs were all there but no one stepped up to call him out and the FBI didn't follow up.

The prevention starts at home. It's not the freakin video games making these kids do these things for crying out loud. It's parents not knowing their kids and other folks afraid of confronting an individual that might need mental help for fear of being sued or getting backlash from parents or guardians for saying their child may have an issue. For the folks that think doing away with guns will be the answer, no. Knives, broken glass, hammer, poison, bombs ......etc. Everyone had those certain individuals in school that stayed by themselves, didn't have many if any friends, were loners. How many people actually made the effort to go up and talk to those individuals? May have made a huge difference in their lives if we would have.

Federal Buildings, Court Houses, AirPorts and all kinds of ''Gun free Zones'' have armed guards there on site , to enforce this.......and are not actually 'Gun Free' at all...

We just might have to have such protection now days, after all, we trust the schools to teach our children, we should think about letting them protect them, on site. Not a scanned or frisked kind of security, but an armed presence.
Most crime deterd by guns actually never have a shot fired, its presence is the determining factor.

If they are (This word is unacceptable on Trapperman) bent on killing , NOTHING , but another armed citizen will stop such.

Its a harsh reality, but 'Gun Free' actualy means 'Kill Zone' now days.

More laws help nothing.

Murder has been illegal for a long time now.

A lot of local LE agencies in Maine came out in opposition of our "Constitutional Carry" fearing a return to wild west shootouts. The law has been in place for two or three years now and their fears have not materialized.

There's a movement underway in our state legislature to allow folks who CC to carry their firearms onto school grounds when dropping off or picking up their children. To meet the protests of the anti-gun crowd, the firearm would have to be unloaded and in a locked case. Even at that there remains opposition.

Kansas law allows licensed ccl holders to have their firearm in a gun free school zone on them and loaded.

And that's as it should be.

We also have constitutional concealed carry but unlicensed carriers are not exempt from the gun free school zone laws.

I am really not sure about the colleges.....but I think you can carry in the state college buildings. I really need to find out about that.....Guess I will call a retired captain from the KUPD on Monday and ask.

Anyway....gun free zones = feel free to kill folks zones.



I ignore any gun buster signs on businesses anymore.......Kansas law is clear that its only a misdemeanor trespass charge if you do not leave if asked to. But then there is the Post office.....plus I hike/hunt on ACOE ground a lot..the Corps is pretty anti gun.

I'm a threat to no one who isn't a threat to me.

Do you guys remember school... School is the best time of your life or the worst....
The amount of kids that have an awful home life is extreme!
This with the violent video games and ridicule from peers is a recipe for disaster.
It all starts at home with parenting...... And this is my figure but 40% of parents are effective parents.

The other 60% dont care...... Kids at school mean they are not at home, if a kid has home work the parent should help them do it.
Parents dont care........to many crack head, lazy, welfare mongrels to give a poop.

[/quote]

Perhaps we need that money to stop going to DC... And local schools should tell the feds to soak their heads and take a serious look at rescinding the "gun free zone" mandate.

Mike [/quote]

I agree 100% if you remember in the primaries Trump was campaigning to give back the schools to the states. I haven’t heard a word about that since the primaries.

Trump was campaigning for private and charter schools, he doesn't care about public schools... And i willing to bet most of us on here cant pay 10,000 to 15,000 a year to send our kid to private school. Trump hired Betsy da (female dog) (This word is unacceptable on Trapperman) to take all the money she could from the public school system to charter schools.

I voted for trump, to help the middle class, but. His view on education stinks....take money from public schools to give it to charter stinks for the middle class that cant afford it....caterers to the rich....how many rural communities dont even have a darn private school in 60 miles, (This word is unacceptable on Trapperman)....

I've thought about that quite a bit myself. A lot of kids are ostracized and the Florida shooter was obviously one of them.

Public education was hijacked by the left decades ago and they've set about to undermine just about everything most of us deem wholesome about America. That's where the pushback against public education comes from.

A more prefect union...no one claimed we'd achieved perfection..

Let the government start giving school vouchers to pay for school choice,private schools will spring up like daisies.

there is NO way to prevent an attack , take the guns away and they will get more creative.

More creative does not mean less effective.

We can not prevent an attack.

What we can do is , make it harder to gain entry , slow down progress , alert and move students or place barriers

two things tend to end attacks ,

1 they run out of victims because there are no more or because they can't access any more they just can't access any more.

2 An armed response arrives

this is really no different than a fire , it burns it's self out or it gets extinguished

we build fire walls and install fire resistant doors to slow down the spread of fire , we build with materials that are fire retardant the may not be bullet proof but

Are you talking about federal vouchers? And who's supposed to pay for that?

Nothing stops a local school district from handing out vouchers, if that's what the voters want.

Jim

Jim, you were a lawyer. I suspect you dealt with the courts and government agencies for years... So you are probably well aware of the insanity and inefficiency of government bureaucracy.

In your opinion would there be any merit in taking a look at privatizing public education?

I only dealt with my local schools as a parent... And the red tape and bureaucracy was enough to make a person scream. Things moved at the speed of smell.

It's readily apparent that the status quo is failing our kids miserably on just about every level.

Just thinking out loud mostly.

Mike

This to me addresses a lot of why we have the problems today.

Cal McNabb
February 15 at 8:05pm ·
This is my 19-yr-old with his AKM semi-auto that he saved his own money up to purchase working a full-time job.
One of the things we enjoy doing as father and son is going to the range together.
This is a powerful, high-capacity weapon. It is not a toy. He can take it apart, clean it, put it back together, and safely and effectively use it.
Many people will be horrified that he bought it on his own and has sole, unsupervised possession of it. I am not. I sleep like a baby across the hall from him every night.
How can I do that? Why am I so at ease with my teenager owning this weapon?
Simple- I am his father, and I RAISED him. I raised him to respect and value life. I raised him to treat others with respect and dignity. I raised him to fear and honor the Lord.
I didn’t get his mom pregnant and then abandon him and her.
I didn’t fail in teaching him traditional values. I gave him truth on a daily basis to combat the lies the liberal society is feeding his generation.
I didn’t fail to discipline him when he needed it.
I was never either of my kids’ friend while they were young. I was their father.
We don’t do moral relativism in our household. We believe that there is right and wrong.
We don’t do entitlement in our household.
We don’t do victimhood in our household.
We bow our heads during prayer.
We stand with respect during the National Anthem.
We believe you should work for what you have and don’t begrudge others who have been more successful.
There’s much more, but I think you get the picture.
I’M NOT SAYING I’M A PERFECT PARENT. But, I have been an INTENTIONAL parent.

The things above are what enable me to sleep like a baby across the hall from him with his rifle(s) in his room. I know he’d effectively defend his family against a threat in the middle of the night, and never harm an innocent person.

The adults have failed the past couple of generations of kids.
The culture from the 1960s-forward has devalued marriage and the traditional family structure allowing kids, particularly boys, to be raised without active, present fathers, susceptible to the lies of this liberal, entitled, narcissistic, perverted, morally-relative, anything-goes society.
That’s why we have all the school shootings. Society is raising confused, mentally- and emotionally-stunted kids.
Blaming it on guns is further denying the responsibility of the adults who failed to raise their kids right. It’s much less work and effort to point the finger at Big Daddy Government and say, “Fix it!” than to do the hard work of self-responsibility and fixing families.
Kids at my school had rifles and shotguns in the their vehicles parked in the school parking lot every day and I never felt afraid of that. I never heard a student threaten to shoot another. Kids settled their disputes with words, and sometimes their fists, but never with guns.

I do remember school. I despised it. From everything I've read on these posts I should have been a school shooter, yet the thought never occurred to me. My parents divorced when I was 5, and my mom then ran off to Florida, leaving me with my dad and his fling, who was physically and mentally abusive to me. A year or so later my mom came back and I lived with her and her mentally and physically abusive boyfriend until I was 13 or so. During that time, I first had a BB gun at 6, a .22 at 8 and a 20 gauge at 12 and never once thought about shooting up my school, even though I had pretty much NO USE for anyone in it. I guess because I understood what guns were, and what they did, and that unlike Mario, there was no "restart" button.

But I hated school so much that when I was 16, I quit going. Thought my mom and grandparents would kill me, but I proved them wrong, because when my HS class graduated, I was entering my 3rd semester of college.

As far as being able to afford private school... I don't have kids, so can't give an authoritative answer, but I worked at a fast food place a couple years ago, where the general manager was making less than 40k a year, supporting a worthless, video game addicted husband, and putting her son through private school, so while I would agree it's not possible for the lower class, I know it IS possible for the bottom middle class.

I think private schools are great. I don't much like the teacher unions, but can see why they're needed in the public sector. I've dealt with the red tape and bureaucracy of a school board too.

Why can't a local school district give vouchers to residents wanting to send kids to a private school? It raises the tax burden elsewhere, but it seems to me a school board or municipality could do it if they want.

Jim

I just wonder if privatized education could deliver the same education at a cost lower than what the state currently forks over... Or at least give more bang for the same buck.

Mike

I have no doubt that it would.

There would have to be some way to impose quality control.

My daughter went to a private Christian high school because she was bullied in public school. I almost walked out of a meeting with the principal, who was to decide whether to admit her, when I learned the taught evolution denial. Our daughter prevailed, telling me she'd already learned about evolution is public school.

Jim

Trapper new, everything I can find to read about Charter schools says they are tuition free. Perhaps you should reexamine your position that Trump's view on education "caters to the rich." The difference between a charter school and a public school is how public funds are spent, not who they are spent on. The charter school is privately managed independent of the federal government. I see less government as a good thing.

USA public education is a joke, in general. We should be ashamed of our ranking when compared to other countries.

The answer is no. Because you would still have all the bureaucracy in place for

Get past the idea that compulsory attendance is equal to education and allow the customers to be the quality control as in a supply and demand situation. We cannot legislate learning any more than we can legislate morality.

I think we are stuck on the notion that there would only be one institution per community...

If you want quality service you will need competition.

We need a system that promotes kids being able to rise as far as their ambition and talent will allow.

So far we are settling for "good enough" from the government.

I won't even pretend to have all the answers. But at this point looking at alternatives and kicking around unconventional ideas can't hurt.

Mike

At the college level private institutions have higher tuition than public owned schools and some people still attend them.
Difference is at the college level people/kids are not forcefully incarcerated, they choose to go and chose what to study, or parents chose for them.

Take government out of the schools completely and I believe there will be more bang for the buck via competition. Competition between both institutions and potential students. It has to start with the acceptance that not every one is a potential physicist.

Even decentralizing the schools would be a step.

common denominator of mass shootings is gun free zones. No more gun free zones anywhere so that law abiding sane people can fight back with the proper tools and the problem will sort itself out. its that simple. Not more gun laws....we need wayyy less gun laws. There is always more good people in a room than bad. Not only would it stop mass shootings in its tracks, it would stop the vast majority of violent crimes.