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Are They Really This Stupid?
One straightforward, easy-to-implement security measure for schools is establishing a single, controlled point of entry. This way, a would-be mass murderer would be stopped from entering the school. The schools my kids attended had this. There was an anteroom in the high school with a CCTV. No one could gain access during school hours unless buzzed in by the front office.
Leftists in the media seem to think this would mean there was literally only one door in an entire school building. Are they really so stupid that the concept of multiple other exit doors that cannot be opened from the outside does not exist for them. Put another way, the elite, blue-checked left seemingly does not know how doors work.
How many doors does the building have? If it’s more than one…
— David Weigel (@daveweigel) May 26, 2022
One door in and out of crowded schools. What could go wrong!?!
— Chris Hayes (@chrislhayes) May 25, 2022
Wouldn't building schools with only one door create other problems? Like making it harder for kids to get out if, say, there is a fire? https://t.co/L7T7SB2fbO
— Karen Tumulty (@ktumulty) May 26, 2022
And of course, the Bulwark is also part of the “We’re too stupid to know how doors work” party.
I think some of them really are this stupid. The rest are focused on the objective of disarming lawful gun owners, and are not interested in any safety measures that don’t move toward that goal.
Published in General
Yes, they really are that stupid. Apparently they’ve never been to a movie theater . . .
both the kid’s elementary schools and the middle school have multiple entry points during drop off with more eyes in place at entry points.
Once the bell rings, all these access points are locked. The first elementary school was a solid building. Our current one is a courtyard style school that is securely fenced without looking like a prison yard.
Their preschool was the same.
The only way into these schools after school started was by being buzzed into a locked door into the front office. The current elementary school lets you into a gated courtyard where the only way into the school is through another gate controlled by the front office.
This has been implemented all over Florida. I think it’s great. These people are legitimately stupid.
You could even have all the other doors simply locked, with the keys only issued to faculty and staff, so classes that are outside for some reason could get back in without always having to walk all the way around. Many workable scenarios here. Doors are not rocket science.
I don’t much like the idea of turning schools into fortresses, to protect against an extremely rare occurrence. It seems to me like having people wear beekeeper suits, because people occasionally die from bee, wasp, or hornet stings. (This is a risk comparable to mass shootings.)
My impression is that this is excessive safetyism, similar to the Covid overreaction.
I think
That safety measure has been very common for a long time. I saw it in the sixties, at least in urban public schools.
On the other hand, it is not perfect: It was common for bad actors to sneak in when someone exited via a locked door, or when a confederate let them in.
Are they really that stupid?
That’s a tough one.
Could be maybe.
But for sure they think their audience is.
I was in a huge resort-hotel last weekend with too many doors to count, and they all worked that way. The only door that could be opened from the outside without a key was in the lobby.
Our kids highschool is this way. You cannot breech the second set of doors. All their lower schools were that way.
Somehow it did not cause that much of an issue for our family over the past 15 years. We liked the security, not just against gunmen, but against kidnapping. That is a danger too, especially in split families. You don’t get to pick up non-high schoolers without being a person on the approved list, for instance.
It is easy to secure buildings this way and has been done in many places already.
You must hate going to movie theaters then. Because all of them, literally all of them, operate on the principle of a single controlled point of entry with multiple exits for emergencies.
How do the kids go in and out for recess? Is the playground a secure enclosed space? At the high school level, how do the kids access the outdoor playing fields? Are the outdoor fields a secure enclosed space? Is the door to the playground/playing fields kept locked except when it’s time to go outside and to come back inside?
Yes. Somehow a requirement to be an elite in the current age is you have to have no common sense or understanding of how the world really works. On the other hand you have to have a certain magical thinking that any policy prescription you suggest will solve the problem instantly without any trade offs.
Leftists don’t think; they emote. If a thought/idea is internally satisfying to them, that’s enough in what passes for their minds. Just shallow twits.
I wonder if there is a connection between “twit” and “twitter”, but — as Leslie Neilsen would say — that’s not important now.
Schools and movie theaters are completely different entities, with different objectives, purposes, and methods of operation. What is appropriate in one is not necessarily appropriate for the other. Might be, but not necessarily.
For recess at schools, yes, that is a way to do it. For high schools with fields and such though, remember, it is harder to go on an rampage when everyone is able to run away. Harder to do a mass shooting outside.
And, even if this is a weak point, so what? You harden as best you can.
Maybe Jerry just hadn’t had his coffee yet. [ Tries to remember the last time I completely misunderstood someone’s blog comment… ]
My point is that if you let the kids out of the building during the day it means you need more than one door, and if those extra doors remain locked most of the time it’s really going to add to the prison-like atmosphere of the place.
I don’t think anyone has mentioned yet the doors with the “Alarm Will Sound” feature. Locked from the outside, from the inside it opens with a push, but sets off the fire alarm.
Even when I went to high school (when dinosaurs ruled the Earth), there were designated entrances to my high school – multiple ones to be sure, but there was always a teacher at every one . . .
I suspect I went to high school about the same time as @Stad (graduated 1974), but in coastal southern California (i.e., mild weather). My high school (campus built in about 1965) had multiple buildings with multiple entrances onto the campus between buildings. The main entrance was next to, but not through, the front office building. Classrooms in the perimeter buildings had doors directly to the outside. It was not unusual for teachers to move class outside the building. I spent a lot of time in the music suite in the arts building, which had exterior doors through which we moved a lot of musical instruments to move them to off-campus events or to practice marching on the field behind the building during normal school hours, after normal school hours, on weekends, and all types of hours, and the visual arts classes moved a lot of art pieces and equipment through their exterior doors. The science building had many exterior doors to move science projects into and out of the school without dragging them through interior hallways. Most of the doors did not have exterior handles, but some did. Those that did not were often propped open.
My daughter was also involved in high school music (graduated 2003), but in upstate New York, where weather drove a more enclosed single building high school. But still the music department had exterior doors through which we moved a lot of musical instruments for off campus marching band events, though rarely during normal school hours. The school building did have large hallway doors on the side and rear of the building. Those doors were normally locked during the school day, but were opened when classes were moving in or out of the building for exterior activities.
It really does not feel that way.
All public areas must have doors that open to the outside and are not locked during times when occupied. It’s in all safety codes. But there are many cases where entrance from the outside is locked, hey there are locks that do this. There can be a stopper on the door that allows the door to open but not close (these are available and cheap) When you want to close the door just lift the stopper (after recess?). Entrance can be controlled by a person inside. My shop’s front door is like this, been that way for over 30 years. No reason that all classroom doors can’t be like this. I’d be surprised if many are not already.
Our doors are always held open during business hours
Speaking of the need to “do something,” is anyone talking about the need to decentralize and deconsolidate these large school districts — to break them up into smaller, more community-oriented institutions where students don’t slip between the cracks so easily? The Uvalde consolidated district has over 4000 students. That’s only 30 percent larger than the school district where my kids went to high school, but that one needs to be deconsolidated, too.
4000 in the whole district? My (three year) high school was 1500 all by itself.
Yup. 4000 in the whole district. That’s too large. Some kids survive the experience undamaged, of course, but we should be looking for an optimum number of students surviving undamaged.
You are being way too kind to Jerry.
Wish I could like this a hundred times.
They don’t misunderstand doors; they see an opportunity to press forward with an anti 2A agenda. Any impulsive piece of lawmaking could afford an opportunity, a loophole, a discretion left to an agency.
The last one was only days ago and we all had to hear about the doofus’s manifesto; there was no advantage to be had in discussion of how he’d been a longtime menace.
It’s close to that at my step-daughters’ high school. I think there’s one building that’s adjacent to the main building, not connected, but if you walk up to the building during the day you have to get buzzed in through the main entrance.
It’s literally not “a” door in and out. It’s like 8 double-set doors. And all the fire doors open out, because, y’know, they’re fire doors.
Yep, doors don’t help ban guns, so that can’t be even a partial solution – one that’s already in place and working.
The kid was a student at the school. Absent detecting a gun and hitting him over the head with a brick to stop him, he’s a student, so he’s automatically let in.
The systemic failures go back well before the shooting occurred. It looks inevitable now; it was not so when his behaviours were originally noticed and literally reviewed by law enforcement, and nothing was done, much like their physical response outside the school while he killed students.
Thanks, enforcers of law-duders! One assumes the bulk of them were highly motivated to rush inside, but had orders.