Florida school does "real" lockdown drill - with l

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Parents were furious yesterday after a school in Winter Haven, FL did a lockdown "drill" - with no warning, and with police pointing unloaded AR-15s and loaded pistols at students! Kids frantically texted parents during the so-called "drill" thinking they were going to be shot at. I'd be furious too, if I was a parent. Our lockdown drills are not like this - they are usually non-emergency ones with dogs sniffing for drugs, not police officers bursting into classrooms with guns loaded. What if a teacher shot the "shooter"?
Also a great way that some wacko could cause a scene - they could yell "drill", with police gear on, firing into classrooms! This active shooter drill thing has gone out of control - fast.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/nati ... ter-drill/

good way to scare them s**tless and reinforce distrust of police officers.

very real chance someone (one of the very many uninformed) could have taken this as a real shooting and have shot the "shooter"

also, was it REALLY NECESSARY for a gun to be loaded?

From TvTropes useful notes on gun safety. http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/UsefulNotes/GunSafety

Wow, that sounds horrifying....I was in a real one and didn't even get a weapon pointed at me and have PTSD, I'd be angry to if I happened to have kids, live in flordia(which would never happen) and they went to that school.

What a joke, we live in a paranoid fascist country. The media, technology, and our government have effectively destroyed our culture and replaced it if one dominated by fear. What an awful time to be alive and it will only get worse most likely. These cops want to play soldier and we're the enemy.

This is a very poor choice by officials who damn well should know better.

A lockdown drill is some unknown situation where you turn off the lights, barricade the door if you can, and then hunker down behind secure objects. And then in short order, like in two or three minutes, you inform the students that it was a drill and thank them for their cooperation. And that's it.

This thing where people burst in with guns is complete theatrical BS and is totally unnecessary. And as people have pointed out, it is much more counter-productive than positive.

Do we know for sure that the guns were loaded?

Perhaps, for the drill, they were unloaded for safety.

From the Washington Post article:

If it's a drill that will necessitate pointing weapons at people they should ALWAYS use "Blue Guns". They are shaped just like all the common police/paramilitary small arms and are just for this type of scenario. Being molded of solid blue plastic, they are totally inert and do not have an intimidating appearance.


When I read about s**t like this I can't help but think that a "drill" like that served a dual purpose; as a drill and also to instill "respect" (i.e. fear) of the police in the students. It's really common sense that you never point even an unloaded firearm at anyone you don't intend to shoot.

Are Americans just naturally paranoid? Where I live people think it's paranoid just to lock the door to your house. Which I do anyway, because I'm mildly paranoid but doesn't mean there aren't any people out there who might try to kill me.

"Blue Guns" huh. i've not heard of those before. isn't it also required to mark the barrels of toy/airsoft weapons with orange?

what stuff do you do that would make anyone want to kill you?

So what stops criminals, including terrorists, painting their guns blue?

Nothing, what's your point?

As an ethical hacker I don't believe technology itself drives us towards fascism. Not that we aren't becoming a fascist nation. Trouble is, all these kids are being conditioned to use technologies which make their every thought, quality or statement searchable by the sickos threatening them at gunpoint. I'd bet anything those cops read every single horrified text message they drummed up. Some of the most promising coders I've seen in our education system sing the praises of Facebook, they might become so embroiled building on huge codebases as to not realize in their lifetimes the hands their data falls into.

Most people use technology for communication and profit. I fear very nearly everyone might permanently forget to dig past the infrastructure.

edit: Hot diggety daffodil this is cberg's 1337th post!