Why bother spending that money on mental health of students right?

The hallways are curved- you can’t keep a line of sight on a target as they run away from you- so can’t hit them. The receptionist has a full view of the surroundings and there are controls like locks that can be triggered from that office etc. Raised ridges and other architectural features provide cover from gun fire. The classroom windows are designed so that a shooter looking in can’t see kids if they stand against the wall, and the glass has bullet resistant film. Lockers have been designed in a size and shape to allow storage of most common items but not facilitate storage of rifles or long guns. Other design features etc. using technology or architecture to provide disadvantages to shooters.

It won’t “stop” a shooter- but the design is such that the hope is a shooting could be noticed immediately and active security applied to contain the shooter and protect kids. The number of hogs on live targets is diminished by passive security, and the shooter can’t easily tell where people are- so they have to search and clear room by room (any non secured rooms) which takes time and would hopefully both mean less victims and more time for LEO to respond and stop the shooting.

It is! Most school shooters are not legally in possession of their weapons, and certainly are not using them legally. Now, let’s say tomorrow the USA banned all guns? Well.... there are ALOT of guns in the USA. What’s more, many are unregistered. Kids used to (and still do) steal guns from the police actually. Then we have our southern neighbor Mexico- who despite some of the strictest guns laws in the world- only ONE legal location to buy guns in the entire country (on a military base) has huge fun crime.

So even if we banned guns tomorrow- there are enough unregistered weapons floating around, and access over the border, that it would likely be decades or more before such measures made any real impact on gun crime. In fact... most gun crimes are committed by... illegal weapons. As we established though, school shooters often get guns from their parents or another adult...

Well.... we don’t have a lot of reason to believe that access would be dramatically impacted if all guns were illegal. Many people don’t register guns because they don’t want them “in the system” but are otherwise law abiding folk. Many have heirloom weapons that were bought before registration was required, or grandfathered out, or were never registered by previous owners. “Dads hunting rifle” etc.

So- all said, banning guns outright tomorrow would be unlikely to have any real impact in gun crime for decades. “Street guns” would most likely stay in circulation until confiscated- so there would still be a danger of mass shootings etc- thusly this would still be a prudent step to take to protect kids from a known possible threat.

It’s still $48 million! You might say. Well... the average MIDDLE school costs about $242 a square foot. The average size of a school is about 100,000 square feet and it costs about $25 million for that. This school renovation was about 190,000 square feet. If we do the math- for a near total renovation including structural renovation- that’s not actually so far off from the costs to renovate the school and NOT include features that increase security for students and staff. They could have used the $48 million on other things- but...

Then you’d have another school with aging and out of date facilities and features. Given that schools don’t get renovated that often- maybe every 20-30 years, and that a common social issue is underfunding of schools- I can’t say there is much reason to be upset asides the fact school shootings exist- which isn’t related to wether an aging school needs a renovation or not. And more over- even if all guns were illegal- buildings like schools or public venues should be designed for occupant safety in disasters, terrorist or other attacks, etc. While we are at it they should also probably be designed with some measure of sustainability and conservation in mind too. So I don’t see a big problem here.

We could also say that it is telling that one would look at this and see a sexual harassment risk from obstructed line of sight- or the implication that the only thing stopping sexual harassment is the harasser being seen: or the idea that there would normally be people who routinely scan for sexual harassment? I mean- there are things called cameras that can allow monitoring of hard to see places too- but realistically it would seem that if harassment wasn’t a threat they were concerned to that degree with before- there wouldn’t be a reason to be concerned with it now unless there were suddenly an uptick in such incidences.

There has been an uptick in school shootings though- and well... if you look around Europe you’ll see that barriers to protect against vehicle attacks are pretty common in many public spaces. It makes sense to design buildings to protect against the things you are most likely to encounter. That’s what walls are. They keep our animals, elements, and unauthorized persons. Like people in flood plains who build homes on stilts for example.

I’m with you. They could be cybermen.