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Santa Fe High School wasn’t the typical gun-free zone. In fact, it was was more prepared than most schools for an active shooter situation.

The school district had an active-shooter plan, and two armed police officers walked the halls of the high school. School district leaders had even agreed last Autumn to eventually arm teachers and staff under the state’s school marshal program, one of the country’s most aggressive and controversial policies intended to get more guns into classrooms.

They thought they were a hardened target, part of what’s expected today of the American public high school in an age when school shootings occur with alarming frequency. And so a death toll of 10 was a tragic sign of failure and needing to do more, but also a sign, to some, that it could have been much worse.

Unlike the abject failure and non-response in Parkland, the Santa Fe SROs went toward the sound of gunfire and engaged the shooter.

Officers arrived at the school’s art lab section about four minutes into the shooting and engaged the shooter right away, Galveston County Sheriff Henry Trochesset told CNN.

That probably stopped Dimitrios Pagourtzis from shooting more of his classmates — yelling “woo hoo” as fired — many of whom he apparently targeted for specific perceived grievances and slights.

One of the students killed, Shana Fisher, had rejected the suspect’s advances for months, her mother Sadie Baze said. Finally, about a week ago, she stood up to him in the middle of class to proclaim she would not go out with him.

Baze said she believes the incident embarrassed the suspect so much that he targeted Shana. “One of the shotgun shells was for my daughter,” she said.

Unlike other notorious shooters, Pagourtzis didn’t appear to fit the profile of the troubled, disaffected outcast. He was on the school football team and was involved with his family’s church.

The alleged gunman’s classmates and parents said they saw no signs of trouble before the shooting, though some said he had seemed somewhat depressed in recent months.

Bertha Bland, whose grandson is good friends with Mr Pagourtzis, said she knew the teenager well and described him as “an outstanding kid” and a good student.

He reportedly exchanged gunfire with the two deputies and negotiated with police — seriously wounding one of them — for 25 minutes before finally surrendering. Perhaps one of the most revealing reports was this one:

The suspect told an investigator he acted alone and spared people he liked because he wanted his story told, according to a probable cause affidavit.

It’s certainly possible that, in addition to the school resource officers, armed teachers and staff, which the district was in the process of implementing, might have further limited the number of killed and wounded. But even in a school that had prepared for the worst, the Santa Fe shooter was still able to get a shotgun and revolver into the building under his black trench coat and take a terrible toll.

How, then, to better protect schools? The next step would seem to be limited points of building access and metal detectors and/or clear backpacks…which weren’t at all popular with Parkland students. Your thoughts?

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73 COMMENTS

    • If people really want to ‘ do something ‘ and not just blame & ban guns …. STOP pumping kids full of Anti-Depressants , with side effects right on the label that say ” May Cause SUICIDAL thoughts or actions. ”

      ( MSM news will never cover it ….. too much ad money $$$ from Big Pharma )

      In Oregon , Kip Kinkle shot up his school and his parents after being put on the S.S.R.I drug Prozac , 20mg.

      • As someone who has seen the effects of people off and on SSRIs and various other medication made to treat various mental disorders, I can wholeheartedly tell you that you should blow this out your ass. They’re not miracle cures, but the effects they have in people who are at the end of their rope is amazing. This kid and many more like him were seriously messed up, and their actions were likely not helped by their mental disorders/medications, but they weren’t the precipitating factor. To think otherwise is to be utterly removed from the realities of modern medicine. Then again, I’m not sure what I expected from a community that so often claims vaccines cause autism.

        • They’re effective all right…until they aren’t. The way I see it, these drugs are a sort of ‘leash’ to control behavior the same as we once used incarceration, but no sane person could possibly agree they are equal in ultimate effectiveness when it comes to protecting the general public from the abnormal behavior. The drugs certainly ‘do’ something, and are effective in keeping many folks in a healthy frame of mind that would otherwise require supervision.

          But the law of averages and the shear ubiquity of these drugs as the default solution to so many mental and emotional problems means that there is a certain (and likely substantial) population of emotionally disturbed people out there being *at best* loosely restrained through medication. All it takes is one unexpected side effect, development of tolerance, or simply missed dosage and those rabid dogs are off the leash completely.

          It is no kindness to show mercy to criminals; this is why Travon Martin ended his life
          It is no kindness to let the insane go unrestrained; they will be burdened for the remainder of their lives for actions they were unable to resist committing

        • so are all those warnings included in the packaging with various medications lying?

        • You can blow your blanket dismissal of his claim out YOUR ass.

          The medications’ commercials mention side-effects—-suicidal or homicidal ideation.

          There is a definite connection between anti-depressants and mass shootings.

        • On the contrary. This kid was not, “seriously messed up,” as you claim. On the contrary no reports of messed up exist and in fact he was a very normal behaving kid.

          The answer is in the relatively low number given that armed response occurred. 10 dead is awful, but twenty as at Parkland, horrific.

          There poor armed response. Here armed response, 20 there 10 here.

          Had more defenders armed been in the school it might have been closer to or zero.

        • They anti-depressant are good until they skip taking them. There’s a reason why they are banned in some countries for people under a certain age. One scientist has discovered that you can tell which drugs are worse and which are better for subjects.

      • Typical uneducated bullshit. Just as pathetic as blaming the guns and “scary weapons” like the anti’s and not knowing a single thing about the product!

        And yes Michael in AK, a large number of the warnings, side effects, AE’s are bullshit.
        Correlation does not equal Causation.

        Take your foil hats off children

        • Well by your “logic” then maybe the meds don’t do what they are supposed to do?

          You lost the ability to be persuasive when you had to rely on insults.

      • Suicidal and homicidal are two completely different things. The vast majority of the 20,000+ law abiding gun owners who shoot themselves dead each year never tried to kill anyone else. You should get your facts straight before reaching at straws and trying to blame anyone or anything rather than the real culprit.

        We have far more gun killings and far more school shootings per capita than any other civilized countries (and almost all the 3rd-world countries too). The reason is simple. A certain portion of everyone is crazy. It is the same portion no matter what country, part of the country, or type of person you are looking at. Since we have far more guns than anyone, it is so much easier for the crazies to be armed. Solution: regulate guns like cars, for the same reasons.

      • The big eight: Celexa, Effexor, Luvox, Paxil, Prozac, Ritalin, Trazodone, Zoloft.
        Precision rifle maker John Noveske researched 42 mass killings and suicides, and all but one of them were by someone who was taking, or had been taking, one or more of these drugs. He published the list on his Facebook page and shortly after died in a single vehicle accident on a deserted country road in Oregon in the daytime and good weather. His Facebook page was taken down almost immediately.
        Yes, the drug companies have great power.

    • Clear backpacks? You know who has to use clear backpacks? People who work in prisons. America’s schools are already not much different than prisons in how they operate- Columbine was an opportunity to those that wished to turn our schools into German/soviet-style indoctrination camps, only the flags are different.

      This should concern you no matter which party is in power- raise “free” children to bow to the whims of government & they’re no longer free.

      How about some math and statistics lessons for those who think a few shootings a year in a country of 350 million people is an “epidemic” worthy of tossing our freedoms and privacy into the shitter.

    • Absolutely too many people oblivious as to whats going on around them or simply don’t care. Had a similar occurrence at JFK Airport, Middle of July suspicious looking guy wearing a trench coat. Looked but could not find any security personnel. I could go on and on…

  1. Here is real “food for thought”:

    A vet and school administrator speaks his mind

    My name is John Bouchell and I am not a bot. I was in school administration after spending a stint in the military. Let me explain: As usual, I was a teacher, a coach and later became an administrator. I worked at all three levels of public school in administration.

    Like most athletic males I was assigned as a part of a school security team- at all three levels. Eventually, I was trained by the Department of Homeland Security, Several sheriff’s departments, and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, GBI. Prior, I was trained the military.

    I was a Combat Crew member and a certified marksman with both rifles and pistols (M-16, and .40 Cal Colt) with an Oak Leaf Cluster (Multiple awards). I was a likely person to help with school security and had an extensive background in technology and video surveillance as well.

    I held an SCI security clearance which is the very highest we have in America. I say these things to help you to understand my background to weigh my opinion as to the events in Parkview Florida, (30 minutes from my home where I live, now retired from School administration).

    As an administrator in charge of a large High School of 1,800 students and 140 employees, I held tabletop exercises and wrote publications & power points presentation, & helped with both multiple school & mult-jurisdiction school systems training as developer and presenter.

    Never did I hear from, receive information from, or was contacted by, read any publications, or gathered statistics from the United States Secret Service. Not once- EVER. Yet, 3 weeks prior to the shooting in Florida, the USSS was not only at the school, they held training.

    I have also, despite actually thwarting a school shooting by an armed predator at my school, causing both Code Red, total lockdown, 911calls and arrests and conviction of the potential shooter, saw, spoke with, or was interviewed or contacted by the FBI, or the USSS.

    Its worthy to note the 911 response time was in excess of 20 minutes. In fact, I was only contacted by a few reporters. The incident was basically ignored and squashed in fear of damaging the political establishment, school board, school superintendent, et.al.

    NO REPORTERS EVER CONTACTED MY STUDENTS for interviews or opinions. I never spoke to a national law enforcement agent much less the USSS. So, to hear the FBI were the first responders only beating CNN by minutes in a wealthy Florida area saturated with Law Enforcement shocked me.

    Seeing the amazing amount of CNN coverage so well organized and all espousing one message and only one message is equally troubling. Seeing a student saying she actually walked with the shooter while evacuating and HEARD shots shocked me.

    Seeing video of a student telling us she was told they would have a drill that day with actors deeply troubles me. Seeing the same young man over and over who visited CNN that day and whose father is an FBI agent troubles me.

    Seeing and hearing the same narratives over and over that conflict with every aspect of training and experience I have is extremely unsettling. I saw video interviews of students claiming multiple shooters. This is troubling as well.

    I realize that the shooter apparently pulled the fire alarm to create chaos and provide a richer target environment (that alarm would have sent a signal to its precise time and location by the way) and tossing smoke bombs in a stairwell to drive the victims to the shooter’s locale.

    BUT: At least one interview I watched was a student saying her doorknob was rattled and she heard a voice say “Go try another door”. This needs exploration. I can sit here and tell you who I think failed miserably but it is fruitless. I’ll save that opinion for future reference.

    In my utterly qualified, expert opinion, there are several troubling “Facts” being dispensed that I refuse to accept prima facia. Some of them are: Why was the shooter visited 39 times by local LE but never placed on a watch list and their right to a firearm flagged and denied.

    Why was his extensive school discipline not compiled and presented to the school board for total expulsion from the schools? What was the FBI the first response when the school is so close to the PD and an officer with a radio was supposedly on campus?

    How did CNN have so many “Kids” in place to echo their exact verbiage and focus on the actual weapon and not the shooter? Why isn’t the alleged USSS involvement in a public school being examined? Who is this reoccurring “Student” that has family in the FBI?

    Why are the interviews that do NOT agree with the one shooter or the narrative that CNN is pushing being heard? Why aren’t the multiple videos available (With the floor plan I have seen I would have had approx 22 cameras in that building and had over 140 in my school) being seen?

    I realize that some of the videos will be used for the trail of the shooter; however, it is in the interest of the public to see some of the unused footage that is available. Why was the USSS at a this school providing training 3 weeks prior?

    And how was the weakest, sloppiest, and most often NOT on REAL location news company all over this son of the FBI agent with an amazing and uncanny ability to find a news camera in multiple sates in the last six months?

    Did this infamous teenager actually graduate already? Has the USSS ever been to any other schools to supervise and provide training for an active shooter situation? How could the USSS possibly visit all 22,000 High Schools in the US? And how would they be chosen?

    Who identified this shooter and how did L.E. track him to the retail store he was arrested at? Why has the entire CNN narrative to attack the second amendment when at least THREE government institutions (possibly FIVE if you count DFACS) failed miserably to help the mentally ill

    Why has the school district decided to demolish this building (like they did Sandy Hook) if their narrative is true and correct? Why not allow the forensics to be published and explored completely? Make it the offices of school safety as a monument even- But I digress.

    All in all my PROFESSIONAL opinion is this stinks to high heavens. Either we are surrounded by the most incompetent news people in the world, who don’t ask questions or give a damn about these murders, or they have NO concept of why this happened will happen again soon.

    I for one am SICK TO DEATH of fake news outlets pretending this is about a rifle- its not. Its about a mentally ill person, totally abandoned and discarded and politically expediently ignored, by multiple agencies allowed to commit inhumane acts of terror due to incompetence. END

    • No one here has any reason to believe you.

      You list a bunch of credentials an give way to many details to try and give yourself some credibility but the fact remains you are posting anonymously in a comment section.

        • We all know you can’t lie on the internet come On people posting proves it is true…!! Smh

          Close alll public schools only way to stop school shootings

    • Well said. And thank you. Our school was festooned with “Gun Free Zone” signs. Only it wan’t. Our CJ faculty was mostly made up of peace officers, prosecutors, a couple of judges, and defense attorneys. All were armed. Faculty members also came to school armed. Our parking lots were dangerous, especially at night and when thugs show up in your office making threats, it makes a good case for coming to work armed. Our admins understood what was going and, unlike many, tacitly looked the other way.

    • That yarn by anarchist sets of too many BS alarms.

      “Combat Crewman” what he was a tanker/DAT? big deal minimal firearms training there.
      ” certified marksman with both rifles and pistols (M-16, and .40 Cal Colt) with an Oak Leaf Cluster ” What??? Certified? WTF is that. “Marksman” is the lowest qualification level possible. .40cal Colt??? Sure is wasn’t a .9mm? BS. Oak Leaf Cluster? No such thing. If you qualify Expert, Sharpshooter, or Marksman with multi weapons you get bars/clasps to attached below the award badge.

      Security clearance a t level above God? BFD (and BS) what does that have to do with anything.

    • This is poorly concealed stolen valor as well. The awards and devices mentioned don’t go together, the clearances don’t work the way the post indicates, and the Combat Crew badge went away in 1993, and was simply a badge worn while qualifying (earning points) toward the Combat Readiness Medal

  2. I admittedly haven’t read much about this, but it’s so out of the ordinary. He wasn’t an ostracized person, actually was involved in his church, the school had armed guards, the school had an active shooter plan, the shooter didn’t use any semi-automatic firearms or even anything that could even accept a detachable magazine (but rather two of the slowest loading firearms in production today) and the shooter didn’t try to commit suicide, escape, suicide by cop, etc. but stood down.

    Weird.

    What DOES he have in common though? Was he on any sort of psychotropic drugs or anything? Or is this an outlier of outliers?

    • The old saying, once is a fluke, twice is coincidence, and three times is enemy action.

      That said, this murderer actually does look like he was just a douche bag who everyone found uninteresting, and probably disgusting. Women rejected him, his peers probably wouldn’t even recognize him, no matter what his hobbies were, he probably wasn’t pulling good grades. Rejection was the straw the broke the camels back, he took the ole Fukitol pill, and went shooting.

      Just what I think… in an age of false flag attacks, once in awhile you might get a genuine nut case.

    • Narcissm is absolutely through the roof. In the 1980s 30% of college students had marked narcissistic traits, and now it is 70%. We are living in the social MEdia era where attention is everything and everyone gets a ribbon. As a millennial I fully admit that there is something wrong with our empathy. My generation grew up watching people jump to their deaths out of the twin towers, beheaded on newscasts, and then in the afternoon we relaxed by killing people in video games for fun ( some even allowed you to kill inocent civilians). Modern games are becoming hyper realistic and are rated by how easily they can be mistaken for reality. We buy games which allow us to inflict the maximum amount of pain on a human image and get a dopamine hit every time we see death and hear screaming. Not only do we play these games; we become addicted to them, and will come back for more with a constant desire for realistic gore, louder screams, and bigger dopamine hits. Is it supprising that we are less shocked when we see a corpse in real life? What about modern soldiers who are more likely to shoot a “target” than past wars. Yes, drugs can highten suicide etc, but the drugs did not create the thinking from a void. We are becoming the pure human animal, we are becoming bankrupt from humanity.

      • ^this needs to be sent as a letter to the editor of papers nationwide.

        What you state is very clearly true, and so deeply overlooked by the media and parents who desperately need to hear it. This problem is going to only get worse as children, who were raised from day one on devices, come of age.

      • Add this to the poisonous attempts by leftists, feminists, and progressivist types (but I repeat myself) to remake our society — they tear down cultural institutions they don’t like, but have nothing functional nor fulfilling to put in their place — and the inescapable 24/7 fear/outrage/fear news cycle, and it’s a wonder we don’t have more young males doing this kind of stuff.

        As it is, this only looks like a problem of massive proportions. There are several articles available that look strictly at the numbers, and it’s clear that this is NOT an accelerating epidemic; school shootings fluctuate, but the average deaths per year haven’t changed since the 1970s/80s.

        So why are we all acting like they’re such an existential threat?

        For one thing, it’s natural. Incidents that are both unusual and scary — as these are — are perceived as bigger threats. We naturally fear them far more than their extreme statistical rarity deserves. That’s just the way the human brain works.

        Now, enter the progressive/leftist dominated news networks…

        Combine the universal profit motive with their political motives (keeping the terror of these incidents front and center for as long as possible in order to turn people against guns & the Second Amendment), and you have the perfect storm.

        If anybody is responsible for the fix we’re in right now — both the continuing school shootings and the resulting political dumpster fire — it’s them. They’ve effectively hijacked the human psyche and weaponized it.

      • Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it.

        This trend of a certain portion of the pro-gun crowd to blame mass-shootings on video games is short-sighted and ridiculous. Kids have been playing ‘cowboys and indians’, for over a century now, and whatever the period-specific war-type game was at the time before that. Kids being accustomed to violence against humans is nothing new, I fail to see the difference between my friend pretending to die in the neighborhood park after shooting him with a stick, and a collection of pixels, which unless you are seriously mentally disturbed is easily differentiated from reality no matter how ‘pretty’ the graphics get. These “video games are evil” proponents are largely IDENTICAL to anti gunners, who know NOTHING about the subject they rally against, and just want to “DO SOMETHING”. Anyone who has spent a significant amount of time with video games would understand how there is no confusing killing an enemy on the screen with shooting some girl who rejected you in real life.

        This much is true: In America at least, video games are the best pro-gun recruiting tool we have. Kid’s don’t hunt in the same numbers as they used to. But kids appreciate using a MP5 in Tom Clancy Rainbow Six on their XBox, then when they turn 18 they grab a GSG522 to see what it’s like, then possibly enter action shooting sports. This group of individuals also includes those who have lived through the 1994 AWB, and are most fiercely going to defend against those wanting to take away the tools by which we best secure this nation.

        But hey, maybe you’re some uninformed Fudd who thinks that bump stocks should be banned, and AR-15’s have no place with the citizenry. I for one am tired of being stabbed in the back by the NRA and other “sensible gun-owners” who would rather slowly turn up the heat on our gun rights, rather than stick to the simple, elegant words “SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED”.

      • “We buy games which allow us to inflict the maximum amount of pain on a human image and get a dopamine hit every time we see death and hear screaming. Not only do we play these games; we become addicted to them, and will come back for more with a constant desire for realistic gore, louder screams, and bigger dopamine hits. . .”

        There is no empirical evidence that playing violent video games, watching violent images, or reading about similar violence, can cause a normal person to commit an act—violent or otherwise—that they would not normally commit. The magic “video-game trigger” doesn’t exist because, given the way humans think and act, it cannot.

      • This is why I’ve migrated back to games I used to play as a kid. Stuff like Sonic, Need For Speed, Gran Turismo, etc.
        The fact that 10 or even younger kids ENJOY and are LEGALLY ALLOWED to play gory games like COD and Rainbow 6 Siege is really sad to me.

        I’m 18. I’ve heard the argument so many times that games will make me or other kids violent. I don’t think that’s true, it’s definitely more a desentitation towards it.
        If this were ancient Rome, Video Games would be the gladiator arena.

    • “…and the shooter didn’t try to commit suicide, escape, suicide by cop, etc. but stood down.”

      He admitted to the cops after being taken into custody he was too chicken to suicide out, but had planned to do it…

  3. I have to think that limiting points of access is a mistake. Historically, fire is a much more deadly weapon of mass murder, but it would be generally ineffective in schools because schools are well-designed for fire safety. Multiple and high-volume exits are part of that design. Of course, not every exit need also be an entrance, but that raises issues about how to enforce that, as seen in the Aurora Theater shooting (killer propped open a fire exit). Misuse or disuse of dedicated exit-only doors sometimes leads to them being blocked or chained shut, as seen in a 1995 attack on a Harlem clothing store.

      • Until someone disables the alarm, either unintentionally because nobody ever bothered to maintain an exit that isn’t in use, or intentionally, often because of spurious alarms.

        • Any legitimate FD regularly inspects schools for exits, alarms, detectors, sprinklers etc. Fire is a MUCH bigger risk than a kid shooting up the joint.

    • School starts: All doors are locked and can’t be opened from the outside, only the door guard at the main entrance can open the door from the inside for late students. All classes are locked ballistics doors with an emergency exit that can only be opened from the inside.

      Its a step forward tbh. That and schools using some of their bloated budgets to offer armed guard positions.

      • All doors are locked and can’t be opened from the outside, only the OFFICE at the main entrance can open the door from the inside for late students AND PARENTS.

        SOP in my area for several years. And total waste. If your community sucks and needs this BS (or armed Capos) MOVE. Total waste of $.

        This entire “school shooting epidemic” is just another MSM/progtard scheme to promote banning guns. For the children. Get your head out of their beartrap.

      • Look at the stereotypical Japanese school… they have a literal wall around them with only handful of metal gates that shut right as class starts.

  4. Well, as someone with some libertarian leanings. I certainly wouldn’t want my kid or my brother’s kids going to school in a Penitentiary , Penal Colony, or Prison…
    So, anyway…How come this stuff doesn’t happen at the schools of higher learning where the Elite send THEIR kids….? How about where the Obama’s sent THEIR kids, or The Bush Family..?How about the Hollywood folks…? It’s always schools and universities of the common folk…The unwashed masses if you will…The people who subject to a lot of Liberal Social Engineering projects…The Social dramas that drive Jerry Springer type mentality in some folks…Improvements need to be made in our schools to eliminate the Liberal Pathogen to prevent CRAZY….

    • Pretty much… the left stocks their children’s schools with actual qualified instructors. It stocks everybody else’s with overweight feminazi social justice warriors and then fights for their “right” to unionize and dictate to you how they are going to teach your kids.

  5. ” Pagourtzis didn’t appear to fit the profile . . .” Great, let’s all pretend to play CSI so we can handcuff our own right wrist to our left ankle.

  6. Stop sending our children to gun free zones. Two armed SRO”s is still effectively a gun free zone. Two SRO’s covering hundreds of students and staff is a placebo, not a solution. Any student intent on having his/her 15 (25) minutes of fame knows where the defensive guns are…and how it will take a long time for the calvary to arrive to save the day. Armed SRO’s make parents and students “feel” safer but are only a partial solution at best. However, willing and qualified staff utilizing concealed carry changes the game for the cowardly, immature wannabe’s.

  7. I echo the WTF are you idiots doing letting greek punk(I will NEVER say this loser’s name) waltz into school in a trench/Columbine coat?!? The dead girl who publicly shamed/ridiculed him probably set the whole planned “event” off. What else besides a dress code or 2 armed guards? They have metal detectors and checkpoints in some Chiraq schools-and no “mass” shootings inside. Plenty of gang BS outside. That’s what happened when Hydaya “danced for Obama” Pendleton was murdered outside her school…

  8. The high school that my children attended in the 90’s was located in a upper-middle class area of NJ and it had metal detectors even then. Why does this appear to be some kind of new idea to the average educator?

  9. We have not had a death by fire in our schools because we let firemen in to do their jobs to prevent school fires. Let police/military into the schools to do likewise. Tell any educators to kiss your ass in the process. They have proved beyond any doubt their ideas on the subject are not even in the realm of the real world. That play should of been flagged with the “Gun Free Zone” bullshit and the programs that prevented law enforcement from cuffing law breaking kids. The educators brought this on us with their pie in the sky/head up the ass liberal “are you sh#tting me?” ideas.

    • That’s got nothing to do with fire departments, but has everything to do with design of schools, with many more fire exits. From the 20s-50s there were school fires that killed hundreds per instance, so they retired and redesigned schools with things like sprinklers, and again, more exits.

      So now we’re seeing an issue that lots of exits are also entrances.

      • It’s much more than this. Kids are dying in school fires not because there are still a lot of school fires BUT we have a lot of doors…they aren’t dying in fires because modern schools frankly don’t catch fire.

        I live in South Florida where hurricane code dictates all new houses are built out of cinder block and steel/aluminum for the walls instead of wood. The only wood on the whole house is the roof trusses. Floors are all tile. Commercial buildings are the same. House fires are almost unheard of …and people dying in a house fire(a modern house…not a trailer or something built in the 1960s) are extremely rare Why? It’s not because modern houses have more exits. It is because there’s almost nothing in them that can burn. Out of all the calls our fire dept responds to only 3% are house fires and most of those are just small isolated kitchen fires or ones in the garage. There aren’t enough combustibles for these small fires to spread and engulf a house.

        Modern schools are very similar…I’d venture to say that there is NO wood in the construction of a modern school. They are made of tile, steel, cinderblock etc….very little in a school is combustible and even that stuff is so spread out that it would take A LOT of accelerant to ignite it into anything coming close to a self sustaining blaze.

        So no…you don’t need a ton of exits in a school for fire safety reasons. Obviously you can’t have just one but for the few others needed you can most assuredly lock those down. They can be monitored to only open in case of a fire, have a guard there, set off a lockdown if opened, etc.

        Think of courthouses, airport terminals, etc. They don’t have many exits/entries in use(Hell…our courthouse has ONE that everyone goes through) and yet nobody worries about people dying in fires there.

        • I take it you know sqwat about home construction. For exterior walls cinder block is common but they can still build with wood. It does require a ton of metal to prevent uplift and such. But wood is still allowed. For interior walls wood is the preferred material. Steel is slowly becoming more common but wood is king for now. And that’s for Dade county.

  10. My kids school limits after the morning bell the door you can use. They open from the inside and and monitored. The main door you go in, have to check with the office, as a parent i must check in and given a pass, then you have to be buzzed in a second door. The pass is a sticker type i have to put on my shirt and teachers know where im allowed. Limited entry, armed teachers, 2 or more resource “officers”, and like my kids school seperation of grades. The kindergarten grades are separated from 1-3 & 4 & 5 they are sectioned off and monitored for individuals who are not in the right place. You can only do so much, then leave it in God’s hands.

  11. “School district leaders had even agreed last Autumn to eventually arm teachers and staff under the state’s school marshal program,”

    But they were still discussing how to go about it, after months, and had not yet approved armed staff.

    • It’s because these people have trouble making decisions and being decisive. Emotion overides logic and decision making abilities. Plus, having armed personnel in their school shatters their world view that love is all you need to prevent atrocities against broken humans.

  12. “Unlike other notorious shooters, Pagourtzis didn’t appear to fit the profile of the troubled, disaffected outcast. He was on the school football team and was involved with his family’s church.”

    Outcasts can play football and go to church. Some do it in an effort to be “normal”.

    • Yeah, his trench coat had at least one Satanic emblem on it, and his Facebook page prominently featured a pentagram.

      His church attendance must have been to please his family.

  13. Private school or home school. I personally wouldn’t send anyone I loved to any public school ever. There’s danger from lack of physical protection and danger from intentional indoctrination of your child into a slave mentality.

  14. We more exact details about the officers that engaged him. The antis are touting this as proof that armed security isn’t effective. It seems like they may have been somewhat effective at containing him as opposed to letting him roam free for 25 minutes.

    • S. Crock,

      A reasonably smart and careful spree killer will always be able to kill a few people no matter what we do. Why? Because they choose the exact time and place OF THEIR AMBUSH.

      The best that we can do is MINIMIZE THE NUMBER OF VICTIMS since we will NEVER be able totally eliminate victims.

    • It sounds like they were able to corner him at the initial shooting area. He wasn’t able to make it to other classrooms without resistance. Seems like the teachers weren’t armed and killed early on. The first responding officers fought and took bullets while doing so.

      If the teachers were armed they could have engaged the shooter from within the classroom instead of the cops being stuck outside of the classroom when kids were being shot and held hostage. It took four minutes for the officers to arrive.

  15. And not one person, say like a football team linebacker, took an opportunity to bum rush this murderer? We have got to teach our kids to fight back, break the bystander/victim effect and act to not just stop, but to completely disable these criminals. Chairs, bats, book bags, etc are good weapons of opportunity and book bags can offer some protection from rounds. Teach your kids to fight back, to call for help, to attack en mass. There is a better than average chance of not only winning the encounter but living through the encounter.

  16. It seems to me that schools have a duty to secure campuses and provide protection for students. Hardening schools with locked doors, metal detectors and armed security is obvious and worthwhile, BUT we need to also address mental health issues as well as reviewing school policies which may unintentionally be creating these sociopaths. It seems that many of these school shooters have common traits/experiences. If there was a way to publicly shame people who commit these acts it would be helpful. No teenager would want to be publicly humiliated, but that isn’t happening.

  17. He wanted his story to be told. That’s why he did it. Why is everyone so intent to tell his story?

    Execute him, jail him forever, whatever, but don’t do anything that might be construed as ‘telling his story.’ Don’t try and investigate “why” he did it. Don’t talk about how he was rejected by some girl. Just lock his fat ass in jail forever.

    • We need to know how these peoples’ brains work. We need to know what drove him to hurt innocent kids. We need to know how his parent/s raised him. We need to know how society lead him in that direction.

      There is so many things we can learn and should learn. Don’t get emotional and lash out in violence. We don’t glorify his actions, but we do need to understand them.

      • Since explosives were allegedly involved, can’t he be renditioned to Guantanamo Bay for lots of enhanced interrogation for terrorism?

        Or put him in for life in the general prison population. Some of the other inmates might be related to his victims.

  18. Didn’t he get kicked off the football team and gained a bunch of weight? Also, didn’t he start wearing a black “trench coat” to school when it was in the 90s?

    We still don’t know how his home life was or more specific things that happened in school. Fortunately, we can talk to him and figure out how his brain works.

  19. -Clear backpacks

    -School uniforms

    -Some deputized/reserve officer teachers who receive extensive training and who are armed

    -Metal detectors

    -Armed school resources officers at a certain number per a certain number of students; at least one per campus; required school-specific/kid-specific training

    -Discipline policies that do remove intractable violators from the regular campus, regardless of special ed status

    -A program similar to crime stoppers that rewards students for warning school officials about dangers

    -Allow school counselors to actually be school counselors and not paper-pushing test coordinators and data collectors

    -Real-live in-service training for teachers that focuses on building relationships with kids

    -Instead of punishing administrators/teachers/campuses for accurate reporting of discipline numbers, a reality-based response that adds staff to high-discipline campuses

    There, that’s a start.

  20. biggest problem is the Government telling these kids they have right’s and do not have too listen to people telling them they are wrong and enforcing that theory with punitive judgement against parents and adults who do try too correct them, spare the rod spoil the child!
    Plus most young adults have a Nintendo Idea of death, shoot them, kill them, reset, repeat.

  21. Limited entry and metal detectors would definitely help. But it will not stop all school shootings. A determined shooter can easily climb a school fence in the dark of night and conceal weapons to be recovered the next day. In San Diego back in about 1977, a 17 year old Brenda Spencer, who later said she hated Mondays, shot up a school from her fathers house across the street. I forget how many victims, but at least the Principal, a police officer and others. My point being, nothing is fail safe.

  22. No boys in trenchcoats until they pass through security. Limited# of security points. This should be obvious.

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