LIke many things in the real world, it's complicated. In this particular case, unless one of the immediate victims was armed, (which would have violated all sorts of laws, being they were underage and in a school) it would not have made a difference. The slightly more information that has emerged on the case was that the elapsed time from the shooter revealing he had a gun and the shooter shooting himself in the head was less than a minute. So anyone who was responding from outside the room would not have gotten there before it was over. Was there even a single adult in that cafeteria when it happened? I don't know, but when I was in high school, the only adult presence was one of the cafeteria ladies coming out from the kitchen every so often to scold the people having food fights. One report I heard said that the shooter was involved in some sort of lovers triangle mess, which might be a motive. Another said he was a star on the football team, so the performance enhancing drugs angle has to be considered, especially the mental effects of them.
So, we have to go look at as many of the mass shooting incidents that we can, and do the tactical analysis on each one, and then go postulate various changes and make the best guesses we can how that might have changed the outcomes. This is harder than one thinks, as there is all kinds of propaganda out there that intentionally distorts what happened to prove that whatever political agenda is being pushed is validated by the incident.
Best sources are usually the detailed police investigations, but these are often not available for legal or policy reasons of the police department or local laws. So we have to go by the witness statements and whatever summary the press relations person of the police department releases to the media. And the police investigation also doesn't find out everything, especially when you get into the very murky area of motivations of the bad guy. If they are dead, then all one can really do is make informed speculation. Limiting the universe of study to school shootings makes the process a bit easier, as local laws make many options illegal.
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2014-10-25 03:58 am (UTC)So, we have to go look at as many of the mass shooting incidents that we can, and do the tactical analysis on each one, and then go postulate various changes and make the best guesses we can how that might have changed the outcomes. This is harder than one thinks, as there is all kinds of propaganda out there that intentionally distorts what happened to prove that whatever political agenda is being pushed is validated by the incident.
Best sources are usually the detailed police investigations, but these are often not available for legal or policy reasons of the police department or local laws. So we have to go by the witness statements and whatever summary the press relations person of the police department releases to the media. And the police investigation also doesn't find out everything, especially when you get into the very murky area of motivations of the bad guy. If they are dead, then all one can really do is make informed speculation. Limiting the universe of study to school shootings makes the process a bit easier, as local laws make many options illegal.