Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire School shooting in St. Louis

Our schools used to have chicken wire between two layers of glass

Any BorTac dudes involved? I haven't seen any pictures of caps with bullet creases through them.

I’d like to solve the puzzle, Pat ! 😬

Standing by for more misinformation from Burns.

The dead student is black, the dead teacher is white.

News here last night showed a pic of a Black shooter, just a quick look. The older teacher was white.

Most high schools I am familiar with have multiple buildings and 1,000 - 3,000 kids, as many as seven times a day not counting before and after school many of these will be moving between buildings. Plus the Seniors will usually have “off campus lunch” privileges.

Consequently there are several ingress and egress points, in repeated use.

These buildings were designed before the advent of regular school shootings on a national scale. Fortunately they still are a rare event compared to the maybe 30,000 high schools in the US open every school day.

Even if you had limited entries, absent metal detectors and routine searches you’re still going to have handguns on campus. School shootings are still highly unlikely at any given location, a kid with a hidden handgun on campus not so much. Happens often enough it doesn’t make even the local news cycle anymore.

I am glad I went to high school when we had our rifles hanging in the back window of our pickups. And we took our handguns in with us in backpacks to show and tell during lunch break. Feel sorry for the kids nowadays.

The high school where I spent 20+ years as a trade and industrial teacher covered over 10 acres under the roof on 3 floors, housed 3K+ students daily, and had over 100 outside doors with "panic bar" latches. EVERY one of those doors had to be unlocked and unobstructed when students were present, by fire code rules. All it took was a pebble or a textbook in a door jamb to disable the locking device that prevented outside access. The local drug dealers knew where all the doors were that were invisible to the security cameras, and they did a booming business hanging out in those places at class change time. Try making a building like that "secure" sometime!

St Louis school shooting suspect had gun confiscated days before attack

The 19-year-old suspect who killed a teacher and a 15-year-old student in a shooting spree at a St Louis high school on Monday had the assault rifle he used confiscated by police just days before his attack.

The St Louis police commissioner has confirmed that shortly before the school shooting, officers were called to the man’s home by his parents who were worried about him and wanted the AR-15 style rifle removed.

“The mother at the time wanted it out of the house,” the commissioner said.

A police statement obtained by the St Louis TV station KMOV records that officers took the view the teenager was lawfully permitted to possess the weapon despite substantial evidence of troubled behavior. His family told police they had arranged for the teen to be treated for mental health issues, had put him on medication and had even overseen a stay in a mental health institution.

It appears police arranged for the rifle to be taken away by a “third party known to the family”, but that the teenager took it back. It is not known how he regained possession, though St Louis police have confirmed it was the gun used in Monday’s deadly attack.

Sack said the family “made every effort that they felt that they reasonably could. I think that’s why the mother is so heartbroken over the families that paid for his episode”.

The tragedy in St Louis underlines the difficulties with implementation of so-called “red flag” laws which seek to take guns from individuals wrestling with mental health and other problems.

In June, Congress passed the first significant gun control bill in almost 30 years. It included tighter background checks on people aged 18 to 21 trying to buy guns, involving a review of mental health and juvenile records held by state and local law enforcement.

In the St Louis case, KMOV said police were called to the shooter’s house at least six times. Two of the call-outs were in July, for an accident and a suicide attempt.

“Last year, police were called to the home three times, including for something involving a weapon. Another call was for the Crisis Response Unit,” KMOV reported.

The gunman left a note before his killing spree, complaining that he led an isolated life and calling his situation the “perfect storm for a mass shooter".

When he forced his way into the school he had more than 600 rounds of ammunition, some strapped to his chest. He killed the student, Alexandria Bell, and Jean Kuczka, 61, a PE teacher who was said to have tried to shield pupils. Seven students were wounded.