Report: 2 shot at Calif. high school; shooter detained

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/01/10/taft-california-shooting-high-school/1823539/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter&dlvrit=206567

KERO-TV says a shooter has been taken into custody as deputies go room-by-room

At least two people have been shot Thursday at a high school in Taft, CAlif., KERO-TV reports.

The condition of the victims was not immediately clear.

The shooter was taken into custody at Taft High School around 9 am. local time, says KERO, which reports that it got a tip on the shooting from people hiding in closets inside the school.

KGET-TV reports that three ambulances and a medevac helicopter have been sent to the scene.

KERO said officers form the Kern County sheriff's department were going room--by-room to secure the school.

Parents were told to pick up their students at the football field, 23ABC reported.

TAft, which has a population over just over 9,300 people, is located 30 miles west southwest of Bakersfield, Calif.

Pitiful. Just pitiful.

Sigh. Here we go again.

:mad:

yup, pretty much. Here we go again. Hopefully its only 2 and hopefully they are ok

We should arm the teachers.

We should arm the teachers.

Knowing how redneck some of that area around Taft is, they probably already secretly are packing.

Seriously though, can we just agree to make it harder to buy a gun, please?

I'll probably get crucified for this, but instead of gun restrictions, would it be possible to enforce gun location restrictions? Like, if you want to own a gun for shooting, hunting, whatever, join the local shooting range, NRA place, have a locker, and keep your guns locked up at an off site location? Seems to me like that would allow you to continue to own a gun without having it easily available for someone, like a disgruntled teenager, to get ahold of and use.

I feel like I talked with someone about this already. Was it on this board, or somewhere else?

I'll probably get crucified for this, but instead of gun restrictions, would it be possible to enforce gun location restrictions? Like, if you want to own a gun for shooting, hunting, whatever, join the local shooting range, NRA place, have a locker, and keep your guns locked up at an off site location? Seems to me like that would allow you to continue to own a gun without having it easily available for someone, like a disgruntled teenager, to get ahold of and use.

I feel like I talked with someone about this already. Was it on this board, or somewhere else?

I'm a gun control advocate, but if you are saying people shouldn't be allowed to have a gun (any kind of gun) in their home, then I think that's a little too much.

I'm a gun control advocate, but if you are saying people shouldn't be allowed to have a gun (any kind of gun) in their home, then I think that's a little too much.

Nothing less wouldn't make much of a difference in terms of overall gun crime. You can ban scary "assault" weapons, and the shooters will just switch to not scary looking rifles, pistols or shotguns. All the VT shooter had was pistols - same with the Ft Hood shooter. A pump action shotgun would probably do the most damage against an unarmed crowd.

Some tweets from students inside the school: http://www.buzzfeed.com/ryanhatesthis/southern-california-school-evacuated-after-shooter?utm_campaign=socialflow&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=buzzfeed

I live 30 mina from Taft and my sister in laws family lives there. It's a really small community. I would never think of something like this happening at Taft. Btw the high school is like a block away from an elementary school and Taft college.

If you are a teacher at any school in the country, and are willing to go through the the concealed carry procedure, which includes traing in how to handle a gun, how in the world can anyone tell you you can't take your gun to work. If thestudents knew there were a couple of teachers packing at the high school you can bet there would be some instant respect. More importantly, there has never been an instant when someone with a consealed carry licence has gone off the rails and done anything wrong. Rich kids go to school with armed guards why can't other kids be protected?

Nothing less wouldn't make much of a difference in terms of overall gun crime. You can ban scary "assault" weapons, and the shooters will just switch to not scary looking rifles, pistols or shotguns. All the VT shooter had was pistols - same with the Ft Hood shooter. A pump action shotgun would probably do the most damage against an unarmed crowd.

While regulating assault rifles may not have made a difference in the Virginia Tech case, that was really a lesson in better mental health care and preventing those who have been legally declared mentally ill from purchasing guns. Virginia did actually change its laws after it happened. We can learn from each of these incidents and make changes in our laws accordingly.

Also, it appears that the shooter in this incident may have used a shotgun, and so far there are no fatalities and he has been apprehended.

The student who was shot was flown to a hospital in Bakersfield, said Ray Pruitt, spokesman for the Kern County Sheriff's Department. There was no immediate word on the victim's condition.

"We have a suspect in custody," Pruitt said, adding that the person was believed to be a student.

Pruitt said he believes the student used a shotgun in the attack and that weapon has been recovered.

23ABC News received phone calls from people inside the school who were hiding in closets.

Parents said that a teacher was also shot, but his injuries were only minor.

http://www.turnto23.com/news/local-news/report-at-least-one-person-shot-at-taft-high-school

While a shotgun can potentially do wider damage, it may be less likely to be fatal (depending on what kind of shot is being used) and will require more and slower reloading, making it easier to apprehend a shooter. I would probably prefer crazy mass shooters to have shotguns than to have semiautomatic rifles.

WTF is going on out here, this is definitely not the news I did not want to hear.

There have been so many shootings over the past six months, I don't think think there's anything left to say.

So the school has a police officer on-site...

Officials say someone opened fire at Taft High School in Kern County, California this morning around 9:00 a.m. PST, shooting two people, one was a student. One person—the student—was airlifted to a nearby hospital, while another denied medical treatment on the scene.

The AP reports the shooter, who is believed to have been a student at Taft High, was taken into police custody about 20 minutes after the shooting began. Officials believe the student was using a shotgun.

Taft High School's website claims it employs a Kern County Sheriff's deputy to patrol the campus at all times.

Taft is a city of about 9,000 located in California's San Joaquin Valley about 30 miles southwest of Bakersfield and about 120 miles northwest of Los Angeles.

http://gawker.com/5974889/another-school-shooting-reported-in-california?utm_campaign=socialflow_gawker_twitter&utm_source=gawker_twitter&utm_medium=socialflow

There have been so many shootings over the past six months, I don't think think there's anything left to say.

How about this?....

http://amarillo.com/news/latest-news/2013-01-09/georgia-woman-shoots-intruder-5-times

Authorities say the woman took her children to the attic as the man broke in with a crowbar.

When the intruder arrived in the woman's attic, police say she shot him five times. Authorities say the woman ran out of bullets and ordered the man to lie still. Police say the woman and her children left the house and the intruder, identified as 32-year-old Paul Slater of Atlanta, tried fleeing the scene.

Police say Slater crashed his car in a wooded area, has been arrested and is hospitalized at Gwinnett Medical Center.

Or this....

http://www.justfacts.com/guncontrol.asp

* A 1993 nationwide survey of 4,977 households found that over the previous five years, at least 0.5% of households had members who had used a gun for defense during a situation in which they thought someone "almost certainly would have been killed" if they "had not used a gun for protection." Applied to the U.S. population, this amounts to 162,000 such incidents per year. This figure excludes all "military service, police work, or work as a security guard."[12]

Yesterday I started a thread that no one responded to about:

io9 - The 12 cognitive biases that prevent you from being rational

http://www.extremeskins.com/showthread.php?378712-io9-The-12-cognitive-biases-that-prevent-you-from-being-rational

That's a shame because this one applies to your comment...

Negativity Bias - People tend to pay more attention to bad news — and it's not just because we're morbid. Social scientists theorize that it's on account of our selective attention and that, given the choice, we perceive negative news as being more important or profound. We also tend to give more credibility to bad news, perhaps because we're suspicious (or bored) of proclamations to the contrary. More evolutionarily, heeding bad news may be more adaptive than ignoring good news (e.g. "saber tooth tigers suck" vs. "this berry tastes good"). Today, we run the risk of dwelling on negativity at the expense of genuinely good news. Steven Pinker, in his book The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined, argues that crime, violence, war, and other injustices are steadily declining, yet most people would argue that things are getting worse — what is a perfect example of the negativity bias at work.

That said: I'm not going to go into the debate in depth here. I would prefer to keep this thread focused on the event itself. But I feel compelled to respond to the issue as it was brought up buy someone else.

On topic: Thoughts and prayers to the victims and their loved ones.

---------- Post added January-10th-2013 at 07:52 PM ----------

WTF is going on out here, this is definitely not the news I did not want to hear.

Umm.... Maybe you should edit this double negative.

How about this?....

http://amarillo.com/news/latest-news/2013-01-09/georgia-woman-shoots-intruder-5-times

Good thing she had the AR-15. Oh wait...

But anyway, no idea how bluefood's one sentence prompted your post.

So the kid who did the shooting had threaten to take a gun to a pep rally and had a hit list. He got suspended 3 days for hit list.

17 posts to start a gun debate....pretty sure that doesn't belong here....

---------- Post added January-10th-2013 at 03:18 PM ----------

So the kid who did the shooting had threaten to take a gun to a pep rally and had a hit list. He got suspended 3 days for hit list.

What it sounds like from the tweets of the students

My sister in law sister goes to Taft high. She says it's true, its a small town everyone knows everyone's business.

Thinking about the teachers being allowed guns let me ask this...what if a teacher wanted to shoot students? Then there's a class full of students the teacher can kill so it can go both ways. What needs to happen is every school needs metal detectors by every door and security guards standing so if it goes off they get searched. After class starts, there needs to be one entrance into the school. Have a security guard by every door I case one tries to break in.

We should arm the teachers.

We should put a teacher in every gun store.

Thinking about the teachers being allowed guns let me ask this...what if a teacher wanted to shoot students? Then there's a class full of students the teacher can kill so it can go both ways. What needs to happen is every school needs metal detectors by every door and security guards standing so if it goes off they get searched. After class starts, there needs to be one entrance into the school. Have a security guard by every door I case one tries to break in.

Home school all US kids. Do a background check anytime your kids plan to get together or "hang out" with other kids.

Thinking about the teachers being allowed guns let me ask this...what if a teacher wanted to shoot students?

Ya'll sure are ready for them teachers to go postal .

metal detectors and ARMED guards might help,though screening students is gonna slow things up.

you think they can afford metal detectors and armed guards at every door?

add

By requiring that no armed resistance to a shooter can occur until the police arrive, this means that persons opposed to armed teachers/staff at a school have an acceptable number of children that they are willing to see killed before the shooter is stopped. What is this number and how was it arrived at?