The Guns of Spring

[Richard]

Parental and community responsibility - what a concept. Some practical tips.

Richard's $.02

TIPS FOR MOM AND DAD

Parents and even private citizens with no link to a child can help prevent school shootings, says Peter Langman, a psychologist and the author of Why Kids Kill: Inside the Minds of School Shooters (Palgrave Macmillan). Here are some of his suggestions:

Set limits on your child's privacy. Keep open communication. Know your child's friends, what he does, what websites he visits. If there is a preoccupation with weapons or violent scenarios in journals, he may need help from a counselor.

Pay attention to school warnings. If the school contacts you with concerns about your child's violent stories or class presentations, he may be depressed or enraged and need help. These "red flags" have been noticed by teachers before school shootings, but parents rebuffed school officials.

Eliminate easy access to guns at home.

Recognize possible rehearsals of attacks. Some school shooters have done drawings, animations and videos or written stories in advance that depicted brutal acts.

Stay alert to possible signs of future trouble. Private citizens have foiled rampage killings by youths. Among them: a clerk in a photo shop who noticed photos of a teenager with an arsenal of guns and someone who found a notebook with plans for a high school shooting in a parking lot. If you notice a possible threat, promptly notify the police.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/educati...-schools_N.htm

[Surf n Turf]

Originally Posted by Richard

Parental and community responsibility - what a concept. Some practical tips.

Richard's $.02

Richard,
Your two recent posts (Post-Columbine programs / Parental and community responsibility) have made me feel a lot more comfortable about the safety of where my grandkids go to school.
I had not read the follow-up material on Columbine, but it sure does not square with what has become “urban legend”, and this insight and the “active shooter” proposition are good steps taken by a system that I thought was to bureaucratic to change anything.
SnT

[6.8SPC_DUMP]

Legislation allowing state university students and employees to carry their concealed handguns on campus appears to have enough pledged support from lawmakers to pass the full Texas House.

The bill would prohibit public universities across Texas from creating rules that forbid concealed handgun license holders from carrying their pistols into a classroom, but it would allow private institutions to exempt themselves.

Chances for passage in the House — if it gets there — look strong, as 76 members have signed on to support the bill, authored by Rep. Joe Driver, R-Garland.

The House Public Safety Committee already has signed off on the measure. Now, it needs to get scheduled for debate in the full House.

-Houston Chronicle 4/10/09

[Richard]

And so it goes...

Notice how one of the first places reporters and LEOs go is to check for someone's Facebook/MySpace etc web-page.

SFA = Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches, TX.

Richard's $.02

SFA student charged with making felony threat
Trent Jacobs and Matthew Stoff, The Daily Sentinel, 22 Apr 2009

SFA police arrested 20-year-old student Jennifer Grant Wednesday afternoon as result of a week-long investigation into threatening letters posted on and off campus early last Thursday morning, warning that a mass shooting was to take place that day. Grant is being charged with a felony terroristic threat.

According to an alert posted Wednesday on the university's Web site, Grant is a sophomore at SFA and originally from Palestine.

SFA police also confirmed that Grant is a resident of The Grove, which is the off-campus housing complex where many of the photo-copied messages were found taped to walls and doors.

Grant was booked into Nacogdoches County Jail late Wednesday and may be eligible for bail after her arraignment on Thursday.

University Police Chief Marc Cossich said he did not anticipate any further arrests. "It's still an active investigation, but no, we're not looking at anybody else at this time," he said.

The photocopied signs found on campus last week said "a shooting will occur today and students will die," and copies of another message found at The Grove student apartment complex said, "10 people will be shot and killed today at grove."

"It's heartbreaking to all of us when this kind of thing happens to any member of our university family. However, we are very proud of the job done by our university police who have continued to keep all of us safe," Bob Wright, the university's director of public affairs, said following the arrest.

On its Web site, the university also thanked area law enforcement agencies for their help in the investigation, specifically the FBI and special agents, Terry Lane and David Goodson, along with Texas Ranger Tom Davis. Special mention was also given to the community for the information provided regarding the case. The university set up a special call center last week to give and receive information, along with ordinary channels such as 911 and Crime Stoppers tips.

Cossich said information leading to Wednesday's arrest came from a wide variety of sources. "It was a lot of different information. It wasn't one certain thing. She came into the light from several different ways," Cossich said.

The threats found on and off campus last week were hand written, then photocopied and plastered in numerous locations on the second anniversary of the Virginia Tech shooting massacre of 32 people by a student there.

Though it was too early for officials to comment on Grant's possible motives for making the threats, comments on Grant's online social network profiles shed some light on her state of mind. Within the last few days, Grant had left at least two posts on her MySpace and Facebook pages complaining about not wanting to go to school. At 9:15 a.m. on the day that her alleged messages were first discovered, Grant posted a message saying, "Read your SFA alerts! Not going to class." Her last post to the publicly accessible portion of her MySpace page said, "Ready to be through with this semester but not ready for finals "

At least one SFA student who knows Grant was surprised about the arrest. "She has always been nice to me whenever I have talked to her and really seems like a nice person all around. For her to make those drastic threats like that, all of a sudden, is highly doubtful to me," David Bruce Smith, 19, of Palestine, said.

According to information obtained from her Facebook page, Grant moved to Nacogdoches last August after transferring from the Tyler Junior College, and she is a 2007 graduate of Westwood High School in Palestine. After the threats were first analyzed by university officials, state and federal law enforcement agencies, SFA decided not to cancel classes or put the school on lock-down. Instead, the university advised faculty to be lenient with students who decided to stay home that day. On the day of the incident, several students told The Daily Sentinel that they believed the messages were a hoax perpetrated to get out of an exam. By late afternoon on the day of the incident, university police said that they were receiving "a lot" of leads on the case, but it is still not yet clear if those leads led to Wednesday's arrest.

Cossich praised the university police department for their hard work during the week-long investigation. "Our officers that investigated it here just did an outstanding job. ... It was very time-consuming because of the severity of the threat that was made, so there was a lot of people on it on our department," Cossich said. "I wish it never would have all happened, but I'm glad we did put somebody in jail," he said.

http://www.dailysentinel.com/news/co...ts_arrest.html

[The Reaper]

Damn those Palestinians!

Seriously, a beautiful young lady who has just taken her life down a very ugly path.

TR