That was when we trusted people and had no hindrance of entrance or exit. We cannot have that attitude going forward. This ploy is easy to defeat. Zero on this try to support your postulate.
Shotguns have been snuckeaked onto airplanes.
Not when everything passes through a metal detector with careful examination. Again, right now it would be difficult to get a single razor blade on, let alone a box-cutter. Zero here.
Checkpoints are shooting galleries waiting to happen, having so many people bunched up in such a small place (a TSA disaster waiting to happen).
Nah. One would not get very far there when a guard pulls down on the shooter. If the object is "get on the aircraft" (get in the school) vs merely starting something at the entry point, that's not feasible. Proper secure environment, say, initial entry through a metal detector to a shielded waiting area for closer individual scrutiny before further admission -- for example -- would at least make a shooting spree highly improbable.
Many rifles can be broken down to small packages.
Tut-tut. This is a trifle where such an attempt is expected and anticipated. Several of the sites where I worked the product ingredients were gold, platinum, palladium, silver, ruthenium, rhodium, etc. You could not get a weapon into, or a common pin out of one of these places without being noted. In addition, all briefcases were opened and examined -- even the plant manager's -- maybe not those of a visiting division manager or an Executive Board member, but a small variation for them was allowed and given there. Any vendor reps passed 1st echelon security to go to a less secure conference room for their business, but never finally entered the more restricted (senior) office/mfg/lab areas without approval and escort.
Never mind everything already in the building which can be abused.
That will not include firearms unless clever planning and execution is involved. One would not expect that approach at all from K-8 graders, only maybe possibly from 9 - 10 graders, with 11-12 held under much closer examination not only merely in entry/exit aspects, but also in social behavior, reliability, and consistency as young adults.
And no I’m not going into details.
You cannot prove your point without going into details. No free pass on this, Uh.
Suffice to say its not hard to beat bag checks, ...
It is not sufficient to say so, simply on your authority. You'd better prove what you say with rational arguments. If you can, that is. We're all waiting, especially on the not hard part.
... and if that’s the centerpiece of your school security a whole lot of people are going to die.
Wrong, because this is a common concept and already proven method of securing sensitive sites where adverse penetration, smuggling, pilfering, and violent behavior are expected.
What our problem is, is that we have not yet seriously determined to abandon the utopian country-club campus aura, environment, and architecture, and begun to implement deadly effective security thinking in public schools.
The negative ideas you have offered are immature (in development, that is) to the serious defender, and you have shown that you do not have a rating beyond the current lay-persons "box" of security thinking, in doing the expert's pre-planning to counter the intents of a perpetrator who wishes to attack a very deliberately closed site and its personnel.
Neither do I, but I have been passed into and out of secure sites from Dijon to Kagoshima, with a hundred such stops between, and have seen how they work. They are pretty consistent in execution. (no pun, no /sarc as you hint mockingly)
In contrast, many school would-be mass killings have been averted by armed staff and students. Not hypothetical.
Name one school. But even one case does not prove the rule. It may merely be anecdotal. You and I may want to eliminate gun free zones, but it may be impossible to implement for public schools by the method you propose.
It is certainly true that the random presence of weaponry and defensive training within the school walls would be likely to crimp the degree of success that a potential perpetrator might experience, but it will not stop him. A building with Swiss-cheese penetration vulnerability will not eradicate the intents of one or two creative perpetrators, who intend to commit suicide by ones own hand or by returned fire as part of their goal. The trends show that this is what they have seemed to desire and carry out, which cannot be surmounted merely by a few roaming police or adventitious handgunners.
No possession of arms by high-school students, minors, should be allowed by parents or administration or local government. One does not know how a licensed but untrained gun-toter will react when challenged by an unexpected firefight situation. He can be just as dangerous as a perpetrator or as helpless as a victim. Many adults, though willing to be responsible for their own welfare, will not be placed in the role of being involuntarily responsible for that of the students, whether they are teachers, office, or maintenance staff. The possibility of getting into a firefight is not, nor should it ever be, a condition of employment for them. That is the kind of thing that protection services such as Wackenhut and Pinkerton are trained for, and lawfully perform as paid private mercenaries.
Furthermore, the tasks of sworn officers is to enforce the law generally, not to provide citizens with individual protection. He does not have authority to arrest anyone who is thinking or behaving suspiciously, AFIK. He can only arrest one who has broken the law, not one who is thinking about it.
In addition, trying to effectively secure an open-boundary system would likely simply be economically foolish. For a community to be able to afford protecting their school children against an Adam Lanza type demands an impenetrable perimeter with a controlled entrance/exit doctrine. Let me say, in this you have not thought of nor mentioned the factor of explosives, which Barbaro (Olean, 1974), Harris & Klebold (Columbine, 1999), and Holmes (Aurora, 2012) had included in their preparations. Nor do I see discovering non-metallic cutlery without individual inspections, either. When we move to the next level (and I presume we will) of experiencing suicide bombing by the perpetrator of himself, we must have bag/briefcase inspection as a part of the school security protocol, and perhaps canine intervention.
Almost certainly the backpack carryall idea will have to go. Perhaps carrying a zillion personal items back and forth between home and school will also have to go, especially when letting 200 students into the building at a time will require too much time and congestion. Another plan is bringing items once at the beginning of term for continual storage, and taking them out once at the end of term. This might work; with no backpacks, lunchboxes, containers etc. carried in by regular occupants. Just their bodies and clothes, eh? For adults, securely store one's personal firearm at the door -- no guns unless the person has have been trained and vetted for a voluntarily offered security role. Then the individual check of staff and visitors would be less overwhelming, or bunching.
A policemen in every hall and classroom can not alone squash bombing or bringing in a ceramic knife, so start upgrading you thinking to make security practical and economical.
What I have thus far proposed has been shown to work, whereas your approach will only be a partial solution. I think you need to go back to your drawing table, go out and examine some point-of-entry/exit installations, and get some professional advice, before you address this problem with simplistic coffee-chat-type ruminations.
Thanks for the opportunity to put your ideas under a critical spotlight. Everyone will benefit from the exposure of that kind of cursory rejection.
My nephew was until recently in charge of security over many embassies. I wish I was able to have his opinions on this. I doubt they would be like yours here. However, I certainly believe that the current legislation for "gun-fee zones" is juvenile and idiotic, and does not work. Neither does banning responsible people from choosing to bear arms for their own protection. In the open environment as in public or private colleges, it is really unwise to prevent adult-age students, instructors, or staff from exercising their 2nd Amdt rights.
Respectfully ---
Prolific verbiage justifying the trivially defeated does not improve the fact it is trivially defeated.
Mass murderers are best deterred, by far, by voluntarily armed citizens. What you insist on would take great effort and cost, and is easily defeated despite your extraordinary measures.
What I suggest has already saved a couple dozen lives since the Newtown massacre, at no public effort nor cost.