Specifically high school. I went to a high school in, let’s just call it an urban environment. Every high school in the city made their students all through a metal detector. I considered it normal after a while and it made me and others feel safe.
As I became an adult, I asked my coworkers if they did and none of them did. They all went to suburban schools around my city. With all the news of school shootings I found that to be weird. Granted, I graduated high school 10 years ago so maybe things have changed.
But my question is for those that did not walk through, did it ever cross your mind? Would you feel safer at school if you did? Do you think all schools should make you walk through a metal detector?
48 comments
Sure, some of them do. It’s not particularly common though.
I never went to school with metal detectors and I went to two different high schools. Though the school I went to take my SAT did have metal detectors.
Yep. We had too many gun scares and a school shooting a few counties over so they installed them half way through my junior year.
A student was actually caught with guns and ammunition and a list. I imagine that was the final nail.
My school never did it but there was mention of it being a possibility. I graduated in 2012.
Nope
Graduated in 95. Blue collar town with some rougher parts. We didn’t have them to enter school but we did have them at football games and basketball games. Would I feel safer? No, people could just leave their weapons in their car lol.
No?
I’ve never attended nor taught at a school that has metal detectors.
I grew up at a time and in an area where from November 15-30th it was common for students to have rifles in their cars because they went hunting that morning or planned to after school. There were also nine unsupervised entrances that were available for only 400-450 students.
No metal detectors and no school shootings.
I never did, heck I carried a pocket knife to school every day and while we weren’t allowed to several of my teachers knew I always had one. Some of my younger siblings had to have clear or mesh backpacks but still no metal detectors.
Personally I think it’s pretty stupid. Someone who wants to do harm to other students isn’t going to be stopped by a metal detector.
I never did. Beyond a few vague threats (which they punished the person giving them) safety was never an issue in my school. It would also be a huge PITA to have to have 2000+ students line up every morning.
I graduated high school in 2006 and never went through a metal detector.
My high school didn’t have them permanently, but we did once have to go through them the day after a kid in the elementary school killed his dad’s pregnant girlfriend with a shotgun. After that day, never again.
I did not. My kids do not, kids in the school district my wife teaches in do
Never. They had us go through the front office after the Parkland shooting, but other than that, no security.
We were allowed to go home for lunch, so we’d just leave and renter through some side door whenever we wanted to.
No, I went to Catholic school in an urbanized area…or I guess you’d call it an old streetcar suburb.
My sister went to the public high school and I don’t think she did, but the campus was locked down. You couldn’t get in without signing in and identifying yourself and all that jazz.
Nope
Nope. There was a discharge incident in my high school, but no metal detector.
No
My sister’s high school had them, mine did not. We lived in a small city in Connecticut but I went to a vocational school wayyyyyyy out in the middle of nowhere.
No, never.
Never went to a school with them and I’ve actually never seen one with them in person either.
Nah, not at all
Not in the schools I went to.
I went to a middle school in New York with metal detectors. We also had to let security search our bags before entering.
I never did, all throughout kindergarten to my graduate program, not a single one.
Current high school student in a public city school.
Every morning when we walk in a security guard scans our bags with one of those hand metal detectors
No, I did not.
Never did.
No, never even seen them. People were talking about them when I graduated though, 2011.
I did not but I also went to a really nice high school so it isn’t surprising.
Not only did we not have metal detectors, we had a rifle team (clay target shooting basically) that would keep their rifles in their lockers. It was never an issue, no one questioned it. I graduated in 2012.
I went to about 20 different schools throughout K-12 and only 1 school had metal detectors because it was in a high crime area with multiple gangs in the area. It wasn’t odd for gangs to recruit high school kids to sell drugs in the school and with illegal drugs comes weapons and violence.
Despite this, if you stayed out of that business, you never saw any of it. Either way, the vast majority of schools don’t have metal detectors but if they do, it’s because they need it.
Only ghetto schools
Not a single high school in my school district has metal detectors. Also never been a school shooting in the district along with most others. I think there’s been 2 incidents in the last 10 years where a student has brought a gun to school and it was confiscated.
The school district I attended has about 70k students and is one of the larger districts in the Greater Houston Area.
Nope. I’ve heard of it, but I’ve never seen it myself.
Nope. I have never seen them at any schools.
None of the schools I ever went to had us do that.
No never went to a school with metal detectors
In both middle and high school they’d set up metal detectors like every other month for surprise inspections. It was rather annoying because there’d be long ass lines and they’d take forever. I once got held up because I had a tenor sax and flute with me so the cop had to inspect them and apparently didn’t know what a saxophone looked like.
We didn’t have metal detectors, no.
I went to 4 different school districts in NY and never had those. I would not be surprised if some of the NYC schools did, though.
No graduate in 2005
That was not a thing in my suburban high school in NJ. Metal detectors in high schools is pretty much entirely an inner city thing.
No. It wasn’t uncommon for kids to carry a pocket knife either. I still remember the principle walking by my friend who had his knife clipping on the inside of his pocket. You could see the top of the knife and the clip on the outside of his pocket. All the principle did was walk by, pull the knife up and drop it down into the kids pocket. Basically his way of saying “just make sure I can’t see it”. In shop class the teacher would borrow a knife of lighter from a kid sometimes too. If we had metal detectors it probably would have done nothing but get good kids in trouble for no reason.
No
I went to a private high school in the early 2000’s. We had a fence around the school and a guard had to let your vehicle in the gate. Students had a sticker on their windshield, no sticker and you had to wait for the guard to radio the office to see if you were permitted on the property. But there was no metal detector.
I felt safe at my HS and never even thought about the need for a metal detector
There’s some. The only metal detectors that I’ve ever had at a school I’ve been to was the arena at my college. And that was just so they could host more events. The arena seats 12K so I think some security was justified.