The basic concept isn’t a bad idea, assuming it works and you already have the cameras. If it ran locally at a negligible cost, I’d say it would be a potentially useful tool. But even then, it wouldn’t solve the problems, just help identify them more quickly, especially in situations where a gun is in the school but isn’t being fired yet. Less useful for an active shooter, more useful for spotting someone flashing a gun, brandishing, showing off to their friends, or even selling.
It would be like a smoke detector, good to have but only as part of a larger plan, and also not something you should be dumping a ton of money into.
I don’t think the smoke detector comparison is entirely valid as smoke and fire don’t make audible noise in the range of 150dB. Funnily enough smoke detectors only emit 85dB which is 65 times quieter than a gun shot (decibels are logarithmic).
Or like that list of scenarios I mentioned in the post you replied to.
flashing a gun, brandishing, showing off to their friends, or even selling.
These things don’t happen very often, but then, neither do fires.
Let me put it like this: If someone was looking at the security cameras and saw a person waving a gun around, do you think that they should say something, or should they just ignore it? If the answer is that they should say something, then there is at least some value in detecting the presence of a gun. After that, it’s just a matter of how effective and reliable the system would be, and what it costs to implement. But I’m not arguing that there are any worthwhile systems in existence, only that such a system could have value.
The basic concept isn’t a bad idea, assuming it works and you already have the cameras. If it ran locally at a negligible cost, I’d say it would be a potentially useful tool. But even then, it wouldn’t solve the problems, just help identify them more quickly, especially in situations where a gun is in the school but isn’t being fired yet. Less useful for an active shooter, more useful for spotting someone flashing a gun, brandishing, showing off to their friends, or even selling.
It would be like a smoke detector, good to have but only as part of a larger plan, and also not something you should be dumping a ton of money into.
I don’t think the smoke detector comparison is entirely valid as smoke and fire don’t make audible noise in the range of 150dB. Funnily enough smoke detectors only emit 85dB which is 65 times quieter than a gun shot (decibels are logarithmic).
Which is why I said that this would be less useful for active shooters and more useful for other scenarios.
Like finger guns on the playground or a food fight in the cafeteria?
Or like that list of scenarios I mentioned in the post you replied to.
These things don’t happen very often, but then, neither do fires.
Let me put it like this: If someone was looking at the security cameras and saw a person waving a gun around, do you think that they should say something, or should they just ignore it? If the answer is that they should say something, then there is at least some value in detecting the presence of a gun. After that, it’s just a matter of how effective and reliable the system would be, and what it costs to implement. But I’m not arguing that there are any worthwhile systems in existence, only that such a system could have value.