Gun Free School Zone map for CA

[anony mouse]

Hi, this is my first post here but thought I could share some data for the map (great idea btw!) ..

http://www.cde.ca.gov/ds/si/ds/pubschls.asp

There you can download the full database of all California schools - type, address, even has latitude and longitude if it helps. Also, those files are maintained and updated daily (supposedly) so if you could find a way to map it as your data for your google map .. it would be some extra code but worth it in the end.

Aemergin / Erik

Thanks, will pass that along, that is the same site that the private schools came from. It seemed that the public ones were not as obvious to the creator of that page. The charter ones appear to only be in html format, which is less than suitable, so if anyone knows of a xls or csv or similar listing of charter ones then that can be done too.

Expect these to be added tonight.

[anony mouse]

It just occurred to me that homeschoolers have to declare themselves to be private schools. Do they then magically create a 1000' gun-free zone around their houses? Words fail to express how much that would suck.

that is a question for debate, but many legislators indicated that yes, yes it does because of the way that the statute defines "school"

18 USC 921(a)
Basically if you home school your kids you arent allowed to have guns in your house, and anyone that knows you homeschool and is within 1000 feet and not on private property or any of the other exceptions cant have them either.

Given that homeschool addresses are not disclosed however its hard to "know or reasonably should have known" that they are there.

[7x57]

Basically if you home school your kids you arent allowed to have guns in your house,

This I very much doubt. IIRC the principal can give anyone permission to possess a gun on campus.

I guess I should track it down in the PC.

7x57

[Timberline]

While the Google map application is a useful rough tool, its inherent weakness is the arbitrary polygonal radius it uses from a single lat/lon point. School yards are large, and often strangely-shaped. A proper GIS tool, such as provided by ESRI, which can project a boundary of 1000 feet from an arbitrary shape, might be the best source for accurate boundary maps handed out at gunshops and Police stations. The Google map will come close, but should only be used for "entertainment" purposes, as the current link advises.

It sure seems there's good cause for having the Authorities bear the cost of this (producing maps for handout), since they imposed the law on us.

[yellowfin]

Its a "safe school zone" not a "gun free school zone" the statute does not recognize these, although state law is free to make the entire state a zone of some type :/

For 70%+ of the population the state is a no CCW zone.

[anony mouse]

For 70%+ of the population the state is a no CCW zone.

it may be higher than that, I heard that 90% of the residents in CA live in urban areas, which generally are the ones that do not like CCWs because we should rely on the rampart and bart police to protect us :/

[pullnshoot25]

THIS IS AWESOME! Great start, I commend your efforts!

[Piper]

The madmen are the ones who passed this law.

Yeah well, you won't get an argument from me.

[DDT]

Remember to pad ALL of those circles by a generous amount - if the circle is centered on the school and the school grounds are 1000 feet across, it does NOT mean that you may safely open carry on the sidewalk past the gates of the school unmolested. For safety's sake, it's a 1000' radius extending uniformly around the property line.

(Grabs popcorn to wait for the "crap, now you're creating a way that we should have 'reasonably known' we were violating a school zone!")

Actually if you have a local map on you when you are OCing it does create a situation in which you should have "reasonably known" this is EXACTLY why you DO NOT want to pad the circle. If you pad the circle by say 200' but you get stopped 100' into the circle you might be sort of safe but you have a reason to believe that you might be in violation. If you make the circles EXACTLY 1000' then just stay clear of the shaded areas you have taken reasonable measures to identify GFSZs and you also made conscious effort to obey the law. As long as you are out of the "red zone" you cannot be expected to have "reasonably known" that you were violating. Keep the circles exact and stay clear.

[Dark&Good]

Excellent idea/initiative

[anony mouse]

I was told that the data file for the schools is a bit messed up, there are missing gps coordinates, there are poorly formed lines, its just screwy, so it may not go up tonight but its being worked on as I write this (although I dont know for how much longer, it is getting late already).

So expect it soon, there is an additional 15,000 schools or so in that list, some are closed so they wont be added, but it will be 7-8 times more schools than is there now.

[Librarian]

11,146 with lat/long data.

Since this is 'for entertainment', might as well use them all; some doofus DA is likely not to know or care about closed.

.......


Yes, there are data problems.

Some lat/long pairs plot into the ocean or SF Bay. (Schools of fish?)

There are not enough dots on Concord the way I created them; since the .KML turns out to be exactly 10 meg, I wonder if I hit a limitation on the tool. But I threw out any lines without the lat/long, so maybe the Concord schools are in the couple hundred I left out.

But ...

SF, again



Los Angeles



I prefer the Maps version to the Earth version; much easier to share, and the actual satellite view is distracting, I think.

[aemergin]

Maybe try to use the GClientGeocoder.getLatLng() object in the gmaps API to convert the actual address string into a GLatLng .. then again you are pushing the geocode limit of 15k per day on a single view of the map.

Might be worth writing some code to run once a day - check the original (screwed up) data against a file you maintain - if there are any changes update your file. You can use the google maps API geocoding service straight through HTTP .. probably the easiest way to pull the lat/lng and dump it into your own file.

I'm not a real programmer, I just play one on the internet.

Aemergin / Erik

[anony mouse]

He is converting based on address to get as many as possible. He also is doing open & merged only, not pending or closed. There should be about 15000 schools when its done, but the web server appears to be dead so this may have to wait until tomorrow.

[aemergin]

He is converting based on address to get as many as possible. He also is doing open & merged only, not pending or closed. There should be about 15000 schools when its done, but the web server appears to be dead so this may have to wait until tomorrow.

Awesome - I can't wait to start using it. One thing I was thinking about was maybe using a different color circle for public, private and charter .. some of those smaller schools can be hard to spot while driving, but if you see it on this map as a different color you might remember while driving through that area.

I know it won't be entirely accurate but at least there will be something that people can use to understand visually just how many schools are out there. Being able to plot a course to work or the grocery store while avoiding school zones might make people a little more comfortable with the idea of open carry if they aren't worried about locking/unlocking their firearm along the way.

Aemergin / Erik