Gun Free School Zone map for CA

[anony mouse]

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

Someone else asked for this earlier, and while its entirely possible I dont think its high on his list of things to do right now. Its really easy to run out of colors given the various types of schools that are out there that qualify under the GFSZ legislation, and that can make some blend in a bit with the map, especially when it gets printed out. Red was chosen originally because it has a high contrast with most objects on the map, where yellow, green and orange can blend in with things like parks (green), roads (yellow/orange), and other features.

Because the State gets to decide what is and what is not a "school" for the purposes of the statute, anything CA Dept of Education lists should be counted.

The list of school types are (at least):
* Private
* Special Education School
* County Community School
* Youth Authority Facility
* Opportunity School
* Juvenile Court School
* Other County-Wide Programs
* Elementary School
* Single Elementary School in District
* Intermediate/Middle School
* Alternative schools of choice
* Junior High School
* K-12 School
* High School
* Single High School in District
* Continuation High School
* Community Day School
* State Special School
* Adult Education Center. (K-12 classes, usually for dropouts)

As a result you end up with a palette of colors that will either be harder to distinguish from the other schools or it will blend with road features.

[aemergin]

As a result you end up with a palette of colors that will either be harder to distinguish from the other schools or it will blend with road features.

Maybe just two colors then? Public and "other" .. just so people take notice of something that might not be an obvious school.

Aemergin / Erik

[anony mouse]

* Adult Education Center. (K-12 classes, usually for dropouts)

Actually this is a guess that its k-12 classes for dropouts, if anyone can prove that its not then they will be excluded from the list.

18 USC 921(a)(26) The term “school” means a school which provides elementary or secondary education, as determined under State law.

secondary means high school, not university afaik.

[B.D.Dubloon]

Well for ****'s sake, you can't hardly carry anywhere in this state. It is messed up to think about, but this map makes me feel uncomfortably like a sex offender trying to find a place to live, except I just want to exercise my rights.

BDD

[anony mouse]

Well for ****'s sake, you can't hardly carry anywhere in this state. It is messed up to think about, but this map makes me feel uncomfortably like a sex offender trying to find a place to live, except I just want to exercise my rights.

BDD

I think that was the idea with the legislation, it has nothing to do with protecting kids, the 1000 foot radius was more to make sure that you couldnt leave your house with a firearm, and basically make things confusing and problematic to the point that some people will just not have them because its too much of a hassle. At least that is my opinion on the matter, the whole notion that criminals, who by definition violate laws, are going to follow laws and thus gun control will work is insane. This is why in Feburary 2000 when Clinton had a study commissioned that showed that gun control == more crime (opposite of what he wanted) he tried to squelch that study, but it did cause the DNC to drop anti-gun as a requirement to be nominated just a couple months after the study came out, now its an individual choice in that party.

[anony mouse]

The updates are going in now for the remainder of the schools, or at least what appears to be the remainders. The count is over 5000 now, so only 10k more to process and get added which should be done just after lunch time today.

Be warned that most browsers do not seem to like this much data, google's chrome handles it the best with a minimal slowdown when zooming and panning, firefox and IE both seem to lag a bit but they do work, zooming and panning is a bit painful though as more schools get added, so use the search bar in the lower left of the map to get where you want to go faster

[obeygiant]

Thank you for bringing the site back online.

[gravedigger]

Face it, the libs are going to plunk a "School" down every 500 FEET across the entire state as a back door means of banning the practical use and transport of guns. They'll call every home with a childcare license a "School" and it all boils down to the fact that the 1,000 foot rule has to be DEFEATED.

[Liberty1]

Be sure to pass your final (or as final as reasonable to take a hint from the language of 626.9) to the CGF board and the "right people" for possible future use.

[putput]

As I suspected, I can leave the house for about a block and then, no matter which way I go, I have to lock everything up. Sucks! Thanks for the info.

[Amacias805]

in my area its missing a few public schools

[bigtoe416]

Wrote a script tonight to parse that public school data and do some calculations and spit out points for polygons which can be used to approximate school zones. You guys can find the script, initial public school data, and output in JSON format at:

http://github.com/khall/Map-School-Zones/tree/master

If this is useful to anybody I can definitely make modifications to do whatever might be cool.

[Librarian]

Wrote a script tonight to parse that public school data and do some calculations and spit out points for polygons which can be used to approximate school zones. You guys can find the script, initial public school data, and output in JSON format at:

http://github.com/khall/Map-School-Zones/tree/master

If this is useful to anybody I can definitely make modifications to do whatever might be cool.

While this is an interesting technical challenge, I think the various attempts so far are sufficient.

The reason is all we need, as a 'consumer', is to have a good idea of the extent of the problem we face. For that purpose, circles and the incomplete list we're using is satisfactory.

Both the Federal and State laws have in their text the idea of 'knowing' one is in a school zone. If either government body is actually interested in enforcing this idiocy, it should be up to them to provide the detailed maps and the on-the-ground indications of school zones. Failing that, we ought to be able (with rueful acknowledgment of Theseus's situation) to defend ourselves on the 'How was I supposed to know?' line.

To actually accomplish a map, one would need the lat/long pairs for every corner on every property. The available data is the approximate lat/long of the street address of the school. In my neighborhood, the western boundary of one property is on a street, and the eastern boundary is the next street over - about 1200 feet away. A circle centered on that street address has its eastern half entirely within the school property.

With the available data, we just can't provide a good map, and it isn't our responsibility to do so.

[stuckinhippytown]

Cool map. For the public schools, you might have to go district to district.

Do you have plans for including universities/colleges? Maybe as a different color (seeing as a different law prohibits protection on university property)?

HEy you can carry on campuses you just have to have permission from the dean or president im currently working on that with 6 other ccw ers

[paul0660]

Federal law prohibits transporting all guns in school zones unless they are unloaded and locked; our state law "does not prohibit or limit the otherwise lawful
transportation of any other firearm, other than a pistol,
revolver, or other firearm capable of being concealed on the
person, in accordance with state law." So according to the state law, you can't UOC in a car as you usually would be able to, but you can have an unloaded unlocked longgun in the car as you drive by the school. If stopped with said longgun, would the LEO find a violation of the federal law even though the state law is not being violated?