Hey, About Those Armed Teachers: They Really Need To Stop Shooting Students.
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In what could be seen as a karmic preview of today's school walkouts to protest gun violence, a couple of Good Guys With Guns accidentally fired their guns in schools in Virginia and California yesterday. Thank goodness they were both trained law enforcement officers, because who knows what kind of havoc an untrained amateur might have wrought.
In Alexandria, Virginia, a school resource officer at George Washington Middle School accidentally fired his handgun while inside his office. The school cop, a five-year veteran of the Alexandria Police Department, somehow managed to make his gun go off while he was sitting down -- police spokespeople didn't say whether the gun was holstered, not holstered, or perhaps being spun around the officer's finger like in an old west movie. Maybe he was hammering nails with it. These things happen.
No one was hurt in the incident, and classes returned to normal. City police are investigating just how the negligent discharge occurred. The resource officer has been placed on "routine administrative leave."
The school district's interim superintendent, Lois Berlin, said the incident didn't exactly leave her thrilled at the prospect of teachers being armed, even if they get some training of some kind: "We had this happen with someone who's a highly trained officer. I think that speaks for itself." To say the least. Also, for an excellent discussion of some thorny questions related to arming teachers, see this Twitter thread by Stonekettle Station blogger Jim Wright.
In the other incident, in Seaside, California, a teacher at Seaside High School -- who's also a part-time police reservist with the Sand City Police Department -- fired a shot from a handgun into a classroom ceiling while checking to make sure his gun wasn't loaded. Looks like it had a round in the chamber after all, huh? Dennis Alexander was teaching a lesson about "gun safety" to his Administration of Justice class, a course for students interested in law enforcement careers, and apparently the kids learned very vividly that loaded guns are dangerous.
Fermin Gonzales, the father of one of three students who suffered minor injuries, told a local teevee station that Alexander had told the class he was just checking to see that his gun wasn't loaded when he pointed it at the ceiling and the gun discharged. Yr Wonkette is not an NRA-trained highly adept professional, but that strikes us as the sort of thing you might want to do before coming onto school grounds? Oh, but it gets even crazier:
The teacher was about to use the gun for a demonstration about how to disarm someone, according to Gonzales.
Call us a nervous nellie, but even if you made sure the chamber were cleared, isn't that the sort of thing you'd use a replica gun for? Oh, we are such silly liberals, worrying about things like that. But the parade of stupid isn't even over yet:
The 17-year-old boy's parents were shocked when he returned home with blood on his shirt and bullet fragments in his neck. The student's parents rushed him to a hospital for X-rays.
"He's shaken up, but he's going to be OK," Gonzales told KSBW. "I'm just pretty upset that no one told us anything and we had to call the police ourselves to report it."
So what we are learning here is that the entire school is staffed by Homer Simpson.
Mr. Alexander was placed on leave from his job at the high school and also from his duties as a member of the police reserve. The police chief, Brian Ferrante, said, in a bit of an understatement, "I have concerns about why he was displaying a loaded firearm in a classroom. We will be looking into that." One might hope so, particularly since the TV station notes that even if Alexander were licensed to carry a concealed weapon, "Teachers are not legally allowed to have firearms in California classrooms." We'd assume that means even an unloaded one, yes?
At least after the kid who was injured went to the hospital, the school district finally sent out a note to parents about the incident:
"Also, if your kid comes home early from school all bleeding and with bullet fragments in his or her neck, please accept our apologies and rest assured that if you send us a note, we'll make sure that counts as an excused absence."
As of blog posting time, Yr Wonkette is not aware that either incident has been declared a false flag attack aimed at undermining Donald Trump's plan to arm teachers, but we haven't exactly gone looking, either.
[ NBC Washington / AP / KBSW / Stonekettle on Twitter]
Might depend on the surroundings. Certainly if one is outside, the ground is better than the air. Inside, a floor of tile-over-concrete is a ricochet hazard, so a drop ceiling might actually be a better "backstop", but perhaps the supply closet full of stacks of paper and stuff would have been better.
Has anyone pointed out that the school didn't think it important for a student who was peppered with shrapnel to seek medical attention? What about the parents? If I had come home bleeding from shrapnel as if it were no more problematic than mat-burn on my knees from gym, my parents would have been on the phone with their lawyer while I was in the ER.