If you’re keeping score at home, the number students saved by teachers carrying firearms in the classroom is zero. The number of students injured by teachers carrying firearms in the classroom is at least three:
A teacher who also serves as a reserve police officer accidentally fired a gun inside a Seaside High School classroom Tuesday, police said, and three students were injured.
Dennis Alexander was teaching a course about gun safety for his Administration of Justice class when his gun went off at 1:20 p.m.
Alexander was pointing his gun at the ceiling when it fired. Pieces of the ceiling fell to the ground.
A news release from the Seaside Police Department said no one suffered “serious injuries.” One 17-year-old boy suffered moderate injuries when fragments from the bullet ricocheted off the ceiling and lodged into his neck, the student’s father, Fermin Gonzales, told KSBW.
The teacher had just told the class that he wanted to make sure his gun wasn’t loaded, when the gun fired, according to Gonzales [Amy Larson, “Seaside High Teacher Accidentally Fires Gun in Class, Students Injured,” KSBW, 2018.03.13].
As I’ve written previously and as Marine turned teacher Debra Ciamacca wrote last month in Time, “Guns have no place in the classroom…. The chance for an accidental discharge is guaranteed.” (And as commenters noted yesterday, when it comes to handling firearms, there is no such thing as an “accident,” only a failure to handle the firearm properly.) If there is no gun in the classroom, the chances of anyone getting hit by bullets or bullet-impelled ceiling-tile fragments is zero.
Guns also guarantee that teachers won’t be able to teach as effectively:
Lastly, a gun acts as an impediment in my relationships with students. Teachers are guides and mentors and discussion leaders and lecturers. We talk; we cajole; we jump up and down; we clown around. We prance; we laugh; we instruct; we care. We put our whole selves out there to students so that they can see that we are real people. A gun is a barrier that separates me from my students. It says stand back instead of stand up. Weapons are not conducive to the teacher/student relationship [Debra Ciamacca, “I Was a Marine. Now I’m a Teacher. Don’t Give Me a Gun,” Time, 2018.02.23].
Don’t hurt teachers’ relationships with students, and don’t hurt teachers and students. Keep guns out of schools.
The solution to gun violence is more guns. So says the NRA. I still can’t believe that anybody agrees with such nonsense, but many do.
We need fewer guns in the classroom. Not more.
Exactly. There is overwhelming evidence (as noted above — and many other examples) that increase in guns equals increase in gun violence (accidents, bad shoots, etc)
Teacher gun safety class wings 3 students. https://wtop.com/education/2018/03/teacher-accidentally-fires-gun-in-class-students-injured/
The teacher is also a reserve police officer. Lucky he did not have a bumpstock. Let teachers teach and lets move forward to limit military style magazines and access to those that are nuts.
and it happened the same day a continent away in Virginia where a good guy with a gun had an accidental discharge in school.
https://www.vox.com/2018/3/14/17120046/school-shooting-accidental-california-virginia-gun-control
With good guys with guns like these, we don’t …blah, blah badguys with guns in schools.
What? No! I never expected . . . !!
Said no one ever except the ammosexuals and LaPierre.