Scandinavia and the World
Scandinavia and the World

Comments #9821303:


Somber

0
Armed to immobilize 31 8, 10:00pm

As a teacher, I hate this. If there is a shooting, my priorities are clear. Lock the door. Barricade the door. (Seriously, I had a 2000 lb bookshelf on piano rollers that could be pushed in front of the door and locked that would make it effectively bullet proof. I had one class where during a shooting preparedness exercise, I identified students who could push it in front of the door and lock the wheels.) Do a count of my students. Notify to the office where my students are and which ones are missing and where the ones out of my class were last reported to be. And if the shooter tries to get in my classroom, I had a 12-20 foot extending aluminum ladder to get down from the second floor. My job would be to get the students out and be the last down.

If I have a gun, what are my priorities during a shooting? Wait for the shooter to get in so I can try to kill them? What if it's a cop trying to get in and I didn't hear them because my students are panicking? What if in the panic, I shoot and hit one of my students? What if I kill them? A lot of people who favor this plan have a lot of ways It could go right, and having thought of all the ways it could go wrong. Then there's what do I do with the damned thing the 99.999% of the time there is no shooting? (Seriously, shootings get so overreported when, in fact, they are extremely rare.) Do I keep it on my person? What's two prevent 2-3 of my students from restraining me and taking it off my person and killing someone they don't like in class? Keep it in a box in my desk? I've had students go through my desk before. If the gun is in a locked box, what's to prevent them from stealing the box, taking it out of the class, and trying every combo they can? Do I get fired if the gun gets stolen or taken from me?

The fig leaf, of course, is that it's all supposed to be voluntary. Great. So what happens when one of the teachers turns out to be mentally ill, has a weapon, and kills a student? It's gotten really close once already. https://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-teacher-shooting-20180228-story.html

You want to stop shootings? Remove the things that shoot. It's a very small, very select category of things.