A teacher accidentally fired a pistol inside a California classroom while lecturing about public safety and injured three students, according to police.
Dennis Alexander was pointing the gun at the ceiling when he inadvertently fired it Tuesday at Seaside High School, said Abdul Pridgen, the city's police chief.
Bullet fragments ricocheted off the ceiling and hit a 17-year-old student in the neck, Pridgen said. Shortly after the incident, class resumed as usual.
The teen’s father, Fermin Gonzales, said he rushed his son to the hospital after the 17-year-old returned from school with blood on his shirt and a neck injury.Let that soak in for a moment: a teacher fired a gun in a classroom, injured three students, one of whom was bleeding from the neck to the point where he ultimately had to go to the hospital, and then resumed teaching as if nothing had happened! No, "Hey, is everyone OK?" Just, "Oopsie, my bad. Now open your textbooks to page 23."
The idea that the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun is an adolescent fantasy born of watching too many Westerns. The best way to stop a bad guy with a gun is to make sure that the bad guy never has a gun in the first place. (It also helps to realize that "bad" and "mentally disturbed" are not synonyms.)
I hope that a minor injury is all it's going to take to get people to come to their senses, and not an all-out bloodbath. But I'll give long odds against.
Just saw this so my comments are a little late, but...
ReplyDeleteThe idea that the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun is an adolescent fantasy born of watching too many Westerns.
This is both a straw man and irrelevant to the actual issue with the incident you describe in this post. It's a straw man because the argument for allowing citizens to be armed is not that that's the only way to stop bad guys with guns; it's that, since no government can possibly guarantee that no bad guy will ever get a gun (see further comments below), we citizens have the right to exercise our own responsible judgment about when there is enough risk to justify us having a gun for self defense. Take that right away and you no longer have a free country.
It's irrelevant because pointing out that a particular teacher is stupid and not qualified to use a gun has nothing whatever to do with how best to protect kids in schools against gun violence, or whether allowing teachers who are not stupid and who are qualified to use a gun might be a valid part of that. Yes, one could argue that teachers need to focus on teaching; but the particular balance of the various considerations involved can be different for different schools, different neighborhoods, different people. Which is another reason for letting responsible people exercise responsible judgment.
The best way to stop a bad guy with a gun is to make sure that the bad guy never has a gun in the first place.
If I thought there was even some chance that a government, any government, could actually do this, I might be willing to get on board, even though I would still think it's a bad idea to prevent citizens who have responsible judgment from exercising it. But that's a moot point because, as I said above, no government can possibly do this. So even if keeping guns out of the hands of bad guys is worth trying, we responsible citizens have to have the right to a plan B if it doesn't work.
(It also helps to realize that "bad" and "mentally disturbed" are not synonyms.)
Which just makes it even more impossible for any government to deliver on a promise to keep guns out of the hands of bad guys. At least "mentally disturbed" is a category we have some way (however uncertain) of testing. There are other tests for "bad", yes (such as a felony conviction, but existing law already prohibits felons from buying guns), but there is no test that will always find all the bad guys. So again, there has to be a plan B.
(Or possibly plans B, C, D, etc.--there's no reason why individual citizens being armed has to be the only other option. There are lots of things schools could do, for example, to improve security without requiring individual teachers to be armed. But to do that you have to face the fact that "keep all the bad guys from getting guns" is not always going to work, so you need to put other defenses in place, and those are your responsibility, not the government's--you the citizen, you the parent, you the school board member. The big problem I see with gun violence in our society is that so many people seem unwilling to admit that.)
> the argument for allowing citizens to be armed is not that that's the only way to stop bad guys with guns
ReplyDeleteTell that to Wayne LaPierre, executive VP of the NRA.
http://washington.cbslocal.com/2012/12/21/nra-only-way-to-stop-a-bad-guy-with-a-gun-is-with-a-good-guy-with-a-gun/
I didn't invent that slogan.
> a particular teacher is stupid and not qualified to use a gun
This was not just any teacher. This was an active-duty reserve police officer. To dismiss his actions because they were stupid is the no-true-scotsman fallacy (with "properly trained teacher" playing the role of the Scotsman).
> If I thought there was even some chance that a government, any government, could actually do this, I might be willing to get on board
Then look at what they did in Australia:
http://fortune.com/2018/02/20/australia-gun-control-success/
I didn't invent that slogan.
ReplyDeleteI know. But "good guy with a gun" is not equivalent to "random person who does not have to meet any requirements for responsible gun ownership".
Also, the proposal for armed security personnel in schools that the article describes is not the same as arming teachers. You can have armed people in the school whose sole job is security.
Of course, as I've already noted, whether an individual school actually needs armed security guards in it is (or should be) a decision for the local community to make--parents, teachers, school administrators. But you can't make that decision rationally if you stick your head in the sand and refuse to admit the possibility that some schools might be in communities where the safety of the children does require armed security guards (or other security measures, for that matter--see below).
This was not just any teacher. This was an active-duty reserve police officer.
Unfortunately, that is not a very good proxy for "responsible gun owner". It should be, but it isn't.
Nor, unfortunately, is it a good proxy for "person who understands their duty to protect children". At the recent school shooting in Florida, armed law enforcement officers stood around outside the school doing nothing while the shooter was killing people inside. Which again goes to show that citizens cannot trust the government to protect them.
(Also, as far as I can tell, the doors of the school in Florida weren't even locked, and there was no security checking of who could come in. That seems like another obvious basic security measure that could have been taken, if only people would stop refusing to admit that some schools in some communities might actually need security.)
Then look at what they did in Australia
I'll take a look and respond separately to this item.
Then look at what they did in Australia:
ReplyDeleteOk, having looked at the article, what it's describing is already the state of current law in the US. So if Australia is going to be our model, then all of the people calling for new legislation in the wake of every shooting are calling for the wrong thing. What they should be calling for is for our current laws to be enforced.
This assumes, however, that the new laws that Australia passed after the Port Arthur massacre actually did make a difference. The article gives no statistics for what the long term gun violence rates were in Australia before the massacre, so I have no way of judging whether its claim that the new laws helped is true or false.
> > This was an active-duty reserve police officer.
ReplyDelete> Unfortunately, that is not a very good proxy for "responsible gun owner". It should be, but it isn't.
What else is there?
There *is* no good way to predict who is going to wield a gun effectively in a crisis and who won't. That's the whole point.
> you can't make that decision rationally if you stick your head in the sand and refuse to admit the possibility that some schools might be in communities where the safety of the children does require armed security guards (or other security measures, for that matter--see below).
The belief that security guards are necessary is a self-fulfilling prophecy. The annoying thing about self-fulfilling prophecies is that they are actually true if you believe them. I prefer to work towards a world where armed security guards in schools are not necessary, and a pre-requisite to building such a world is believing it's possible. (Happily, there is evidence that it is in fact possible. The world is full of places where children go to school without armed security guards and without regularly getting shot. I grew up in such a world, and it's still true in many western countries. The U.S. is an extreme outlier in this regard.)
> the doors of the school in Florida weren't even locked
The shooter was a teacher. How would locking the doors have helped?
> what it's describing is already the state of current law in the US
No, Australia's gun control law is much more stringent than in the U.S.
> This assumes, however, that the new laws that Australia passed after the Port Arthur massacre actually did make a difference.
Happily there is data:
https://cdn1.sph.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/1264/2012/10/bulletins_australia_spring_2011.pdf
There *is* no good way to predict who is going to wield a gun effectively in a crisis and who won't. That's the whole point.
ReplyDeleteSo what, exactly, is the point? This seems to me to be an argument for not letting the government decide who gets guns and who doesn't, particularly if that involves disarming the good guys. Is that your position?
The shooter was a teacher.
Not in the Florida school shooting, which is what I was talking about in the part of my post that you responded to with this comment. Obviously locking doors isn't going to help in every case.
Australia's gun control law is much more stringent than in the U.S.
How so? All I can see is that their enforcement appears to be much more stringent than in the US.
Happily there is data
Thanks for the reference. I agree the data presented supports the claim that the Australian measures made a difference. I also note, however, that the conclusion of the article gives several good reasons why gun buybacks in the US have not been effective. The third reason in particular (the much greater difficulty of importing guns into Australia because it's an island nation) would also explain why it's so much harder for gun control measures generally in the US to prevent guns from getting into the wrong hands.
> So what, exactly, is the point?
ReplyDeleteThat arming teachers is a stupid idea.
> > Australia's gun control law is much more stringent than in the U.S.
> How so?
28 day waiting period, you have to provide a "genuine reason" for why you need a gun, and there's a national registry.
That arming teachers is a stupid idea.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure I see how that follows from "there's no way to tell for sure who will use guns responsibly". I could see how "arming anybody is a stupid idea" follows from it, but not arming anybody is not a viable option. Even Australia has armed law enforcement.
> not arming anybody is not a viable option
ReplyDeleteOnly because we choose for it not to be. We could choose otherwise.
> Even Australia has armed law enforcement.
Teaching and law enforcement are two completely different professions. Trying to have the same person perform both roles pretty ensures that neither one will get done very well.
We could choose otherwise.
ReplyDeleteReally? Bear in mind that not arming anybody includes not arming law enforcement or military. As I said, even Australia doesn't do that.
Teaching and law enforcement are two completely different professions.
Which is irrelevant to the point I was making in what you quoted, that not arming anybody is not a viable option. Even if you ensure that teaching and law enforcement are completely separate professions (which evidently California does not do, since, as you noted before, the teacher in the incident you posted about was also law enforcement), and disarm all the teachers, you still will have armed law enforcement. (And military.)
> > We could choose otherwise.
ReplyDelete> Really?
Yes. Of course. There is nothing in the laws of physics that compels anyone, even the police, to carry a gun. I'm not saying that disarming law enforcement entirely would be prudent, but it is an option. In the U.K. most police do not carry guns. British police officers overwhelmingly support this policy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police_use_of_firearms_in_the_United_Kingdom
"Surveys by the Police Federation of England and Wales have continued to show police officers' considerable resistance to routine arming."
Personally, I think that guns should be treated more like airplanes. Anyone who wants to can fly a plane, but before you're allowed to do it you have to go through some pretty rigorous training and get a license so that you don't kill yourself or others. Also like airplanes, every gun should be registered with the government and tracked when it changes ownership to ensure that its owner is properly licensed. Failure to properly secure a gun should result in civil liability. Gun manufacturers should be held liable for injury caused by defects in their product just as aircraft manufacturers are, e.g.:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/popular-remington-700-rifle-linked-to-potentially-deadly-defects-2/
In the U.K. most police do not carry guns.
ReplyDeleteMost. Not all. So they don't disarm everybody. And UK military certainly is not disarmed.
Personally, I think that guns should be treated more like airplanes.
This is a reasonable position, but note that it is not consistent with your previous statement that there is no way to tell who will use guns responsibly. The whole point of the rigorous process you need to go through to get a pilot's license is to filter out the people who cannot fly a plane responsibly.