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The Los Angeles Times reports
After their teacher fires a gun at school, Georgia students use opportunity to challenge Trump's proposal
Jesse Randall Davidson wasn't a stranger, some mysterious threat from the outside. He was a bearded, bespectacled, 53-year-old social studies teacher and the play-by-play announcer for the football games at Dalton High School in northwest Georgia.
But when the teacher brought a gun to school, barricaded himself in his classroom [February 28], and fired a single shot, students quickly recognized that this wasn't just a sad local incident.
Amid national outrage over school shootings--and suggestions by President Trump that schools would be safer if some teachers packed guns--it was a political event.
"my favorite teacher at Dalton high school just blockaded his door and proceeded to shoot", a 16-year-old student named Chondi Chastain tweeted at the National Rifle Assn., earning more than 17,000 retweets. "We had to run out The back of the school in the rain. Students were being trampled and screaming. I dare you to tell me arming teachers will make us safe."
[...] When students came to his door at room 413 during third period--a time his classroom is normally empty--it was locked, and Davidson wouldn't let them in, police said later.
"My brother, who was one door down from the teacher, said he was yelling at his students to 'get the [expletive] out of here'", junior Henry Hansen, 17, wrote in a private message on Twitter.
The principal, Steve Bartoo, tried to unlock the door with a key, but Davidson "slammed the door before I could open it and said, 'Don't come in here, I have a gun'", Bartoo said at a televised news conference.
Bartoo put the school into lockdown mode, and soon after, Davidson "apparently fired a shot from a handgun through an exterior window of the classroom", Dalton police spokesman Bruce Frazier said at a separate news conference. "It did not appear that it was aimed at anybody."
[...] Dalton police, the Whitfield County Sheriff's Office, the Georgia State Patrol, and federal law enforcement agencies all responded to the emergency. "More or less everybody with a badge in the area came running", Frazier said.
After about half an hour, Davidson surrendered and was taken into custody
[...] The Dalton students immediately turned to social media to take issue with Trump's calls to arm teachers.
Heavy.com adds
Records show Davidson has been charged with aggravated assault with a gun, terroristic threats and acts, carrying a weapon in a school safety zone without a license, reckless conduct, disrupting public school, and possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony. He is being held without bail at the Whitfield County Jail.
[...] Davidson has a history of bizarre medical episodes both at school and outside of school, The Chattanoogan reports.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Saturday March 03 2018, @09:35AM (18 children)
If you think they are, you probably don't understand what the problem is.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 03 2018, @10:19AM (17 children)
Port Aurthur massacre - Australia - 1996
1 gunman - 35 dead - 23 wounded
Afterwards, the people of Australia said ENOUGH!
The changed the gun ownership laws.
They bought back the guns from those who were no longer entitled to ownership and destroyed those.
They haven't had a mass shooting since.
It clearly is a solution.
Compare:
May 2017 - 18 injured in Changchun, China knife attack [news24.com]
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Arik on Saturday March 03 2018, @11:24AM (7 children)
To a manufactured (and artificially defined) problem.
I've lived in Australia. It's the only place I've ever lived that was MORE violent than the US. They don't often shoot each other, these days. At least, not with firearms. I saw a case with a crossbow bolt - I think I'd rather have a bullet. But where they hide most of their deadly assaults is the key "glassing." When you "glass" someone, you hit them in the face with a glass hard enough to break it. Then you slice them up with what you have left. Many have been killed, many others disfigured for life. At least when I was there this was accurate.
Now, when I was there, they were working really, really hard to remove all glass from all public restaurants and bars. It was still in service and it was still being used, every night, but replacements had to be acrylic, so that it can't be used that way.
How far have they gone down that road now? I'm not there, I can't say directly, and I've been on the ground for events and then read about them in the news the next day too many times to do more than chortle at the notion that I can trust the news to tell me. But I'm sure if they have then the violence is simply finding new and more creative ways to express itself. Violence does not cease just because a common weapon is removed from the arena.
This is the same slippery slope argument that is used to outlaw freedom in each and every instance. The same argument that says you can't possibly be allowed to see the source your mobile phone, you can't possibly boot an unauthorized OS on your PC, etc.
The fact is that violence is a much deeper problem than simply having weapons available, and that attempting to eliminate weapons results in an impoverished environment, in all respects. Yes, it's somewhat more difficult to find an effective weapon in an impoverished environment, but no, that doesn't mean less violence. Quite the opposite.
Make a nerf world and the consequence will be a spike in killings by strangulation.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 03 2018, @03:32PM (5 children)
Please explain how a single person can "glass" 35 people.
Otherwise your statement ist just "the ban only made things better by multiple orders if magnitude, but not perfect and was this a total failure".
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Saturday March 03 2018, @06:04PM (3 children)
There are serial killers who have been convicted of strangling over 100 people, one at a time.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by LVDOVICVS on Saturday March 03 2018, @06:42PM (2 children)
Outlier data.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 03 2018, @09:26PM (1 child)
Comforting to the outlier victims, I'm sure.
(Score: 2) by LVDOVICVS on Saturday March 03 2018, @09:54PM
Not the point of the discussion. However, since the concept may be confusing to you, let me state it clearly; the goal is zero victims.
(Score: 1, Troll) by Arik on Saturday March 03 2018, @09:17PM
No. I don't want to give some asshole that would actually do it ideas. If you know anything about human anatomy and physiology it's not hard to figure it out yourself, unfortunately.
"the ban only made things better by multiple orders if magnitude"
No, it didn't, and nothing I said even vaguely implies that it did.
If you're a (physically) powerful person who wants to be able to bully and bash others without risk then I suppose it improved for you.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Saturday March 03 2018, @08:23PM
That sounds like an argument that gun control in Australia is working. Instead of being armed with a gun, they are armed with a glass bottle.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 03 2018, @04:25PM (7 children)
see, this is the problem with socialists. i have no problem with worker ownership of the means of production but now you want to take away people's right to have the means to revolt or protect against unjust government(public thieves/attackers/kidnappers) or private thieves/attackers/kidnappers. you've gone full authoritarian, nazi on us. what happened?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by LVDOVICVS on Saturday March 03 2018, @06:39PM (6 children)
You will never, ever have the means to "protect against unjust government." You can't defend yourself from an M1A1 tank. You can't fight a hellfire missile fired from three miles up, not to mention all the other means available to a government today. This is a completely spurious argument.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday March 03 2018, @07:10PM (3 children)
That is an idiotic statement. Latest guestimates of gun ownership in the US is around one hundred million people owning somewhere around four hundred million firearms that we know about. I want you to ask yourself what one million or so combined police and military are supposed to do against that should they decide it's necessary. Especially when a gun owning citizen looks exactly like a cowering subject right up until they decide to kill you.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 03 2018, @07:54PM (2 children)
Well, oh paranoid Buzzard, when 70% of the armed citizens are standing with the police and military to take down the Rebels (Sound familiar? Militia? Whiskey Rebellion?), the guns of the crazy 3%ers, or the possible 16% of Americans that might support them, will amount to naught. So cut the "Red Dawn" ammosexual fantasies.
(Score: 1) by tftp on Saturday March 03 2018, @09:10PM (1 child)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 03 2018, @10:14PM
With the obvious exception of tftp!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 04 2018, @02:24AM (1 child)
As just one simple example, uprising citizens could easily go shoot holes in the fuel tanks at air bases
and effectively ground the air resources. Looks like you have not been "thinking for yourself" and just
thrown in the towel.
(Score: 2) by LVDOVICVS on Monday March 05 2018, @07:28AM
Yeah, I forgot. Airbases are not massive parcels of land. They park the planes right next to the outermost fences at all of them. And they don't have guards, patrols, or sensors. And they don't have places around where they really do park the planes that if one enters, they literally shoot first, then maybe ask questions if anyone survives.
Congratulations. That's is the stupidest piece of gun fellating crap I've heard in a while.
(Score: 1) by west on Saturday March 03 2018, @11:25PM
they have had mass shootings since. educate yourself.
mexico has total gun restriction. and the highest gun violence on the planet.
checkmate?