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posted by Fnord666 on Saturday March 03 2018, @07:53AM   Printer-friendly
from the mental-issues dept.

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.


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  • (Score: 5, Informative) by tonyPick on Saturday March 03 2018, @03:19PM (2 children)

    by tonyPick (1237) on Saturday March 03 2018, @03:19PM (#647080) Homepage Journal

    Also, minor point, but the image referenced by GP is here, and that's almost certainly not a teacher either.

    https://www.snopes.com/is-armed-teacher-students-israel/ [snopes.com]

    This image does show a woman with a gun at her hip watching over or looking over a group of children. However, this photograph was not taken in a classroom, and the pictured woman is most likely a security guard, not a teacher.

    Which quotes Israel Today: http://www.israeltoday.co.il/NewsItem/tabid/178/nid/23572/Default.aspx [israeltoday.co.il]

    There is a picture going around the Internet that I have seen about a dozen times today that claims that Israeli teachers are packing heat. Well, are they? The answer is “NO.”
    ...
    In the picture, the students are on an outing. While it appears that the teacher is holding a rifle, I have never seen such a thing in ten years of living here. Rest assured however, they are under armed protection. In most cases it is an armed guard or a soldier that will accompany a class, not the teacher. And my guess is that the woman with the gun is a security guard, not a teacher.

    Secondly, they are not armed in the classroom.

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  • (Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 03 2018, @09:34PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 03 2018, @09:34PM (#647278)

    Snopes knows you will make assumptions about soldiers and teachers based on American culture. These assumptions are wrong.

    See how quickly you can figure it out:

    All classes in Israel are taught by soldiers. The school janitor is a soldier. The school bus drivers are soldiers. The school administration is all soldiers. School cafeteria workers are soldiers. School nurses are soldiers.

    Still wondering why? They are adult Israeli citizens. They all serve in the military because Israel requires it. Both men and women are mandated to serve in the military.

    Even if somehow Snopes is lucky enough to be correct in speculating that "the pictured woman is most likely a security guard", that doesn't change the fact that every teacher is trained to operate a full-auto military rifle. Every sweet little 1st-grade teacher has been trained to machine-gun the enemy to death.

    • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday March 04 2018, @12:16AM

      by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Sunday March 04 2018, @12:16AM (#647355) Journal

      You overstate your case, by some margin. Not EVERYONE is a soldier, in Israel. Just as any other society, there are some who are unfit for service. So - maybe the janitor isn't a soldier. Or, maybe it's the principal. Suffice to say, in any given school, with a staff greater than 20, there are probably one or two adults who are not soldiers.

      But, universal conscrition is a wonderful thing. ALMOST everyone is qualified to step up, and defend the children! Here, in the US? Maybe one in fifty has the qualifications, and maybe that person also has the balls to do what is necessary.