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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: 1) by Sulla on Saturday March 03 2018, @04:35PM (4 children)
Guns are liked less now, carried less now, with less of the population (as a percentage) than they were fifty or a hundred years ago, yet in the past ten years we have seen something never seen before in our history in regards to school shootings.
Gun laws are stricter than they have been in the past (with exception of the short period of the awb that was more strict) and more shootings are happening. Overall crime I down but school crime is up. All the stats show that everything is getting better except for violence at schools. This is an issue that is happening because something is wrong with gen z and the millennials.
So why? Those two generations will have a lower standard of living than the xers and boomers. When my dad bought the family house it cost him 1/4th is his income from working as maintenance at a cereal factory, it costs 3/4 my salary for the same house as an accountant. Cash for clunkers means there are fewer cheap cars out there to allow me to save money there. Jobs go overseas, become obsolite, or you have to compete with h1b, and then on top of all of this we have 70+k of school debt so we can get a job because nobody appears willing to hire without a degree. Then this god damn boomer meme about shaking a guys hand to get a job instead of being fucked by some hr department because they would rather not hire instead of accept someone without four years experience on an entry level job.
Ritilin because parents and teachers were too lazy to raise us. Xanex and other benzos because its too much work to be a fuckin role model and want us to just shut up. Schools teaching us that we arent allowed to be proud of our history because we are all literal slave owners and nazis for things done by custer, jackson, lee, etc. That our system is corrupt and that we should try communism because its better than our republic and stalin was misunderstood.
Boomers fucked our education, fucked us with meds, fucked us with our sense of person, and fucked our future. Maybe all the nihilism and deaths at schools are on the hands of our elders for being fucking worthless and failing their only role in society.
Forgot about the national debt, thans for that too you skum.
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday March 03 2018, @06:24PM
So what? When it's your turn to be the oldsters, the younger generations are going to complain. The key question will then be, will they have a valid reason for complaining? It's not looking so good. Your generation's only claim to morality is that it was born at the wrong time.
Then live where it doesn't cost that much, if home ownership is that important to you. Most of the US has really cheap real estate. Sure, you're not given the opportunities that the boomers (mostly the elder half) had, but it's still not that bad. Take advantage of that and adapt to the crap.
I'll note here that this real estate mess probably has as much to do with income and wealth inequality as rich's peoples' capital doing better in a time of developing world labor competition. You get a pile of people in the wealthier urban areas restricting access to home ownership, then of course you're going to end up with a younger generation that has to either go without a home, spend an unusually high share of their income on home ownership, or live in a poorer region of the US. Mobility was one of the equalizers of human wealth, and it's in trouble [ssrn.com].
(Score: 1) by tftp on Saturday March 03 2018, @08:55PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 03 2018, @11:02PM (1 child)
Well maybe when you grow up a bit and a few more of your millennial brethren start voting for someone besides Hillary, you might stand a chance to fix the income inequality problem. I'll even help you a bit. It's not about giving McDonald's burger flippers $15 an hour. Tax the living fuck out of the uber rich like fifty years ago. Bring back 90% marginal rates on the highest incomes. Pass income limits on publicly traded companies as a ratio of max to mins. Tax stock options value as income payable when it vests. Tax capital gains as ordinary income. That'll fix your national debt problem too. Get your lazy emo asses out and vote for Bernie or someone like him. Don't whine like a pussy and bemoan your shitty existence.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 04 2018, @04:07AM
It's too late for an income tax to fix it. The wealth disparity is already there and is not going away at any rate of income tax.
The only way to reduce it now is to tax assets. Some n% of everything over $x million, every year.
n and x are open to debate but that, or pitchforks and torches, are the only ways you are going to reduce the gini coefficient now.