Whilst this confirms some perceptions of Alabama, leaving loose weapons about after hours or otherwise unattended would be a temptation for putative criminals and others to raid the armory and arm themselves with cans. Which may be used in further crimes.
This is part of ALICE training, but to carry around canned corn seems to be a misunderstanding or, at least, taking it too far. One of my friends posted about it on Facebook and here was my response:
She mentioned mentioned that she agreed with the idea but she was just commenting that it seemed silly for everyone to carry abound a can of soup with them…which was in the picture I saw on FB, my next comment was as follows:
Regarding the CCW comment, she’s very pro-CCW (she owns guns, I don’t know if she carries them). I don’t carry a gun, never have, but, as I said, my store has been involved in an armed robbery so I like to leave it at ‘I have no problem with CCW’. What bothers me about teaching kids to keep soup cans in their backpack is that you are basically teaching them to bring a weapon to school. I know it may seem silly to think of a soup can as a weapon, but that is essentially what it is. It’s a hard, heavy object that, in this case, exists for no reason whatsoever than to throw at someone that intends to hurt you. If you’re anti-CCW then ISTM you should be against having kids carry projectiles meant to defend themselves in their backpack.
Like I said, when they (two cops) spoke to us about it, they just mentioned things like staplers or water bottles, even pencils or books…just things nearby. As he said, sometimes it just takes something like that to break their concentration for a few seconds to make the difference between life and death. Sometimes just breaking their concentration can ‘snap them out of it’.
As the ALICE training states, though, this is a last ditch effort, when the option is ‘sit there and wait to be shot’ or do something.