To summarize, last week a local teacher accidentally brought a gun to school. He took originally took it to a local target range in a backpack he didn’t use much. A few days later, he put books in the backpack, forgetting the gun was still in there, and took it to school. He left it unattended in a teachers conference room where two other teachers noticed it, looked inside, and saw the gun. As a result, he was first suspended and has now been fired. He’s also been charged with a misdemeanor, possession of a weapon on school property.
My question for the Teeming Millions is is the school behaving unreasonably?
I was raised in a strongly anti-gun household, but I came around to a moderate to pro-gun position after getting to know a few responsible gun owners. I’m also a bit absent-minded. As a result, this strikes me as going too far. He had no malicious intent, and it seems like the sort of thing I could have done. (For the record, I don’t own a gun, nor do I plan on purchasing on as things stand now.)
On the other hand, I don’t have any information on whether the gun was loaded. If he was coming from target practice, it seems reasonable to me to assume that it either was loaded or that there were bullets in the same backpack. I also don’t know how much access students would have had to his backpack, although I’d hope on general principles it wouldn’t be much.
Is a man losing his job because of an honest mistake, or is the school district taking reasonable steps to protect its students?
Speaking from Britain, of course he should be fired. The last time an adult brought a gun to a school here was in a town called Dunblane.
Correlation does not of course equal causation, but people bringing guns to schools also correlates with undesirable events in your country strongly enough to justify the legislation he has fallen foul of, I believe.
cjhoworth, you may wish to reread the first sentence of the article.
This is something you don’t just forget. You have a responsibility not to. Whether he’s fired or not is actually a very distant second to the importance of solving the problem of him being completely irresponsible with a gun. It’s only a matter of time before something does accidently happen and whether he’s in a school or not when it occurs is irrelevant.
As long as schools insist on zero tolerance policies they should work both ways.
A minor child would be expelled from school and arrested for having a knife much less a gun at school. Children have been suspended from school for even drawing a picture of a gun. If we expect our children not to make mistakes then why shouldn’t we expect the same from our teachers?
Well, I wouldn’t fire him, were I the principle, but I would give a VERY severe talking to, plus reprimand, and possibly a bar to any raise this year.
However, I wouldn’t fire him. He made a careless error, and I don’t hold with “Zero Tolerance.” I would let the public know it was just a harmless accident, and there was no danger to the schools children.
If you are the type of person who is likely to leave a gun lying around, you should not own a gun. I’m sure all the other people who have accidently left their firearm where a child could access it
also did not have malicious intent. That does not mean it is completely irresponsible.
Change “teachers conference room” to “classroom” and “teachers” to “students” (which could have happened just as easily) and we could be talking about a dead kid here.
Not so. You have no way of knowing how many Brits may have absent-mindedly had guns in a school since that horrible tragedy.
I think there’s a fundamental difference between bringing a gun intendding to cause a massacre and inadvertantly bringing a target pistol with no intend to use it. The two have nothing to do with each other.
One can even make a case that guns in school improve safety. If there were another Dunblane-type madman, there might be an armed citizen who could deal with him. There have been cases like that in the US.
In short, I disagree with the zero tolerance policy. I don’t think it serves the public particularly well.
Okay, agreed. However, since you may not legally own even a .22 target pistol here (yes, the Olympic team have to train in France!), I would venture that the chances of someone
bringing an illegal firearm into a school, let alone leaving it unguarded, are such that it has not occurred. In agreement with Mange: you say “tomayto”, I say “tomahto”, you say “absent-mindedly bringing a gun to school”, I say “you fecking what??!!”.
This is exactly why I believe that teachers with concealed carry licenses should be permitted to carry their handguns in school.
In more than one instance of a school shooting, including one in Edinboro, Pennsylvania and one at a law school in West Virginia, the attackers were subdued because citizens with guns stopped them.
I knew many of my high school teachers had handguns and had licenses to carry them, and had some disgruntled kid shown up at that school to start killing people, I’d want them to be able to do something about it.
Now, I’m not condoning what this guy did, because it’s the last thing a responsible gun owner would ever do. You don’t put your gun in a bag, forget about it, and then leave it lying around unattended. I’m a gun owner, I’m licensed to carry concealed, and I believe it is my duty to never ever leave that gun anywhere that it could be picked up, played with, used for malicious intent, or harm someone. It just don’t fly.
So the guy should be punished for being the kind of careless jerk who leaves a gun lying around, otherwise known as reckless endangerment. I don’t think though that there’s anything wrong with a responsible licensee holstering their gun and keeping it concealed though.
I’ve handled and fired many kinds of guns, and any idiot who would leave a gun in a backpack cannot be trusted with firearms. I mean, isn’t this something EVERYONE who ever touches a gun learns?
I was in the army. I can only begin to imagine what would have happened if I’d just “Forgotten” my rifle somewhere in public. I’d probably still be doing punishment PT today.
I mean, forget about bringing the gun to school; WHY DID HE LEAVE IT IN THE BACKPACK? A responsible gun owner watches his weapon like a hawk until it is safely stored in its place.
I agree with december on the general principle that “Zero tolerance” is a stupid blanket policy, but in this particular instance, the guy is irresponsible with guns at a school. He shouldn’t be fired for “zero tolerance,” he should be fired for gross incompetence.
If the teacher in the OP had taken proper care of the gun then I might listen to that argument. But he absent-mindedly left it unattended. Somebody with such low regard for the dangers of firearms shouldn’t be teaching or using a gun, let alone both. He should have had the gun license revoked in addition to getting fired. (Or was it?)
If you’re absent minded about your gun, you shouldn’t own one.
If you bring a gun to school, you shouldn’t be employed there anymore.
He was right to get fired.Interesting… it seems that this is a situation where both anti and pro gun people can agree (at least on the point of gun safety and responsibility).
Not meaning to hijack this thread, but I would like to ask:
What about someone like me? I am currently an instructor at a technical college. I have a license to carry a concealed firearm (no license is required here to own one, only to carry concealed) and happen to know that some of the students here are the violent type. Some of them have been to jail for violent offenses, including one who set his girlfriend on fire, and some are on a sort of ‘work release’.
Hypothetically, if I carried my pistol, holstered and concealed, while at work, do you think I should be fired for having a pistol on ‘school property’?
Making an error with a firearm does not make one an idiot nor does it make one an irresponsible gun owner. If I have 11 years of safe firearm use and then one day experience an accidental discharge (that hurts nobody) am I suddenly not to be trusted?
I really don’t think the mistake was that big of a deal. Reprimand him, sure. It is only the hysteria surrounded our fear of guns that fuels so much outrage.