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Yup, another cop, another school, another negligent discharge — even as The People of the Gun push for gun rights restoration in the schools. nbcwashington.com:

A school resource officer accidentally fired his gun inside a middle school in Alexandria, Virginia, during school hours on Tuesday, police say. No one was hurt.

The officer was inside his office at George Washington Middle School in the Del Ray neighborhood when he accidentally discharged his service weapon about 9:10 a.m., according to Alexandria police.

The shot was fired as the officer, a five-year veteran of the Alexandria Police Department, was sitting down in his office, police said. A department representative declined to say whether the officer had taken his gun out of his holster.

“I just think it was an accident that happened, and we’re going to investigate it and find out, and we’re going to move forward,” Capt. D.C. Hayes said.

I’ve said it before. I’ll say it again. Putting armed “School Resource Officers” into schools is a bad idea. Not only are they an easily identified “shoot me first” target for an attacker, they’ve got f*ck all to do all day, every day.

As the irrepressibly anti-gun vox.com points out in their inevitable article 2 “good guys with guns” accidentally fired them in schools on Tuesday, bored cops start playing with their guns:

Still, this has happened before with some regularity. In 2016, a sheriff’s deputy fired his gun in a Michigan high school while testing a robotics machine, hitting a teacher in the neck, and a part-time correctional officer at an elementary school for a job interview at a Florida elementary school shot himself in the knee. In 2014, a teacher in Utah accidentally shot herself in the leg (and shattered a toilet) while at school. In 2013, a police officer assigned to a New York high school after the Sandy Hook shooting accidentally fired his weapon in a hallway.

Actually, it’s worse than that. These SROs start playing with students. And I don’t mean that in a good way. Click here for my Google search “school resource officer rape.”

If we want to make schools into a harder target for criminals, crazies and terrorists, just repeal the Gun Free School Zones Act and let law-abiding Americans exercise their natural, civil and Constitutionally protected right to keep and bear arms inside the school gates.

End of story. Except for the IGOTD award for the unnamed and thus unshamed police officer.

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28 COMMENTS

  1. Jeezuss Almighty in a Tutu!! If I were a conspiracy-minded sort, I’d think these people were ACTIVELY TRYING to make themselves look like idiots-with-guns-in-schools, just to undercut the argument in favor of arming the more competent.

    Just which size of bus did these people take to their schools, anyway??

  2. Reply’s blocked.

    Ya, GMAN

    “I’ve said it before. I’ll say it again. Putting armed “School Resource Officers” into schools is a bad idea. Not only are they an easily identified “shoot me first” target for an attacker, they’ve got f*ck all to do all day, every day.”

    Just like every off duty beat cop sitting in a bank or slinging a badge at a sporting event.

    I LIKE armed people in schools. You can only assume that every other MF there is, so (IF YOU CANNOT 100% PROTECT FROM THEM, AND YOU CAN’T) don’t handcuff the good guys.

    About the ND,
    GOD help the poor guy. I don’t believe malfeasance, I think there was some negligence, but he’s likely never to do it again, and should be safer than the next guy now.

  3. “I ask, sir, what is the militia? It is the whole people, except for a few public officials.”
    — George Mason

    “Public officials” includes the cops.

    Citizens should be armed, not government employees.

  4. So, um, how does one know they are an irresponsible gun owner prior to endangering themselves and others?

    Or are we just going to have to get used to this kind of school shooting as well?

  5. @ flinch

    AS SOON AS YOU CAN GUARANTEE THEY WON’T HAPPEN (and you can’t) they’ll continue to happen, and you continue to suck it up, because YOU ALSO CAN’T PREVENT SOME ARMED MF COMING ON CAMPUS AND COMMITTING VIOLENT CRIMES.

    .
    .
    .
    .

    ANYONE ELSE THINK THAT TTAG GOT BOUGHT BY SOME LIBERAL GROUP IN AUSTIN?

  6. Point of order: “Government Employees” are not necessarily “Public Officials”. I for example work IT for a local government. It’s just a job, all I do is facilitate “the government business”.

    I shouldn’t have to give up my 2nd Amendment rights just because of my particular employer.

  7. @Flinch:
    The frequency seems much lower, and the injury rate is nearly zero, so if we can switch from the mass murder type to the idiot gun fumbler type, I vote yes.

    Also, Reply to a comment seems to be broken.

  8. ND’s happen all the time, and I’d bet more than 99% are never reported.

    However, those that happen in public places, like shopping malls, gun training courses and especially SCHOOLS are witnessed by countless numbers, and therefore get reported.

    So, in just 1 day, we’ve got 2 ND’s reported in Schools. The Anti’s will undoubetedly add these to their “Blanket List” of School Shootings.

    My own father, a Detroit PD patrol officer had a ND in our home while he was getting dressed in his bedroom for his upcoming midnight shift. Do you think he reported that? Hell NO!

    I almost had one several months ago while watching a YouTube training video on dis-assembly of one of my newer rail guns. I had a loaded mag on the table, and while trying to re-attach the slide, I forgot I had a loaded mag in the gun.

    The re-assembly of the slide jammed, and while attempting to remove it again, I pulled the trigger, while NOT pointing it in a safe direction.

    I suddenly realized the gun was trying to put a cartridge into battery.

    Wow, if that cartridge had gone into battery, the gun could have gone off, while pointed in the direction of my thigh.

    So,,,, should I have reported this to anyone?

  9. “It’s just a job, all I do is facilitate “the government business”.”

    Just follow orders right? If not for the clerks and the paperpushers the thugs can’t operate. You are just as guilty.

  10. As a retired teacher with 40 years in, the most significant part of Farago’s post concerns the uniformed SROs in the first place. Were I a kid or terrorist taking down a school, he/she would be the first person I’d shoot. Now I have another gun and extra ammo, a taser, pepper, and probably a lot of other cool stuff to use. In all my years in the large High and Middle schools, I never knew an SRO to be the least bit suspicious of anyone who approached them once inside the building. Not knocking cops, but when you break it all down, these events are really only happening in about 1/50th of 1% of all schools around the country. No one ever expects the worst. (Well, discounting a fair number of folks around here… 🙂

  11. I figured that school ND’s/AD’s would be a thing if firearms in schools ramped up. And I AM strongly in favor of that ramp up.

    I’m curious though. There have been many schools with firearms prior to Parkland. Were there no ND’s before, or they just didn’t make the news??

    Here is a wild suggestion that I’m sure many will hate. What if there was a nation wide policy that all guns in schools will be carried or stored Israeli style? An alternative might be manual safeties, though I think Israeli is superior.

  12. How about you carry the way you want, and I’ll carry the way I want? I have zero need to control you, why do you think you should be able to control me? Or that I would pay any attention, should your “nationwide policy” gain popularity?

  13. How does one fire their gun without putting their finger on the trigger if they are carrying the gun in the proper holster? Aren’t most handguns designed not to go off by themselves? Okay, some Sig Sauer guns will go off, but they need a little force to do so.

    Maybe they are carrying Glocks. I have seen a few people, who carry Glocks, have their gun go off due to the trigger getting caught on something. Leather holsters or constant redrawing throughout the day.

    How about carrying without a round in the chamber? In a school environment you are likely to have enough time to draw and chamber. You can’t carry a gun like that in public because you get ambushed.

    I hear a lot of people say a manual safety on a gun is an unnecessary feature that no striker fired gun should have. I disagree with that because it does make things much safer and I am not comfortable carrying AIWB without a manual safety or a DA/SA hammer fired gun. Apparently, there are people who carry fully loaded that need a manual safety on all their guns.

  14. The teacher that shot her own leg and shattered a toilet….
    I’ve got this mental image going….
    “Hmm, what do I do with this gat while I’m taking a shat”

  15. RF come do a ride along with me as an SRO. I assure you I do not do f* all all day. Between crisis intervention, mental health issues, fights and larcenies I stay quite busy.

  16. Tile floor: Thanks for chiming in. I imagine that most of us need to hear from ethical police more, to remind us that some of you actually exist. I have never personally met one of you and of course usually only particularly bad cops that make the news.

  17. SRO’s are fine as long as everyone including parents and school administration understand that the “best and the brightest” are not being assigned by Sheriff’s and Chief’s as SRO’s.

  18. Every time I hear of one of these kinds of incidents, I cringe. How hard is it to follow simple firearm handling rules? I makes you wonder if we should force civilian police to use clearing barrels and 30-days corrective custody for NDs.

  19. @TileFloor
    IMHO the entire idea of SROs has been predicated by the abject failure of our society in general and by school staff in particular. None of those functions should be performed by cops. Cops dont belong in schools at all. Anytime a cop is in a school WE have failed.

  20. Web site doesn’t work when clicking on Reply. Using Safari.

    I agree with the idea of Israeli carry in schools. Don’t need to worry as much about drawing in 1.5 seconds to handle an ambush. If you are not gunned-down by the perp as the first victim you will probably have time to rack the slide while running to the sound of gunfire.

    I expect that police are more vulnerable to the arrogance of “it can’t happen to ME! I’m an ONLY One”. A teacher will be less likely to be tempted to fiddle with her gun. I see no reason to remove a gun from a holster absent an emergency or the call-of-nature. In the latter case the solution is to properly fit-out the toilet stalls.

    It occurs to me that arming teachers and other staff to concealed-carry is a tactic that suffers from the same problem as having an SRO (in or out-of-uniform). Everyone will know who the adult-in-the-room is and s/he will have a non-zero probability of being armed. The SRO (in-/out-of-uniform) will also be known to be armed even if he is concealed-carrying.

    A student pulling a gun in a classroom will first shoot the teacher. A student bringing a gun down the hall will first shoot every adult he sees, then enter a classroom and shoot the teacher as the first victim in that room.

    I’m not making an argument against arming either school staff nor having police in schools nor having parents and grandparents armed in schools. The fact is that if everything goes down optimally, the adult(s) – armed or not – will take the first rounds. It’s still better that they be able to shoot back (with their dyeing breath) vs. having students take one more round.

  21. A negligent discharge inside a school should have severe, perhaps career-ending ramifications.

    There’s just not excuse for this. At the range where you incorrectly re-holster? Okay. There are safety protocols in place there to at least minimize the damage done. But if you’re screwing about with a gun in an environment like a school and do it poorly enough to fire a round, you should probably be finding a new career because the whole “life and death decisions” thing is not working.

  22. Finally someone suggesting Israeli style empty chamber carry!!
    I cannot tell you how much hate I get on gun forums whenever I say that I choose to carry empty chamber, full magazine
    The gun CANNOT discharge if the chamber is empty!
    Yes it is 1.5 seconds slower, takes two hands and you could short stroke the rack under stress
    School Armed guards should be required to carry empty chamber
    The increase in safety is worth it as school shootings are extremely rare and nd’s are far more common

  23. You can reply to a comment by right clicking on the “Reply” button and choosing “Open link in new tab.” However, this now won’t put the reply in the right place, even though it used to.
    But yes, this comment system sucks, and no one is interested in fixing it.
    It can’t really be that hard to get a working comment system; lots of other blogs (the vast majority in fact) manage to do it.

  24. You simply can not rely on the police. Period. Trained civilians with guns are safer than the average cop.

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