Yes, I know. This is old news.
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"A teacher in Utah accidentally shot herself in the leg Thursday inside an elementary school building.

Just before 9 a.m., Michelle Ferguson-Montgomery accidentally discharged her gun while using a faculty restroom at Westbrook Elementary School in Taylorsville, the principal said in a letter to students’ parents. The incident occurred before school hours, and no children nor staff were present. The teacher was in legal possession of her gun on school property.

State law allows individuals to obtain a concealed-weapons permit and carry firearms onto school campuses, following the completion of a safety training course. Educators in possession of a weapon on school property must keep it with them at all times to prevent a student from finding the gun in a drawer or cabinet. The law does not, however, permit administrators to identify the faculty members who are eligible for licenses.

“Neither the district nor school can restrict access to our campuses for concealed weapons permit holders,” Principal Karen Chatterton wrote Thursday in the letter. “While this can be a highly emotional issue, we encourage you to have civil dialogue with our elected officials.”

Ferguson-Montgomery, who teaches sixth grade, did not experience life-threatening injuries. But crisis counselors were available subsequently for faculty and students who were concerned about the event.

A similar incident occurred in another state just last week, when a professor accidentally discharged his handgun and shot himself in the foot while walking on the campus of Idaho State University. A new law that went into effect earlier this year on July 1 allows Idaho residents to carry concealed weapons on college campuses."


http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/utah-teacher-shoots-herself-the-leg-while-school

She is my cousin's daughter and the perfect example of why having guns in school is a bad idea. However, she didnt shoot herself. She accidentely shot a toilet and was hit by flying debris from the shattered toilet.She lost her job and was charged with negligence.

But Bona Dea, that was in 2014. Since then teachers have become much more proficient in the use of weaponry.

Look it up. It's a fact.

lol. I am sure I would be a natural. I have never handled a gun and cant keep track of my keys or phone.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/24/2018 12:32AM by bona dea.

What was she packing, a Dirty Harry hand cannon?

Was she able to find another teaching position?

That seems the danger to me in teachers carrying concealed guns. Is this type of thing happening ie, the unexpected mishap while on campus.

I dont know.

numbersRus Wrote:
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> n/t

LOL! She's one of the Good Ones.

Teachers leave their cell phones all over the school buildings. I don't know why anyone would think they'd be any better with guns.

Accidents happen and kids and guns dont mix

"I’d be safe. I’d have the safety on at all time, and no bullets in the chamber, until, that is, it was time for me to intentionally shoot a student, a responsibility I would take very, very seriously.

I am concerned, though, that we have a 14:1 student:faculty ratio here, and I see a lot of my colleagues in the community spaces with students milling about. There’s going to be some intense competition to bag students, and I’m going to have to be quick on the draw if I want to be first. Maybe I need a bigger gun? Or two guns? Or maybe a hand grenade? I wouldn’t want the chemistry department to get a higher score than the biology department, you know." -- P.Z. Myers

I think you should only be permitted to carry one cartridge in your pocket. If an emergency arose, you would be allowed to put that bullet in your revolver.

That way we would avoid most accidents.

The Barney Fife safety method.

I knew you would get the allusion!

You laugh but when was the last time there was a mass shooting in a Utah school???

And when was the last time there was a mass school shooting in Canada, the UK, Australia, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, New Zealand?

I am profoundly thankful I live in a country where the last thing on my mind when my children went to school was whether or not some nut with an assault weapon was going to shoot them.

I have read ( not here but other sites) where people have said those of us in countries with strict gun laws are somehow less 'free' than Americans. Utter rubbish.

So true. How can anyone feel truly safe living in a 'free' country knowing just about anyone can get their hands on an assault weapon to murder en masse?

That isn't living free. It feels like we're living inside a shooting gallery and we are the ducks.

She shouldn't be around guns or children.

She shouldn't be around guns AND children.

She shouldn't be around paper cutters and children.

She shouldn't be around any dangerous tool and children because children are important and vulnerable and she is careless and unsafe.

You are unintentionally saying something wise.

No one should have very dangerous objects around children. Do you see what that means for guns in schools?

It would take hours and hours of work to use scissors to cut the thousands of booklets and art projects in a normal first grade class.

I use normal school tools to do my work and do it safely.

Banning paper cutters, scissors, staplers and other necessary tools is completely counter productive. They can be used around children if it's done the way I and almost all teachers do it.

Sheesh!

I wouldn't trust her with Crayola scissors in the presence of other human beings.

I wouldn't trust her with a gun, surely.

Agree. I dont know if she lost her permit, but I hope she did.

She is a good person who made a careless mistake. I agree she shouldn't be around guns and she did lose her job,but not fit t be around children is pretty harsh. I see this not so much as a reflection of her, although she was certainly careless,, but as as an lesson in why people shouldn't go around carrying guns especially in a school.You very seldom have need of a gun for protection and often innocent people are hurt.If you do carry, you Ned a lot more training than she had.

Bona dea unregitere Wrote:
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> She is a good person who made a careless mistake.


I don't need a good person teaching my kids. I need a SAFE person.

Don't be a risk to kids. It's fairly easy to identify the path of least risk to children.

Clearly, she is someone who's reasoning renders her unfit to be in charge of kids. Period.

Maybe around plants, or machinery? But not kids.

She did lose her job and I dont object to that, but to say she shouldnt be around any kids which presumably includes her own is harsh. I assume she learned from her mistake and is.probably safer now than many other gun owning people. I know several people who have had gun accidents ,including one whose child was shot. That is why I think gun laws should be stricter and teachers shouldnt be carrying.I also think hidden carry permits should be rare and only for people who may be in actual dangerr.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 02/24/2018 04:18PM by bona dea.

Good points bona idea.

I don't believe her teaching credentials were in question.

The same standard of care that caused her gun to misfire in a lavatory is akin to careless hunters who trip on a hike and their gun goes off. Was it preventable? Yes. That accidents happen is a given.

More reason why children, guns, and teachers do not mix.

There would be more accidental guns going off the more teachers carry firearms.

Teachers shouldn't have to double as security guards or militia in order to teach. It is a sad day in our history when educating children is so fraught with danger.

I realize that carrying a gun would be on a strictly volunteer basis, but if teachers were required to carry, many would simply quit. That's not why we went into the profession. If we wanted to be police officers, we would be police officers. We wanted to teach, and that alone is a hard enough job.

I am starting to see signs of a teacher shortage. My urban district is having an increasing problem in retaining talented young teachers because we are no longer competitive when it comes to pay and working conditions. Suburban districts are working harder to recruit both new and experienced teachers. One of my colleagues was just told that a suburban district would apply all 18 years of her experience to their pay scale, and that was previously unheard of (normally school districts in my area will only apply 10-12 years.) The suburbs are now very eager to take experienced teachers, whereas before they tended to favor the less-expensive newbies.

The discussion of teachers packing will not help the developing teacher shortage, that's for sure.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/24/2018 09:26AM by summer.

That is a shame Summer, because we aren't only selling the teachers short, we're selling our children short.

Less pay, over worked teachers, understaffed classes.

You're right that teachers didn't sign up to be security officers or policemen. It's a tough enough job without adding that to the job criteria.

If teachers are expected to perform two jobs--those of teacher and those of security guards--they should be paid the sum of the wages that go to those two categories of workers. Is anyone suggesting that?

This idea of armed teachers is just another way for society to shortchange teachers. If people wants security on campuses by way of guns in schools, they should pay for that directly rather than trying to get teachers to bear the burden for free.

The situation is ridiculous.

In the Florida slaughter the police officer stationed at the school failed to enter the school. When the three officers dispatched to the school arrived, they too failed to enter the school but hide behind their vehicles in the parking lot.

That is what happens when highly trained people confront threats like this. Why would anyone expect teachers, who chose their jobs because they want to impart knowledge, to shoulder the burden that trained cops are afraid to bear?

And that at little or no increase in pay.

And they should have the same training that a cop has if they are going to carry guns around kids. Even then, I can see a lot of problems



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/24/2018 06:15PM by bona dea.

Absolutely.

You have a school system with zero deaths by firearms in Utah and that is the system that you are criticizing and making fun of.

How many people have been killed by guns in the Utah school system in the last 100 years? Hint: The answer is zero.

Yet. Let's hope gun violence doesn't find it's way there. Because honestly, in this culture, there isn't such a thing as a safe sanctuary in America.

I teach in Utah and we have had numerous lockdowns because kids have brought guns to school or because there
is an armed person on the run in the neighborhood. That has happened to me several times. No one has been killed but it could happen. We did have a junior high student bring a gun to school and after school just a few feet from the school he shot and killed himself in front of other kids.That should count as a gun death in schools.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/24/2018 04:10PM by bona dea.

Was she sitting on the toilet when she shot it?

So the lady teacher was in a stall and shot the porcelein god? Didn't she know that sticking a pistol in your garter is done only in pulp fiction?

That said, "accidents happen" --even to the best of us!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zw-jTCNZSmY

Simply opening up as a policy to allow teachers to receive significant training and after that conceal carry seems it can't help but create a deterrence value.

Almost every major metropolitan city has a civilian reserve police program that allows volunteers to receive full police training and join paid cops as part of the police force. It's likely some of us here have had interactions with these men and women and never realized they were actually accountants, teachers, or an ex-mormon Pulitzer-Prize-winning political cartoonist. (Yes, it's true)

If we're fine having armed cops on campus to keep our kids safe, there's virtually no difference in most areas to have a fully-trained reserve cop carrying a gun. They both have the same training, but one is a volunteer.

So let's just expand what is already accepted on most campuses already: We welcome cops here to help keep our kids safe. And Mrs. Johnson (AKA The Lunch Lady) also happens to be fully trained reserve police officer. She's part of the plan to keep our kids safe.

Nobody's forced to train if they don't want to, but as in the outside world, those that want to, can. Perhaps many schools will not have a single teacher who wants to participate. That's fine. Just knowing there may be trained, armed protection present is a much different scenario for a shooter than the security knowing not a single person on this campus is equipped to stop their murderous rage.

I imagine there are quite a few parents and teachers in Florida right now who would have gladly ran after that shooter when all the law enforcement on site chose to wait until the shooting stopped. And there's no argument that teachers and school staff have far more invested in the safety of their students than any police officer. That's likely why they waited outside while the slaughter continued unabated.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/24/2018 01:06PM by Tall Man, Short Hair.

I'm not comfortable around runs. It would be a comfort to know there were highly qualified school employees with guns just in case of a serious incident.

My classroom had a giant walk in storage closet where I thought I'd take my children in an emergency. I would have locked the door on the outside and hoped fervently that I could keep my tiny students quiet in an emergency. The classroom door locked but we couldn't see who was knocking on it ten times a day, and a monitor just opened it for whoever was there. Of course if there were gunshots or a commotion, I would have told them to run to the closet and not open the class door.

I would have defended my kiddies with a heavy object or fingers in the bad guy's eyes if necessary. Too bad that schools have such terrible problems.

Just because one teacher is careless about any issue, doesn't mean they are all equally dangerous. I was a serious union advocate who helped write contracts and went before administrators to advocate for teacher rights. Still, child safety and a good education for all students is what I cared about most.

Fortunately, no careless or very bad teacher ever asked me to defend them.

In fact I once reported seriously dangerous and unethical behavior to an administrator. It was about a teacher who was let go in spite of tenure and experience. Everyone was better off for it.

I've known teachers who I'd fully trust to have a gun in any situation. It's all about motivation, training and good judgment.

>>I would have defended my kiddies with a heavy object or fingers in the bad guy's eyes if necessary. Too bad that schools have such terrible problems.

Just curious, if confronted by a gunman you would prefer go after him with a "heavy object" or "fingers in the bad guy's eyes" as opposed to leveling your own gun at him?

I'm seriously curious. Myself, 10/10 times I would prefer to have a gun...whether I was trained to use it or not.

I am not American so, like most of the developed world, find it absurd to even consider weaponry in schools.I confidently say goodbye my kids in the morning without fear of a shooting in school. I just cannot even begin to fathom.that there is even a discussion about arming teachers. If I was ever forced to live in America, I would most definitely home school my children because your system.is broken if you have to consider arming teachers.

For some reason Americans cannot conceive of the possibility that other countries do some things better than they do. Sometimes that is tragic.

When was the last time a military school got shot up? They are full of guns and kids with guns.

You are off point.

The question was why can't Americans learn from the experience of other countries.

Exactly.

You just dont want me to compare systems that dont work like in Florida with systems that do work like in Utah.

I wonder why? Maybe its because you are wrong.

Sockpuppeting isnt allowed. How about being brave enough to use your real moniker?

Go ahead. I couldn't care less what you compare with what.

Before you intervened, we were discussing the US and other countries. I consider it a shame that the American people habitually disregard the experience of other countries confronting similar issues.

I don't have any expectations that you would contribute positively to that discussion. Do whatever you want.

I see you made up this moniker today, to troll here. Do yourself a favor and Google "US military base shootings." Especially Ft. Hood. See how many people have been killed. Those place are full of guys with guns, too.

Everything you just said proves the exact opposite because there was a gun ban in Ft Hood. That is what allowed the massacre. If the soldiers were armed then 1 shooter wouldnt have been able to take out a bunch of people. Why is that hard to understand?

Gun control is like the Mormons asking the Fancher party to turn over their guns and just trust them. We know how that turned out.

Thank you. It is broken.

1) Malignant peer pressure
2) Highly sexualized atmosphere and cultural norms
3) Oppressive group think
4) Declining educational standard

Granted, you can't protect children from bad things in the world, but you don't have to immerse them in it.

Did the toilet pose a clear and present danger?