All About That California Teacher-Cop Whose Gun Went Off in Gun Safety Class

[TexasTowelie]

If you live or work in San Francisco, you may have heard some chanting in the streets today. (You probably heard it in any one of hundreds of cities around the country, too.) That was the sound of America’s high school students demanding for sensible gun legislation before the next inevitable school massacre occurs. There was another, smaller sound, that mostly got drowned out, and that sound was smug, condescending adults retreating into the instinctive need to squash teenage idealism and lecture kids instead. The kids mostly drowned it out.

But something else happened yesterday that’s also at risk of being drowned out. In Seaside, near Carmel, there was a school-shooting incident — a minor one in comparison to what happened in Florida last month, but a significant one all the same. There are many details about it that address a ridiculous canard that’s floating around the American political system: which is that the solution to guns in the classroom is more guns in the classroom, either through arming teachers or relying on militarized schools to police every student as if they were a potential mass murderer.

Monterey County’s KSBW broke the story, which goes like this:

A teacher who also serves as a reserve police officer accidentally fired a gun inside a Seaside High School classroom Tuesday, police said, and three students were injured.

Dennis Alexander was teaching a course about gun safety for his Administration of Justice class when his gun went off at 11 a.m.

Alexander was pointing his gun at the ceiling when it fired. Pieces of the ceiling fell to the ground.

Don’t laugh at the multiple ironies. Please don’t. Because there’s more. This all happened as Alexander was checking to make sure the gun wasn’t loaded, and a 17-year-old student suffered “moderate injuries” when “fragments from the bullet ricocheted off the ceiling and lodged into his neck.”

No one at the school checked to make sure that all of the students were uninjured, Gonzales said. The school day resumed as normal.

The 17-year-old boy’s parents were shocked when he returned home with blood on his shirt and bullet fragments in his neck. The student’s parents rushed him to a hospital for X-rays.

Read more: http://www.sfweekly.com/topstories/all-about-that-california-teacher-cop-whose-gun-went-off-in-class/

[msongs]

1. police and medical emergency svcs should have been called right after the incident parents had to

take him in for treatment? appalling.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

2. Were that my son I'd be already consulting an attorney.

And it is genuinely appalling that a police officer (don't think that the "reserve" designation should let him off the hook) is sufficiently ignorant or untrained as to "accidentally" fire his gun in class. Jesus H Fucking Christ. If a police officer can't keep that from happening, why should anyone think untrained teachers would be a good idea to arm?

There are enough incidents of this kind that any sensible person ought to conclude that there is NO such thing as gun safety.

[DFW]

3. The second part is at least as appalling as the first part

I hope the city of San Francisco has a huge budget surplus, because they suddenly deserve to lose 110% of it in an upcoming lawsuit by the victim's parents.

[NBachers]

4. It happened in Seaside, about 115 miles south of San Francisco; just north of Monterey.

[Cha]

5. OMG.. WTH! the teacher and reserve police

officer didn't know the gun was loaded.. so he thought he would test it by shooting the ceiling?!!!

And, then didn't check to see if the kids that were hit would require medical attention?!

Do I have that straight? What kind of operation are they running there? Arming teachers with guns.. this is just one example of what could and did go wrong. UNREAL.

Poor kid.. I bet his parents were shocked!

"Next time someone suggest the answer to a bad guy with a gun is more good guys with guns, this freakishly chilling anecdote provides the definitive answer for the rest of time. Meanwhile, to every single student participating in today’s gun-control walkout: Good work, thank you, and please help save the adults from ourselves."

Well Done story.. Gracias, TexasT!