In Tallahassee, Florida, an elementary school safety monitor brought a gun onto campus and somehow managed to leave it sitting in a restroom. Not locked away or secured, but just there until a school administrator happened to find it. The person whose job was tied to keeping the campus safe admitted the gun was theirs and ended up arrested after the fact, which feels like closing the barn door long after the horses got out.
A couple of weeks later in Garrett, Indiana, a high school staff member did something just as reckless. A personal handgun was brought onto campus, again by someone who had no business carrying it there. This time a school resource officer intercepted the situation quickly, secured the weapon, and escorted the staff member out. That one didn’t rely on blind luck as much as the Florida incident did, but the result is the same.
These aren’t connected cases, but they might as well be. The details change and the setting shifts, but the pattern stays intact. People who are trusted to be inside schools decide the rules don’t apply to them. Then everyone else is left hoping nothing happens before someone catches it.
And why is it in almost all these stories the gun is found in the bathroom? Are your deuces so amazing they make you forget you’re carrying a loaded gun? It keeps happening often enough that it stops feeling like a coincidence. Call it anecdotal if you’d like, but it’s a pattern that shows up far too much for my comfort. Is there something about school bathroom tile that makes people forget they’re carrying a deadly weapon?
Again, this is where the whole ‘responsible gun owner’™ argument falls apart. Responsibility isn’t about what you intend to do but about what actually happens. A responsible gun owner doesn’t leave a firearm unattended in a place where a child could pick it up. A responsible gun owner doesn’t bring a weapon into a school in the first place when they’re not authorized to carry it. Yet here we are, again, dealing with both of those failures within weeks of each other. Not to mention the reports of incidents like this that I just don’t have the time to post.
No one was hurt in either case, and that’s the line that will get repeated. While technically true, it misses the point. The only reason no one was hurt is that someone else intervened or stumbled across the danger before it could escalate. That’s not responsibility. That’s just dumb luck and timing.
Schools spend a lot of time and money preparing for threats coming from the outside. Meanwhile, these incidents keep proving that the problem doesn’t always have to break through a locked door. Sometimes it’s already inside, wearing a staff ID badge.
There’s absolutely no need for guns to be in school. Not carried casually, or left behind, or brought in because someone thinks they know better than the rules. Every time one shows up where it shouldn’t be, it creates a situation where the outcome depends on chance instead of control.
Two incidents in a short span of time is more than enough to make the point. It only takes one of these guns falling into the wrong hands to turn a near miss into something deadly.
(Sources)
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