Tornado Alley (PROG)

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Accidental gun killings surged after Sandy Hook school shooting

"Teacher accidentally fires a gun in California high school during class on public safety"

By Meredith WadmanDec. 7, 2017 , 2:20 PM

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Authors respond

The authors have responses to many of the critiques. In response to Kleck’s concerns about the “astounding” increase in deaths, McKnight says that the new gun sales accounted for only part of the increased exposure after Sandy Hook; people removing their guns from storage to inspect or clean them could also have contributed. “The real issue is not the number of guns, but the number of guns that are stored improperly,” she wrote in an email. She also argued that buyers who feared new gun control laws and raced to buy firearms may have been new owners and less apt to handle guns safely. “For example, if they were less experienced gun owners, then they might be at greater risk” of accidents, she says.

The authors say there’s some evidence for the neophyte gun owner argument in data from California, a state that keeps permanent records of every gun acquisition. A study published this year in the Annals of Internal Medicine reports that so-called first-time transactions—the first time a buyer was documented to have obtained a weapon—accounted for 57% of the surge in gun acquisitions in that state in the first 6 weeks after Sandy Hook.

The authors also examined Google Trends data and found post–Sandy Hook surges in searches including the terms “buy gun” and “clean gun.” They call this “suggestive evidence” that gun exposure increased after the Sandy Hook killings. They hypothesized that people conducting such Google searches may be more likely to take out a stored firearm or buy a new one, thus increasing exposure, which Levine defined in an interview as “the idea that the gun is around.”

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/12/accidental-gun-killings-surged-after-sandy-hook-school-shooting

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Arming Teachers? The Idea Gets an F

FEB. 23, 2018



To the Editor:

Re “Trump Suggests Armed Teachers Get ‘Bit of Bonus’ ” (front page, Feb. 23):
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/22/us/politics/trump-guns-school-shootings.html

President Trump urges that teachers be armed with weapons in school settings. I am outraged by the suggestion, and the cavalier, contemptuous disrespect for some of the most noble professional citizens in our society.

Teachers are required to have graduate degrees in most states; they go through rigorous programs in philosophy of education, psychology and the content of a variety of academic disciplines. There is no place in the teacher education curriculum for Marksmanship 101.

This suggestion shows ignorance of educators and of public education. American teachers do sacred work, are underpaid and are under frequent political attack.

Envisioning teachers as an armed militia, as a corps of guards with military discipline ready to do effective battle, is not reassuring. It is a fantasy masquerading as a solution.

TIBBI DUBOYS, NEW YORK

The writer is professor emerita in the School of Education at Brooklyn College, CUNY.

To the Editor:

Let’s consider for a moment the imbecility of the suggestion that teachers be armed and ready to return fire in the event of another school shooting. If the perpetrator is a student at the school, the teachers would be firing at a child; how many teachers do you know who would actually do this?

In the event of a firefight, there is the possibility of friendly-fire casualties; how many teachers would be willing to take that risk?

We already ask too much of teachers: We ask them to work for little pay in underfunded, overflowing classrooms, and they do. They do because they are committed to their mission to educate, nurture and help the next generations succeed.

To our president and members of Congress: Go ahead and ask that same person to take on the responsibility of potentially killing a student, friendly-fire or otherwise, and see what response you get.

BROOKE JONES, HONOLULU

To the Editor:

I am trying to picture myself as I am teaching “a thing of beauty is a joy forever” with a gun holster on my hip.

RUTH CANDEUB, EDISON, N.J.

The writer is a retired English teacher.

To the Editor:

I recently learned that a kindergarten student told her mother that she had been instructed on how to survive an in-school shooting: Hiding under a desk and playing dead were advised.

Not wanting to leave anything to chance, the mother ordered a bulletproof backpack, to be used as a shield. Is this what we are coming to?

Is the possession of an assault weapon so important to some of our citizens that they are willing to risk the psychological traumatization of an entire generation?

CHARLES GOODSTEIN, TENAFLY, N.J.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/23/opinion/arming-teachers.html