The Glade 4.0

HALFWAY, Ore. (CBS Seattle/AP) — Teachers were shocked and caught off guard when an Oregon school held a school shooting drill.

The Oregonian reports Pine Eagle Charter School in Halfway held the drill last Friday as children were home for an in-service day. Two masked “gunmen” burst into a meeting room holding 15 teachers firing blanks. Teachers only realized it wasn’t a real shooting when none of them were bleeding.

“There was some commotion,” school principal Cammie DeCastro told The Oregonian.

Teachers were frightened about what happened.

“I’ll tell you, the whole situation was horrible,” Morgan Gover told the paper. “I got a couple in the front and a couple in the back.”

The school held the unplanned drill in hopes to better educate teachers on how to deal with a school shooting. Of the 15 teachers in the room, only two would have survived.

“I’m in charge of a pile of kids,” Gover told The Oregonian. “It made me analyze as a teacher what my role is for these babies.”

The drill has been criticized but the school has dismissed the criticism.

“For us not to know how we were going to respond is leaving us open,” DeCastro told The Oregonian.

DeCastro added that arming teachers or having armed volunteers at the school are possible outcomes for the future.

Last month, the Oregon Senate Judiciary Committee passed, on a 3-2 party-line vote, four bills that would expand background checks and add new restrictions on carrying firearms. The bills next move to the Senate floor.

The proposed legislation would expand background checks to cover private gun sales and transfers, exempting exchanges between family members, including domestic partners. It would also prohibit licensed gun owners from openly carrying firearms in public buildings, allow school districts to ban firearms on school grounds, and require concealed-weapons permit applicants to take a course taught by a live instructor. A provision requiring applicants for concealed-weapons permits to pass a firing range test was dropped.

The drill comes in response to the December school shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., that killed 26 people, including 20 children.

In comic strips the person on the left always speaks first. - George Carlin

In comic strips the person on the left always speaks first. - George Carlin

I can't help but think that given the push to arm teachers, some hapless sap could have very easily ended up dead.

The proposed legislation would expand background checks to cover private gun sales and transfers, exempting exchanges between family members, including domestic partners. It would also prohibit licensed gun owners from openly carrying firearms in public buildings, allow school districts to ban firearms on school grounds, and require concealed-weapons permit applicants to take a course taught by a live instructor.

Restricting legal activities to punish criminals is like assraping a child molester to get your wife pregnant.

Facism is not a school of thought, it is a racial slur.

I can't quite understand the thinking that it takes for a law that bans firearms on school grounds in an attempt to protect the children.

...The chances of a nutjob with an AR-15 showing up to kill as many as possible are very low...

Facism is not a school of thought, it is a racial slur.

Do you remember what the AR in AR-15 means?

Facism is not a school of thought, it is a racial slur.

I think the strongest arguments are that such bans help: (i) prevent accidents involving improperly secured firearms, (ii) prevent unpremeditated / opportunistic shootings (e.g. an argument/altercation that escalates to someone grabbing their gun), and (iii) avoid the need to keep an extra eye on that sketchy dude shouting at the ref during the football game or getting worked up about his taxes during the school board meeting. In short, it comes down to a risk preference that favors low-frequency/high-consequence risks over high-frequency/low-consequence risks. The chances of a nutjob with an AR-15 showing up to kill as many as possible are very low, but the chances of a normal person forgetting to set the safety on his gun or a schoolyard fight escalating to a shooting are comparatively high, so the schools prefer to protect against the latter scenarios with a ban.

RD, the chances of nearly anything happening are "comparatively high" in to "a nutjob with an AR-15 showing up to kill as many as possible". Do you have any information on how often the scenarios you highlight occur?

I'm a little unclear on which risks you characterize as "low-frequency/high-consequence risks" and which are "high-frequency/low-consequence risks". It seems to me that any time a firearm is discharged, that's "high-consequence". Which scenarios in your statement do you see as "low-frequency/high-consequence risks" and "high-frequency/low-consequence risks"?

Why would the risks be different at a school than at a shopping center or other public spot?

The proposed legislation would expand background checks to cover private gun sales and transfers, exempting exchanges between family members, including domestic partners. It would also prohibit licensed gun owners from openly carrying firearms in public buildings, allow school districts to ban firearms on school grounds, and require concealed-weapons permit applicants to take a course taught by a live instructor.

Not off hand, but I'm sure we could dig up relevant stats on accidental and opportunistic shootings, and as you seem to agree, they're pretty much guaranteed to be high by comparison to premeditated mass shootings.

Sorry for the confusion. I'm saying that accidental and opportunistic shootings are more likely than premeditated mass shootings, but their body count would be significantly lower, so:

accidental/opportunistic shootings = (comparatively) high-frequency/low-consequence
premeditated mass shootings = (comparatively) low-frequency/high-consequence

Basically because there's a higher concentration of kids in a school, and kids tend to be curious and risk-prone and to get into frequent fights at school.

I think it's a good idea to do this training, not sure if doing it by surprise was the best course of action though.

Curious, if the teachers were "better prepared," what would that entail and how might two innocent people have been killed? I assume their school is a gun free zone, so it's not like they would have been packing heat, prepared or not.

One would hope that the employees working inside of a gun-free zone would be following such an ordinance. Also, let's try to be a little realistic in our scenarios. If there were 15 special forces members in the room, I doubt the exercise would have ever even taken place.

One would hope that the employees working inside of a gun-free zone would be following such an ordinance. Also, let's try to be a little realistic in our scenarios. If there were 15 special forces members in the room, I doubt the exercise would have ever even taken place.