Clair Davis was in the "wrong place at the wrong time", according to Greyson Robinson, of the Arapahoe County Sheriff's Office in Colorado. Yet, the public school she attends is in the same district as her home, and the day she was shot by her fellow student, Karl Halverson Pierson, she was exactly where she was supposed to be....in school. Why would going to school involve the need to worry about escaping a deranged shooter? Why can't her parents correctly assume that their daughter is safe when she is where she is supposed to be during the day....in school?
Karl Halverson Pierson was where he was supposed to be, too. The item that was not where it was supposed to be was the shotgun he took to school with him. Oh; the Molotov cocktails in his backpack didn't belong in school either, but at least Pierson didn't blow anything up. Why do some Americans have so much trouble recognizing who was in the right place or in the wrong place at any time? Clair Davis has every right to be in school, where she was; and she has every right to expect to be in the right place, school, at the right time, without getting shot. Especially by an adult classmate who had a right to buy a shotgun. Is it really too hard to ask that guns not be brought to school?
The 2013-2014 school began on an awkward note in Kansas because no one seems to know where to draw the line concerning guns and schools. In July of this year, Kansas decided that teachers and other school employees could take concealed weapons with them to work. The insurance company that underwrites policies for about ninety percent of the public schools in Kansas decided against that type of risk. If no one else wants to look at the possibilities of a random adult working inside of a school not being a perfect marksman, or lacking the training to determine when to use deadly force against your children and mine, at least the insurance company does! And well they might; they are deeply vested in the bottom line, not the popularity contest we call "small town atmosphere". Pierson was an adult, as was Adam Lanza, the shooter at Sandy Hook, in Connecticut last year. Adults with deadly weapons may actually be a bigger problem, from an insurer's standpoint, than children with deadly weapons.
It's a sobering reality when a school, of all places, becomes the "wrong place at the wrong time" to the extent that the school cannot even purchase liability or other types of insurance. We can't protect our children from everything, but don't they deserve to be in school, and in the right place at the right time, safely?
No comments:
Post a Comment