NJ School Security Guard’s Gun Discharges in Bathroom

If your gun goes off unintentionally, the bathroom might not be the worst place for it to happen. After all, you’re going to think “s**t” right about the time you do it. If you’re already on the toilet, at least you won’t need to clean your shorts.

What brings this up is an incident that happened at a school in New Jersey.

It seems the security guard got to experience this…sensation firsthand.

A New Jersey security guard is on leave after his gun went off in an elementary school restroom, officials in Paramus said this week.

No one was hurt, not even the guard, when his weapon accidentally discharged while he was “behind closed doors in a single-use, staff-only bathroom” at Midland Elementary School, Superintendent of Schools Sean Adams wrote in a letter to parents shared by local news outlet Patch.

…

He added that the guard was already on leave and that further action could be pending after the school board reviews the incident.

Perturbed parents had mixed feelings about whether security guards should be armed at all, especially around young children.

Adams noted that no one was injured.

Unsurprisingly, some of the parents are bothered by the fact that there were any guns in the school in the first place. Of course, if that weapon had been discharged at a would-be mass shooter, I think they’d view things differently.

Now, there are questions about this shooting that we don’t have answers for just yet.

One is whether this was a school resource officer or one employed with a private security company. I’m curious because while police training can be overhyped by those unfamiliar with firearms and just how much training cops get, private security company employees often get less.

Another question, though, is what firearm was the guard carrying?

My default position for more than a decade was that there were no accidental discharges, only negligent ones, but Sig has disabused me of that notion with their P320 fiasco. If this guard had a P320, then it might not actually be his or her fault. We’ve seen video of officers carrying the firearms and having them just go off with their hands nowhere near the weapon, so this is a possibility.

Sure, Sig denies it, but we know how that goes.

Still, I’m sure this was terrifying for both students and teachers, especially as they’re all very fearful of school shootings–though, as I’ve noted before, the kids and parents have more to fear from teachers–but this is also something that should never happen.

There will be an investigation, and I hope it’s an honest and fair one. The truth needs to be revealed and corrective action taken, if necessary.

But on the same token, people need to settle down a bit as well. While being upset over something like this is justified, taking armed guards out of schools, as some want to do, is outright stupidity.

At worst, just mandate they have to have more and better training before stepping onto school grounds if they’re private security. If this is a police officer, then they need to have a word with the chief of police about what the heck happened.