School Cop Negligently Discharges Firearm in Hallway

I’m one of those who has advocated for more guns in our schools, just in the hands of responsible adults. I firmly believe that guns save lives and we’ve seen far too many instances of what happens when everyone in a school is disarmed and someone decides to do horrific things.

But I’m also realistic enough to understand that people are people. Someone is bound to be stupid or careless–as if there’s a functional difference–at various points in time.

Those situations need to be dealt with and then we move on.

But I can’t help but think this story is going to become a thing.

Social media users were left horrified after a dad shared an email he received from his child’s school, notifying him that a firearm had mistakenly gone off in a hallway.

Justin Radcliff, a father of four in Wilmington, Delaware, received the email from Stanton Middle School, where one of his daughters is in eighth grade, at 3:20 p.m. on November 6. It said, “While repositioning his weapon in his holster, our School Constable’s firearm accidentally discharged in the hallway.” The email added that “no one was hurt” and that students were in their classrooms at the time of the incident.

A spokesperson for Red Clay Consolidated School District and Stanton Middle School told Newsweek that the safety of their students and staff was of their “highest priority” and that they were committed to providing a safe learning environment.

They said in an emailed statement: “We are deeply concerned by how such an incident could occur, and we are actively working with law enforcement to understand exactly what happened and to ensure all necessary safety measures are in place.

“While this is an ongoing investigation, we can confirm that a firearm accidentally discharged in the hallway of Stanton Middle School as a School Constable was repositioning it in his holster. We are grateful that no one was hurt, and students were safely in their classrooms.”

Radcliff, 38, told Newsweek that he “was furious” about the incident. What annoyed him even more was that the email was sent after classes had finished for the day, rather than immediately after the incident happened.

I mean, I get where Radcliff is coming from. I’d be angry if that happened at my child’s school, too, and I’d definitely be furious if they didn’t notify me promptly that it happened. Especially when they have no way of knowing how little or how much I was aware of. Imagine a kid hearing the shot, texting Mom and Dad that a school shooting is happening, only for their phone to be snatched up so they couldn’t say all was well? I’d be panicking, and an email explaining what happened would help.

However, I suspect some people will point out that this is why we need fewer guns in school.

What people need to understand is that there are around 23,400 school resource officers in this country. They’ve been around since the 1950s, though they didn’t become common until the 1990s.

During all that time, how many negligent discharges have we heard of from SROs?

Yeah, not all that many.

While this guy needs to be investigated and probably fired, especially if he was playing around with the gun in any way, this doesn’t invalidate anything. If we’re going to go that route, then we should probably take police cars away from officers because they sometimes get in wrecks that are entirely their fault.

Sounds stupid, right? That’s because it is.

So while this is probably going to get brought up down the road, we need to remember that this is an isolated incident that’s far from common. The only reason it’s news and being run at Newsweek is because it’s uncommon.