Another school shooting has occurred in Bakersfield, California at Taft Union High School. KERO-TV is live streaming their coverage. At least 2 students were reportedly shot. One student was airlifted to the Bakersfield hospital. I’ll update you as the situation continues to unfold.
UPDATE: I noted earlier that Taft Union has an armed police officer, or School Resource Officer, patrolling the campus. It turns out that he didn’t make it to work today because he was snowed in, according to Sheriff Donny Youngblood during today’s press conference.
Despite no presence of an armed guard, the shooter was “disarmed with words not guns”, as my twitter friend @mdawriter put it. The Huffington Post reports:
Had another teacher and a campus supervisor not talked the shooter down from firing more rounds, Youngblood stressed, the situation could have been far worse. Youngblood estimated that some 20 additional students were at risk. Police arrived at the scene a minute after the first calls came in at 9:00 a.m. PST., and the suspect was in custody by 9:20 a.m.
When news of the shooting first broke, I noted that there is no proof an armed guard on campus can prevent or even mitigate the severity of a school shooting, as the NRA would have us believe. While this certainly remains the case, the ability of school personnel to talk down the shooter demonstrates that “good guys with guns” aren’t the only answer to “bad guys with guns”. By limiting the gun control debate to such cartoonish terms, the gun lobby successfully stifles our creativity to think outside their narrow box.
UPDATE: Details from police
Here’s a full picture of what went down at Taft Union High School this morning, from the Associated Press:
A 16-year-old student armed with a shotgun walked into class in a rural California high school on Thursday and shot one student, fired at another but missed, and then was talked into surrendering by a teacher and another staff member, officials said.
The teen victim was in critical but stable condition, Kern County Sheriff Donny Youngblood told a press conference. The sheriff said the teacher suffered a minor pellet wound to the head but declined treatment.
When the shots were fired, the teacher began trying to get the more than two dozen students out a back door and also engaged the shooter in conversation to distract him, Youngblood said. A campus supervisor responding to a call of shots fired also began talking to him.
“They talked him into putting the shotgun down,” Youngblood said.
The sheriff said that at one point the shooter told the teacher, “I don’t want to shoot you” and named the person he wanted to shoot.
The shooter may have had up to 20 shotgun rounds in his pockets, he said.
Officials said there’s usually an armed officer on campus but the person wasn’t there because he was snowed in. Taft police officers arrived within 60 seconds of first reports.
UPDATE: Police say SWAT teams stormed school
The New York Daily News reports:
SWAT teams stormed Taft Union High School around 9:30 a.m. local time in Taft, Calif., about 40 miles south of Bakersfield. Authorities rushed to the school after calls came in that a gunman had opened fire in the science building, Ryan Dunbier, a senior deputy with the Kern County Sheriff’s Department, told the Daily News.
UPDATE: Shooter used a shotgun (police)
THINKPROGRESS: Biden’s Gun Violence Event Interrupted By News of Another School Shooting
CNN had to ironically cut from footage of Vice President Joe Biden’s meeting with gun rights advocates to breaking news about the latest school shooting following the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary. Here’s the clip, captured by Thinkprogress:
TAFT UNION HAS AN ARMED GAURD
In the meantime, I’m curious whether there was an armed guard at the school, which the NRA suggests will prevent shootings. So I read over Taft’s most recently updated School Accountability Report Card, or SARC, which is available on the school’s website. Under the subheading School Safety, the report states that “Two campus supervisors and a uniform deputy sheriff (the school resource officer) monitor the cam- pus before, during and after school.”
I imagine the school resource officer is armed with a firearm given that she/he is a a uniform deputy sheriff. Perhaps she/he was responsible for stopping the shooting. If so, we’ll find out soon enough. This much we do know: the mere presence of an armed guard isn’t enough to deter gun violence in schools. Then again we’ve known that since Columbine, which had an armed school resource officer who wasn’t able to stop that massacre either.
.I am sorry to say that these incidents are going to continue. There are such deep pathologies in American society which combined with the availability of weapons becomes a lethal continuum. I have felt for years that the never-ending wars and the militarism of US foreign policy (Katrina vanden Heuvel has written eloquently on this subject) is another contributing factor. The US needs to withdraw from the world and come home and try to fix our problems.
January 10, 2013 at 3:01 pmBritain’s satirical Private Eye mag nails it this month with a spoof “Diary of Wayne LaPierre: “What would Jesus Christ have been thinking as those bad guys nailed him to death? From what we know of the man what he was thinking was ‘If only I had a high-calibre semi-automatic handgun, none of this would have happened…’ “
January 10, 2013 at 3:27 pmAmen! Some of us simply don’t want to be nailed to the Cross. Self defense is a natural instinct and the 2nd Amendment isn’t about duck hunting. The gun control argument currently centers on the debatable point of how many others a person w/a gun should be able to kill. If you’re in for a pinch, you’re in for a pound. While killing multiple others would, hopefully, prove to be a rare necessity (unless our government becomes even more violent and repressive), any Viet Nam war vet can tell you that one bullet doesn’t necessarily equal one kill. Sometimes many multiples of bullets are necessary for one kill. The Swat team members would, no doubt, verify that assertion.
January 10, 2013 at 7:41 pmSorry the NRA never said armed guards would prevent shooting. They basicly said armed guards could help lower the number of deaths related to school shootings.
January 10, 2013 at 4:42 pmYep, you’ll notice these gun free zones tend to accumulate the highest death tolls. I propose an experiment: Have someone hold a gun pointed at your head, then proceed to argue how guns should be inaccessible or regulated out of practical existence. OK, now have a gang w/guns pointed at your head and argue how guns with more than ‘x’ number of bullets should be regulated out of existence.
Home invasions happen–even in the most rural of communities. Perhaps your 6-shooter didn’t strike your mark, but I’m sure the bad guys will wait while you reload, yes? Citizens should have the right to the same number of rounds in one clip the cops have–and for much the same reason.
January 10, 2013 at 7:47 pmThose kids just walked right into Columbine High School, cop had no warning and was out gunned. We need to block gunmens from being able to enter the schools, thats the tickey
January 10, 2013 at 4:54 pmThe courthouses and federal buildings seem to manage that without banning guns or even particular kinds of guns. Perhaps the kids aren’t as high a priority?
January 10, 2013 at 7:51 pmRania,
I’m a glutton for your ignorance on again another subject you have obviously no practical experience in and are unqualified to provide a legitimate response.
So, how about “I noted that there is no proof an armed guard on campus can prevent or even mitigate the severity of a school shooting, as the NRA would have us believe.” Are you really that naive, perhaps you are? I’ll break it down to you; insane or murderous threat is best dealt with swiftly. If words are an option then thankfully no further bloodshed is required. But dang girl do a little research on what an “effective” response to a lethal threat is. The first responders in this case were unarmed staff and they were very fortunate. The first responders (school staff) at Sandy Hook did not fare well in a “gun free zone”.
What’s your effective security counter measures response? Do you know what our President’s stance is or was before the public became aware no less than 11 armed guards and secret service watch over his children at their school?
I have two children in public school so you could say I have a dog in this fight.
January 12, 2013 at 11:30 pmFuck you all Forex bustards
January 15, 2013 at 3:43 amSchools should be re-designed and updated. No more glass doors, have a steel exit door to the outside for every classroom, do not put classrooms near any entrance or exit of the building, full video and audio surveilence thats linked to local police dept. Guns dont kill people, people kill people. And I’m not implying to make our schools like a prison, just a safer place for our children and harder for violaters to enter or approach. If you take guns away…the criminals will obviously find a way to get their hands on one no matter what. Im sure some parents and neighbors of schools would even form a “school watch” group. There are solutions to decrease these crimes.
January 16, 2013 at 8:06 am