Pennsylvania: Teachers, Students “Armed” With Rocks To Combat Potential Shooter
“throwing rocks is better than throwing books or pencils”
The Blue Mountain school district in Pennsylvania has provided all of its schools with 5-gallon buckets full of rocks to be used as a “last resort” against a potential school shooter. Students and teachers have been practicing in unarmed drills (i.e. drills without the rocks).
The school district reportedly expects the buckets of rocks to also serve as a deterrent, making a potential shooter “think twice” before selecting Blue Mountain schools.
A rural school district in Pennsylvania is arming teachers and students with buckets of rocks as a last resort should an armed intruder burst in, the superintendent said Friday.
Every classroom in the district about 90 miles (145 kilometers) northwest of Philadelphia has a 5-gallon bucket of river stones, said Blue Mountain School District Superintendent David Helsel.
“We always strive to find new ways to keep our students safe,” Helsel told The Associated Press in a telephone interview, adding that the rocks are one small part of the district’s overall security plan.
. . . . Staff and students in the Blue Mountain district have been trained in a program called “ALICE” which stands for alert, lockdown, inform, counter and evacuate. Helsel said the rocks are part of the “counter” portion of training, fighting back if the intruder makes his way into the classroom.
The buckets are kept in classroom closets.
. . . . Kenneth Trump, president of the Cleveland-based National School Safety and Security Services, a K-12 security consulting firm, calls the idea illogical and irrational and said it could possibly cost lives.
He said the efforts fill an emotional security need, but don’t actually enhance security.
One high school senior said he supports the plan, adding that throwing rocks is better than throwing books or pencils.
Watch:
You may recall that businesses began training employees working in gun-free zones to throw chairs, purses, pens, staplers, etc. to disorient, even momentarily, an active shooter or terrorist. The training included “swarming” the assailant immediately to subdue him.
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Comments
Yes. Throw rocks as an absolute last resort. Before reaching that point, try throwing hot lead at 1,000+ fps. It is much better than throwing books and pencils.
So April 1 is early this year, huh?
Dude, I’m working April 1st, and you are raising the bar for my trickery. 😛
Heh.
Give it up Fuzzy. Today, when virtually every Onion story looks like solid news, you don’t stand a chance on April 1st.
Oh, by all means, do something to p*ss off an already deranged shooter! [sarcasm] Nothing like being pelted with rocks to calm down someone who is already trying to kill you! [/sarcasm]
False security. But what about when the students get mad at the teacher?
So just how many of these students and teachers will actually expose themselves to open fire in order to throw a rock (or rocks) with enough force for it to even matter? Hmmmm? How many of them can even decently THROW a rock. Remember Obama’s first pitch????
They are just not taking into account basic human nature. Cops have GUNS and they often hesitate to go into harm’s way. Yes there are exceptions to this, but “onesies” and “twosies” get picked off in a gunfight–and I’ve been in one. Look, even under duress, human nature (and remember we are talking teenagers here) is more prone to cower, than stand and fight. I’m not taking anything away from this except to say that it is a very, very limited security effort and is probably going to be more successful as a PSYOP against future shooters at the school rather than being protection of any significant sort.
In the end, only another person with a gun stands a fair chance of stopping a hellbent shooter.
And to think so many are totally against arming teachers because they claim the armed teacher would not be able to stand up against a shooter armed with an AR-15 style rifle and would have no chance and yet they think that arming teachers with rocks is a better alternative. If this does not point out the serious flaw in the Left’s thinking, their divisive politics, and their inane agenda, then I do not know what will.
And using a gun is better than throwing rocks.
Unless the rock has gps guidance.