A year after she was shot by her 6-year-old student in a Virginia classroom, former teacher Abby Zwerner said she still worries about the other children who saw it happen, and wonders how they’re faring.

Wounded by a bullet that struck her hand and chest and punctured a lung, Zwerner rushed the other first-graders into the hallway before she collapsed in the elementary school’s office.

“I hope that they are enjoying school, enjoying their second-grade year,” Zwerner, 26, told The Virginian-Pilot newspaper. “I hope that they’re still kind to their classmates, kind to teachers. I hope that they still have happiness, and that their happiness wasn’t completely stripped away.”

  • WashedOver@lemmy.ca
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    6 months ago

    If only all the other kids were armed too we could have avoided the need for thoughts and prayers - NRA

    • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      They want to arm teachers already. When I keep asking how do you guarantee that a kid isn’t ever going to get access to a teacher’s gun, they act like that’s a stupid question.

      • lennybird@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        Yep. Take your pick:

        1. It’s either out of effective reach to be useful in an emergency situation.

        2. Or it’s recklessly in the open for others to steal or accidentally play with and cause a safety accident that goes underreported in this country.

        3. Teachers are stretched even more thin and underpaid by an even greater amount as they must now take recurring training and expect to be a hero wheb trained LEO with more tools in their kit can’t even do.

  • shalafi@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    LiberalGunNut™ here! Not too many ideas out there for laws that actually make a difference and will stand up to 2A challenges, but I got one.

    Drop the fucking hammer on anyone who allows a non-authorized person access to their weapon(s). No idea how this actually looks as a law, but I’m sure you get my drift.

    I’ve heard arguments pro and con regarding safe storage. For example; I’m not one to legislatively tax poor people for exercising a right. But lockboxes are plenty cheap enough. If you want to step up from a cheap lock-box, $80 and an hour of work, and you got a Harbor Freight wall safe installed. (They’re great BTW!)

    And such a law doesn’t need to specify containment! “Anyone gets hold of your gun, concrete and steel box for you.” Bet people would pay fucking attention!

    • chitak166@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      🥱

      Reducing the disparity in wealth has a direct impact on the amount of people who want to lash out at society by killing indiscriminately.

      Give people reasons to live so they don’t make up reasons to kill.

      Unfortunately, liberals and conservatives love to unite on greed because they’re both in on it.

      • TheFonz@lemmy.world
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        What data are you using to back this claim? Most school shooters seem to come from middle class to rather affluent families. How do you guys manage to pivot every thing to class warfare?

        I was walking down the street and I stubbed my toe: “Ow how can the proletariat suffer the injustice of tripping over uneven sidewalks while the rich continue to exploit us!”

        This is like a meme level comment at this point.

        Edit: to everyone downvoting: Prove me wrong. Give me the data. Show me that income or class had a considerable impact on these active school shooters.

        • chitak166@lemmy.world
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          The closer we get to the root of the problem, the more people we’ll find that contribute to it and the fewer we’ll find that are willing to acknowledge it.

          I’m sorry you’re too innocent or delusional to believe that money doesn’t impact nearly every aspect of our lives.

          • TheFonz@lemmy.world
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            6 months ago

            You willfully neglected the whole point of my comment. Show us the data that school shooters are influenced by income or class warfare? Not even Marx would stoop as low as you guys do to frame every. Single. Issue. Through. One. Single. Lens.

    • athos77@kbin.social
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      6 months ago

      There’ve been a bunch of initiatives the past couple years (since Biden took office) to provide free gun locks and lock boxes. There’s really no excuse not to have one.

      • averagedrunk@lemmy.ml
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        6 months ago

        Yep. A bunch of police departments give out cable locks if you just ask. I bought one for $4 because I don’t want to go to the police department for any reason and I use it to lock my helmet to my motorcycle.

        It’s not a perfect solution but it’s cheap and helpful.

    • Wrench@lemmy.world
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      Punishment for irresponsible gun storage wouldn’t make a dent. All it would achieve is putting more people in jail, not actually preventing mass shootings.

      Ban semi auto guns. Bolt / lever / pump / hammer (etc) action weapons only. That is plenty for hunting and defense scenarios.

      Realistically, it’d have to be a long, multi phase roll out of voluntary surrenders, followed by crime enhancements, followed by open warrants.

      • shalafi@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        and will stand up to 2A challenges

        You seem to have dropped this.

        And who do you imagine is voluntarily surrendering? Not sure what you propose here.

        followed by crime enhancements, followed by open warrants

        Doesn’t that contradict your second sentence?

        As far as bans go, some people obey the law, some do not. There’s also this.

        • Wrench@lemmy.world
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          All of your questions are addressed my first, succinct, comment. There’s no point in arguing with you if you’re going to ignore the points, I know where this goes.

          Edit - ok, you had one point that wasn’t addressed. 2A. You have the right to bear arms. Multi action guns are arms. Just like we don’t have a right to full automatic guns, we don’t have a constitutional right to semi automatic guns.

      • grue@lemmy.world
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        Ban semi auto guns. Bolt / lever / pump / hammer (etc) action weapons only. That is plenty for hunting and defense scenarios.

        The 2nd Amendment exists for the purpose of ensuring “the security of a free State.” Bolt / lever / pump / hammer (etc) action weapons don’t cut it for that purpose in the 21st century.

        Instead, we should take a page from Switzerland: issue everybody a military-standard assault rifle and force them to train with it, but don’t let anybody keep any ammo.

        • Brokkr@lemmy.world
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          The 2nd amendment states that a well regulated malitia is necessary for the security of a free state. It does not state that armed citizens are necessary.

          Before you bring up DC vs Heller, please first address how using originalism to rewrite the constitution is reasonable by an appellate court.

            • Brokkr@lemmy.world
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              Please stop leaving out the important parts. Clarifying components of a law are very important. Your link clearly states that there are 2 classes of the militia and the 2nd class is unorganized and therefore not part of the “well regulated militia”. The unorganized militia is everyone not in the National Guard or the Naval Militia.

              Additionally, by your interpretation, anyone over the age of 45 would not be a part of the militia and would therefore not have a right to bear arms. Including Heller who would therefore have lacked standing. Would you agree? If you do not, please explain.

              • grue@lemmy.world
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                Your link clearly states that there are 2 classes of the militia and the 2nd class is unorganized and therefore not part of the “well regulated militia”.

                That just means it needs to be better regulated, which is exactly what I proposed to do.

                Additionally, by your interpretation, anyone over the age of 45 should therefore surrender their firearms.

                What part of “sure, it needs a little updating to get rid of the sexism and ageism” did you not understand?

                • Brokkr@lemmy.world
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                  6 months ago

                  I was editing my prior comment while you were writing this. Please see the updated version.

                  I think you’ve misunderstood the link you provided. Part of the militia is explicitly not regulated because the civilian population is not part of the National Guard.

        • Couldbealeotard@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          How far can the American 2nd amendment allow? Where, between a sling shot and a nuclear warhead, is the line in the sand?

    • SeaJ@lemm.ee
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      “But I need my gun at the ready at all times! Plus there is one time I saw the lockpicking lawyer pick a gun lock and I’m certain all thieves have seen it.”

      I’ve seen that shit argued soooo many times. Unless it is 100% failsafe, there are still a stupid amount of people that will think it’s useless. It reminds me of people who do not wear seat belts because they heard about one person who was saved because they were thrown from a car. They will use that 0.01% of times to curse their own irresponsible behavior.

  • JakenVeina@lemm.ee
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    Anyone else feel like the article title was rather clickbait-y?

    former teacher Abby Zwerner said she still worries about the other children who saw it happen, and wonders how they’re faring.

    • aaaantoine@lemmy.world
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      It did at least draw me to the comments section to see the chatter, but no, I pretty much expected what you quoted.

      I guess it’s open enough to interpretation to be misleading. Do readers think she was worried the kid was going after them next? Do they think she was worried one more of the students would come after her?

    • lad@programming.dev
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      [Researcher David Riedman, founder of a database that tracks U.S. school shootings dating back to 1970] said Saturday that he’s only aware of three other shootings caused by 6-year-old students in the time period he’s studied. Those include the fatal shooting of a fellow student in 2000 in Michigan and shootings that injured other students in 2011 in Texas and 2021 in Mississippi

      Maybe not, at least if we don’t know the exact age at least to the month

    • odelik@lemmy.today
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      The person that coined this phrase is stepping down from the NRA. I think it’s time we retired this garbage, just like the person that created it.

        • odelik@lemmy.today
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          Poe’s Law was on life support in 2015 with the ramp up to Trump’s election. It died shortly after his election.

          When you’ve got the people of Uvalde that went through their, very public, tragedy and then went and voted for the people that were openly advertising that they were trying to block gun and social reform to address the problems that led to the death of their children, you really do have to add the the /s (or other qualifier) these days.

    • GiddyGap@lemm.ee
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      Is that why elementary school shootings are incredibly rare outside the US where random people don’t run around with guns all the time?

  • Agent_Engelbert@linux.community
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    Back in the day, when the government of Japan banned samurai schools, and prohibited so many dangerous weapons, the samurai got angry and revolted.

    Those samurais, on the other hand, who worked closely with the government or had willingness (or had leverage by working with them), created their own “spiritual” schools, teaching aikido, kendo, and practices of spirituality, peace, and finding one’s own path in life.

    But now Japan thrives ever so lively. And yet, the government now carries all that stigma after the ages of samurais had passed; and for good reasons, because they do oppress people and judge them unjustly in courts.

    Perhaps the sword may have not been the answer, but it is certainly not the solution either to dismantle all, including the good and the bad, for there are the protectors of peace- the sword carriers, and those whom carry weapons and guns are no different.

    And there are those who are irresponsible and neglectful, and would drive opposition the opportunity for justifying radical changes. Then that radical change would be justified. Including the dismantling of weapons and their schools of thought.

    So is the case that had led to this women’s unfortunate circumstance.

    However, I will still carry the sword to death with me.