I'm pretty sure existing criminal and civil laws in most jurisdictions adequately address shooting people with projectiles without consent and outside of reasonable self defense, or conspiring with, soliciting, or procuring others to do so, whether or not in the context of an employment relationship.
And if they don't in Indiana, then a limited fix for teachers isn't the solution needed.
This whole situation is absurd, and the idea of passing a law explicitly banning intentionally injuring a teacher during a training drill is the cherry on top.
It sounds like this whole training activity is being run by idiots that don't actually know anything about or respect gun safety. Shooting someone unexpectedly with an air soft gun is already illegal. If the teachers signed a liability waiver making it okay, it's on the teachers for willingly participating in a clearly stupid and dangerous activity. If they didn't, then the injured teachers should hire a lawyer and sue...
Jess christ, I can't believe people here argue that with the straight face. Do you treat other mass shooters and terrorists the same? He shot the school therefore school caused it by not giving him everything he wanted? Seriously.
By this logic, if employer in right to work state fires someone and that someone shoots the workplace, employer caused the shooting.
Most shootings at schools are targeted (jilted lover type situations—often these target an adult, not a student; something related to other crime, like beef over drug dealing territory between students) or are coincidences (a shooting otherwise having nothing to do with the school happens to take place on the edge of the parking lot, or something like that). They're not what people usually mean by "school shooting"—though, I mean, obviously they're still not great.
However, even including those, a couple years back I ran the numbers on odds of a kid even being present (not hurt or killed) during any kind of shooting at a school, over a 13-year K-12 school career, and I don't remember the exact figure, but it was low enough that I concluded none of this was worth any real concern on my part at all. And that's assuming shootings at schools are evenly distributed, which I'm sure they're not.
It’s extremely unlikely a given kid will be present at all during any kind of shooting at school, the vast majority of which aren’t indiscriminate killings and which may not involve students or staff at all (a shooting that just happens to take place with at least one involved party standing on school property)—over all 13 years of k-12 school.
I ran the numbers and it was firmly in “not even worth a thought” territory. I cast the net of the definition of “school shooting” as wide as remotely reasonable, and made the criterion present at the building for, not hurt or killed, and it was still not worth worrying about.
The odds are even better in the kinds of schools HNers are likely to send their kids to, since a ton of those shootings are drug- and/or gang-related.
Statistically true but tell that to every school district that forces the teachers to lead live shooter drills every month. With that said though, shooters happen and teachers are in charge of ensuring the safety of their class when it does. Whether it happens or not its part of the job description. How would it play if there was a real school shooting and the teacher just ran away abandoning her class?
"but that'll lead to more school shootings!", cry the people who've apparently never considered that school shootings are premeditated and the shooters tend not to care about the law.
> And I mean actual school shootings, not the kind of stuff that's defined as, "somebody fired a gun somewhere on school property at any time, and somebody died as a result"
Teachers don't need to be armed in case of a shooter just as teachers don't need to carry fire extinguishers in case of a fire.
Teachers DO need to be trained in what to do in a shooting just as they do when there is a fire. When there is a fire, we don't lock ourselves in the classroom waiting for the fire department to show up. We escape, we fight the fire (with fire extinguishers) until the fire department shows up to deal with the situation.
This is what the Israelis do, they have gun safes placed around the school that contain a handgun and a magazine. They train the school personnel on how to operate the weapon, they're not looking for the next Jason Bourne, just someone who can slow down (or possibly stop the shooter). Opening the safe automatically dials 911.
"school shootings" is also misleading, because it includes negligent discharge of a police officer's gun into the wall on school property, gang/crime related shootings (even non-fatal) on the school parking lot after hours, and so on.
What we think of as "school shootings" - an active shooters targeting individuals in a school systematically - is still exceedingly rare and you know them all by name. 1-2 per year, if memory serves. Pretty bad, yea, but not nearly what it's made out to be. Pretty much chance of being struck by lightning.
http://www.heraldnet.com/news/teacher-wants-out-of-marysvill...
http://www.whio.com/news/crime--law/350k-lawsuit-filed-madis...
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/families-washington...
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