In the wake of the shootings at Sandy Hook, Don Dunn, the superintendent at Van ISD, 70 miles southeast of Dallas, sent a memo to parents explaining what the district was doing post-Sandy Hook to ensure students' safety. These included adding school resource officers, brushing up on emergency drills, locking classroom doors, and adding a security system.
When the Van ISD Board of Trustees met in January, they added something else: guns.
As the district explained in a press release, the board authorized "specific school employees and other persons" to carry guns on school property.
That way, there would be people who could properly respond to any number of scenarios "including invasion of the schools by an armed outsider, hostage situations, students who are armed and posing a direct threat of physical harm to themselves or others, and similar circumstances."
The district ordered a training class on Wednesday to train employees on the proper use of firearms. There, one of those employees, who wasn't identified by the district, shot himself in the leg.
According to a statement released today by the district and reported by the Tyler Morning-Telegraph, the individual stayed after class to have the instructor check out a "mechanical malfunction."
"With the assistance of the instructor, the malfunction was addressed, but the gun misfired and the bullet ricocheted coming back to strike the VISD employee in the left leg," the statement read. "The VISD employee was attended to at the scene and transferred to Tyler for further treatment. The injury is not life threatening or disabling. Because of privacy and security issues we cannot make any further statement."
Guns in schools: what could possibly go wrong?
