Shooting Fish In A Barrel

Friday afternoon, I received this email from the school district:

Good afternoon! We had a false alarm this afternoon after school with a report of possible weapons on campus. Several of us immediately ran around the outside of the building and told students to get inside for a lock down. The good news is they all responded and ran inside within seconds. Even better news is that police were given wrong information. The report was for another city. As you know, we’d rather error on the side of caution and were proud of the students for their quick response.

Hope you have a good uneventful weekend!

Signed, Principal

 Can I tell you how wrong this is?  Not the email notification, per se, but the whole lock-down thing.  I am so opposed to locking children in a classroom "to keep them safe".  Tell me, what is so safe about locking thirty children in a classroom, without an escape, if there is someone in the building with a weapon.

I had friends at Columbine, I spent a sleepless night waiting to hear if they were okay.  As the disturbing reports came out about Klebold and Harris mowing down students who were hunkered down in the library, my heart broke.  One of my closest friends little sister usually spent her lunch hour in the library doing homework.  On that fateful day, she allowed herself to be talked into going out to McDonald's with her friends.  She *hated* McDonald's, but got browbeaten into going.  That decision may have saved her life.

In response to Columbine, schools all over the nation started having "lock-down" drills or reverse fire drills.  To keep our children safe.  Safe?  Are you kidding?  Did they learn nothing from Columbine?  What happened to the students trapped in the library?  Think about it.  What happened?

Now think about what happened to the children who ran for their lives.  How many of those children died?

Yet the powers that be who run the schools decided it was safer to lock-down our kids, which means that they are herded into classrooms, the doors locked, lights turned off and they're expected to be quiet.  Excuse me, but who can be quiet when there's some lunatic going room to room mowing down our "safe" children?

I understand the school's position.  I really do.  They have to be able to account for the children.  They are tasked with keeping them safe while on their property.  How can they do that if the students are told to run?  I get it.  I also know that if one of my children is ever hurt because of a lock-down, I'm gonna own myself a school district.

My children, from the moment the Columbine incident hit the news, have been told to run.  I don't care about the school's rules. 

I.
Don't.
Care. 

The principal and I can go head-to-head after the fact, but my children are to run as far as as fast as they can.

While they were in junior high, I introduced them to a teacher who I shot competitively with, Mr. H.  I made my wishes very clear to Mr. H.  That if there was ever an incident on school property, my children were to go to his classroom (if they were close enough) and he would let them out the back door (he had one of the few classrooms with an outside door).  If my kids weren't close to Mr. H.'s class, they were to find the nearest exit and RUN.  They could call me from wherever they ended up to let me know they were okay.

Sometimes, you have to break the rules to stay safe.  I've taught my children that it's okay to do so.  There are safety "rules" that are just plain stupid.  School lock-downs are just plain stupid.