Just about a month in, and of course the nation is still gripping with the Sandy Hook shooting. In California, a teenager shot at two individuals. One was injured. The individual was a victim of bullying and the person wanted revenge against his tormentors. I guess in my honest opinion, those indiviudals Bakersfield, California is the scene of at tragedy. The shooting at Taft High School was brought to an end by a courageous teacher. This tragedy reassures the nation that reasonable gun control is necessary.
The National Rifle Association was at the White House with Vice President Joe Biden. The talks didn't go well. The NRA wasted no time attacking on the proposals the vice president offered. And while they're in the meeting, a tragedy happens.
At a press conference held Thursday afternoon, Sheriff Donny Youngblood said that the shooter, a 16-year-old student at the high school, entered a science classroom at around 9 a.m. that morning armed with a 12-gauge shotgun.
According to Youngblood, the teen shot one student before shooting at and missing another. Law enforcement officials believe both students shot at were intended targets, and Youngblood said the shooter called his second target by name before firing.
The teacher began to evacuate the students out a back door, then he and a campus supervisor were able to engage the shooter in conversation and distract him while students evacuated the classroom, the sheriff said. The two adults were able to calm the shooter and convince him to put down the gun.
"[They] did a great job protecting the kids," Chief of Police Ed Whiting said at the conference.
The teacher suffered a minor pellet wound to the head.
Youngblood said a neighbor saw the shooter enter the school armed with the shotgun and called 911, and that Taft police were on the scene in less than sixty seconds.
The suspect is believed to be a student, Kern County sheriff's spokesman Ray Pruitt told the Associated Press, and police believe the weapon used was a shotgun.
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| Vice President Joe Biden and Attorney General Eric Holder meet with NRA representatives. |
Two people have been reported shot, according to the station. The first victim suffered minor injuries and refused treatment, according to KGET. The second, a student, was airlifted to Kern Medical Center. Ryan Dunbier, senior deputy with the Kern County Sheriff's Department, told the New York Daily News that the airlifted victim had been shot in the chest and was critically wounded.
The incident occurred at about 9 a.m., according to KABC, and took place in the science building, according to the TaftMidwayDriller.com, a local paper's website.
At around 9:20, the suspect was taken into custody and students were evacuated to the football field. Parents were notified and asked to pick up their children.
Taft is a community of about 7,000 located 30 miles southwest of Bakersfield, in San Joaquin Valley.
An employee of the Taft Police Department told The Huffington Post the department would not release any information on the shooting. They also said a press conference would take place later today at the scene of the crime.
Taft Union High School in Taft, Calif., normally has an armed guard on campus to help officials with problems that go "beyond the scope" of the administration.
But on Thursday morning, as a student showed up with a shotgun and fired two to four shots at a teacher and a classmate, the officer was nowhere to be found.
"He couldn't get there because he was snowed in," Sheriff Donny Youngblood of the Kern County Sheriff’s Department said in a press conference Thursday afternoon.
To what extent the officer's absence contributed to the situation at Taft Union will never be known. Law enforcement officials were grateful on Thursday that the impact of the shooting had been limited. The suspected shooter injured only two individuals: a teacher who received what Youngblood called a "pellet wound" to the head, which did not cause significant damage, and a 16-year-old student who was evacuated to a hospital, where he or she remained in critical but stable condition.
Had another teacher and a campus supervisor not talked the shooter down from firing more rounds, Youngblood stressed, the situation could have been far worse. Youngblood estimated that some 20 additional students were at risk. Police arrived at the scene a minute after the first calls came in at 9:00 a.m. PST., and the suspect was in custody by 9:20 a.m.
The shooting goes down as yet another chapter in a series of recent instances of gun violence. Coming at the start of what promises to be a contentious political debate around gun control legislation, it could potentially alter the course of that conversation.
That's because Taft Union High School had already adopted the type of preemptive security approach that the gun rights community has been advocating for. In a School Accountability Report Card for the 2011 to 2012 year, officials listed the following under the heading: School Safety.
"Two campus supervisors and a uniform deputy sheriff (the school resource officer) monitor the campus before, during and after school."
A separate document from the school notes that "two campus supervisors and a full-time sheriff’s deputy work with the assistant principal on matters of student welfare." The document also notes that the high school "contracts with the Kern County Sheriff’s Department to employ a full-time school resource officer to deal with truancies and disciplinary issues that are beyond the scope of our administration."
A separate law enforcement official, briefing reporters on Thursday afternoon, said he and his colleagues were grateful for the school's policy, regardless of the fact that the armed officer had been unable to make it to the school that crucial morning.
"Unfortunately they can't be every place at all times," the official said.
Others following the gun policy debate have been more critical of the idea of posting armed officials on the campus of every school, a proposal pushed by the National Rifle Association following the shooting deaths of 20 first-graders and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. Many observers questioned both the cost and the efficacy of the idea. An armed guard, after all, had been at Columbine High School the day of the shooting there. In addition, not all mass shootings take place at schools, raising the question of whether the country should have armed officials at every mall, movie theater and house of worship as well.
But the idea does poll well. And as Vice President Joe Biden puts together a list of recommendations with his gun policy task force, it's been suggested that he could throw the NRA a bone by proposing more money to place guards at schools.
Now I am very concerned that the NRA and the Republican Party are working a NIGGERIZATION of President Barack Obama. When he tries to reach out to them with this fallacy of bipartisanship, these WHITE EXTREMIST reject it or deny the reality of fact. This shooting in California, gives credence to what could happen if things don't change.
School bullying is an issue that leads to mass shootings. The president will have to make things happen with or without the help of Congress. The Congress is too partisan and too extreme based on how Republican obstruction gridlocked progress.
We're in the 21st Century and yet the very same agitators from the past century are still controlling an agenda that's so far out of the mainstream.
We here at Journal de la Reyna send our condolences to those who may of been lost in this tragedy.
