Here’s another sad story of hysteria used to water down science teaching. David Lapp does a simple and dramatic exercise, the ballistic pendulum experiment: fire a bullet into a block of wood, and from the masses of the two objects and the movement of wood, calculate the velocity of the bullet. That sounds pretty cool to me, and seems like a clever and dramatic way to get students to see the utility of simple math. Now, though, people are practically shrieking penal codes at the poor guy and whining about the terrible example he is setting, putting those poor school kids in danger.
“It’s just absolute madness, from my point of view,” said Feinberg, one of the founding members of the National Emergency Assistance Team, which has responded to most of the school shootings in the country. “It is not only crazy in concept, in light of the world we live in it is absolutely irresponsible.”
Guns are common objects, and a lot of the kids probably have at least one in their household. A lot of those kids have probably been out shooting: they have held a gun near their face, aimed it in the direction of a target, and pulled the trigger. They may have gone hunting with a parent, a situation far, far riskier than the controlled setting of a classroom. Mr Feinberg has no control over what they experience outside the school, and seems to have no idea of what those kids are doing in real life anyway. The virtue of this exercise is that it takes something familiar and uses it to reveal the mathematics of matter and motion.
The phrase that bugs me is “in light of the world we live in”—what world is that? One where if a teacher uses a gun responsibly as a tool, kids will be inspired to…what? Learn physics? What “irresponsible” lesson does Mr Feinberg think was taught?
I don’t know, PZ, this does seem irresponsible to me. Very cool teaching exercise and it probably gets plenty of kids excited about the subject, but the mere presence of a gun in a school is unacceptable in my book – no matter how controlled its use is. What happens to the gun when it is not in use? What happens if it gets stolen? What happens if it malfunctions during the experiment? I don’t know the details of this situation, and I know you can ask “What ifs” about all situations, but using a gun in a classroom, even as a teaching tool, is unacceptable to me.
I think it is simply magical thinking. Children shooting schoolmates and teachers is bad, therefore putting together children, teachers schools and a gun will result in something bad. Add in a touch of knee-jerk antigun sentiment and the term “school psychologist” gets an even worse connotation that it started out with.
I’ve known a few of those old school military guys, and they treat guns with far more respect and concern than I do. I am assuming that this instructor is straightlaced and disciplined with it — if not, then there is a problem. The thing is, though, that the administrators quoted in the article are reacting irrationally — just having a gun anywhere near the kids is giving them the vapors, and that’s just wrong.
. . . but the mere presence of a gun in a school is unacceptable in my book – no matter how controlled its use is . . .
Oh, jeez. My junior high school — comprising the 6th, 7th and 8th grades — which I attended from 1981-1983, had a gun club, for heaven’s sake. With long guns! On school premises! In the hands of children!! Some of them under the age of 13!! The horror!!!
I never thought I would think that in many ways 1980s America had more sense than we do in 2006.
PZ, While I normally agree with you about 90% of the time, do we really need a school experiment that involves guns? It may be an “interesting” way to illustrate math and physics principles but it sounds a lot like the teacher is going for the thrill and the method will far overshadow the point he is trying to make.
Wait, I have a math problem that will fit in with the news of the day and grab the kids’ imagination:
Gynalotramin Jones only got half of the dime bag he paid for. If he paid a fin for the dime calculate the amount per gram if the standard for a dime is 10 grams. If the dime was cut with baby formula at 60/40 recalculate. If Gynalotramin is really pissed and passes the dealer’s corner with his AK how many rounds can he get off in 100 feet if he travels at 40 mph and the AK fires at 10 rounds a second?
The same lesson can be taught with a bic pen and a spitwad. I am sure students will find this equally inspiring.
Long guns are safer. :-)
Speaking of safety – we have lots of data on the use of guns in controlled situations, such as firing ranges. We can, with some confidence, quantify the danger of the gun in question. What we cannot quantify is the inspiration of the demonstration performed with a gun, versus the same demonstration using a softball pitching machine.
One other thing – whatever the relative merits of the two positions here, Mr Feinberg’s subjective experience with guns in classrooms is essentially guaranteed to suffer from severe selection bias.
Guns are common objects…
Maybe you should change that…
Guns are maybe common objects is the USA but not in the civilised world. Look at your murder rates if you wonder why people are uncomfortable with this. How can a teacher use a gun ‘responsibly as a tool’? It is a tool with only one purpose: killing.
Didn’t you read the article? Guns are also used to move wood blocks.
Sounds like a great, dramatic experiment to me. Demonizing a tool, albeit one whose purpose is generally to cause injury or death to a living thing (though that’s not an absolute, I know target shooters who’d be very reluctant to use a gun to harm anything), is silly. Guns may make killing more efficient, but it’s still people who do the killing (yes,yes I know that’s too much like “guns don’t kill people, poeple do” but that’s a true enough statement as far as it goes.) If youngsters saw guns as tools with practical purposes (as many do, since their parents see them that way and pass on the attitude) rather than as symbols of “macho cool” power over others, we’d be on our way to a society that doesn’t have the murder rates we have now. Show a kid what a gun can really do to something (how the force is applied to the target, what its effects are on living tissue) in a practical experiment and they might well think twice about using it on someone. If more portrayals of gun violence showed the real results, it would be a lot less popular in entertainment. Guns have uses that we shouldn’t be afraid of (hunting, for instance) and the sooner kids find them pratical rather than exotic and symbolic, the better.
Do they still allow knives in home economics class?
I wonder if those who get the heebie-jeebies at the mere presence of a firearm go into a similar tizzy near a swimming pool or lake, and whether their relative discomfort is in any way related to the proportionate risk of being shot and drowning.
Guns are maybe common objects is the USA but not in the civilised world.
The statistical term of art for this sentence is “complete horseshit.” Canada has an overall gun ownership rate similar to that of the US. Other Western countries have relatively high rates as well.
It is a tool with only one purpose: killing.
Gawrsh, Mickey, I know literally dozens of hobby target shooters — including some competitive shooters — who have never brandished a gun at anything but a paper target. But I’m sure your quite clever and well-grounded argument by assertion should suffice to disprove their existence. Well done!
Oh, come on. I’m liberal. I don’t own a gun. I think guns ought to be regulated. The simplistic hysteria of people who want to hide the existence of guns from kids who already know all about them is embarrassing.
I know literally dozens of hobby target shooters — including some competitive shooters — who have never brandished a gun at anything but a paper target.
Well, there are easier ways to cut paper.
Does anyone have some statistics for the rates of gun ownership in the Western world? Phil said: “Canada has an overall gun ownership rate similar to that of the US. Other Western countries have relatively high rates as well”, but I find that difficult to believe.
I misspoke (I was thinking of another statistic), but proportionately speaking, the US has nearly 10 times the population of Canada, but only about 3.5 times the number of weapons per 100,000 people. (See here.)
I don’t own a gun either, and I haven’t even touched one in probably 20 years (when a friend and I used to plug cans out in the woods with a .22 rifle while in high school). But, yes, the “Eeek! A GUN!” hysteria from some people really is embarrassing.
And while it’s easy to simply point to differential murder rates and shout “Eeeek! Guns!!!” there are a whole lot of other factors — population, population density, urban/rural splits, ethnic/national homogeneity, historical factors, poverty rates, etc. — that need to be accounted for before pointing to gun ownership as THE cause. It’s my understanding that poverty rates are a much better predictor of violent crime than gun ownership rates are.
There’s a video out there on the internets somewhere of a police officer giving a demonstration on the dangers of handguns to a group of high school students. Of course, the “unloaded” gun goes off in the middle of the talk while the cop is fiddling with it.
It seems that the real issue here has been missed. Do we really think that all teachers are always responsible enough to be allowed to conduct physics demonstrations with lethal weapons? I know some high school teachers that I wouldn’t trust to walk my dog, let alone carry a loaded gun into a classroom. Just because one guy might be a pillar of good sense and responsibility doesn’t mean that the teacher in the next classroom isn’t a moron.
There’s a video out there on the internets somewhere of a police officer giving a demonstration on the dangers of handguns to a group of high school students. Of course, the “unloaded” gun goes off in the middle of the talk while the cop is fiddling with it.
I own a gun for home defense, and I’m a really good shot, too. But I’m thousands of times more likely to cause you an injury with my car, or even with my cooking (heh), or even with my perfume, should you happen to be allergic to it. Unless you have a hysterical fear of ME, there’s no reason in the world you should have a hysterical fear of my gun.
Bang.
Made you jump! Heh.
I was one of Mr. Lapp’s students. It is a great demonstration. He also does one where he lies on a bed of nails with a cinder block on his stomach and has a student smash the cinder block with a sledge hammer. Mr. Lapp really engages the students and not just the ones who are interested in science to begin with but also those that typically avoided science courses. He does it without sacrificing the knowledge, skills and lessons to be learned. That is rare I am afraid to say. His Physics courses are part of the senior year experience at Tamalpais High School. Students want to take the course.
As for the demonstration, I have seen it done other ways but they just don’t have the same impact. As for safety, the gun is brought to school one day out of the school year. It is locked in a box which is then placed in a locked room that is adjacent to the classroom. The only way into that room is through the classroom. Mr. Lapp is careful.
What science courses should be teaching students is how to think critically about the world around them. To be able to separate rational thought and facts from irrational fears and false claims. Superintendent Ferguson is banning the demonstrations because of public outcry, the irrational fear (“He does a lot of things to grab students’ attention. However, this garnered more attention from the public.”). What happens when some parent realizes chemicals are stored in the chemistry room year round that can be used as poisons, to make explosives, are carcinogens? When a parent realizes for nucleic acid extractions phenol and chloroform are used? Do we ban them as well? I can understand if facts were cited that showed that such gun demonstrations were significantly more dangerous than other science experiments routinely done at the high school level. That has not been done. Only fear is expressed. Columbine is cited. To me in a world where action heroes in movies and video games dodge bullets with absurd ease, I would think them knowing the actual velocity of a bullet coming out of a gun would be a good thing for them to know and understand.
I should note of my class of 181 at Tam (public high school), 4 our now pursuing their PhD in the sciences. From what I gather that is a pretty good percentage. I think the fact that sciences teachers at Tam go the extra mile plays a good part in that.
(My handle on here links to my blog where I have posted a letter I wrote to to Superintendent Ferguson).
Paul wrote:
“What “irresponsible” lesson does Mr Feinberg think was taught?”
As a Physics teacher myself for more than 30 years, I can tell you that firing a gun in a school situation, with kids around is highly irresponsible and reckless. I would never do this for the same reason that I wouldn’t do the Thermite demonstration in my classroom or the ammonium dichromate “volcano”. The safety of the students is your number one priority, and no matter how relevant the demonstartion is and no matter how remote the odds are of something happening, you must always err on the side of caution. Most teachers are highly competent and dedicated, but I have met a few in my experience that I wouldn’t want my own kids to be in a classroom with.
Besides, there are numerous ways to demonstrate this principle in a physics classs without resorting to firearms.
The statistical term of art for this sentence is “complete horseshit.” Canada has an overall gun ownership rate similar to that of the US. Other Western countries have relatively high rates as well.
Canada has a high rate of rifle ownership, but its rate of handgun ownership is as low as Europe’s. Since most guns used in murders are handguns, rifle ownership doesn’t really count.
It’s my understanding that poverty rates are a much better predictor of violent crime than gun ownership rates are.
The 1960s saw American poverty plummet and crime soar; the 1970s had relatively high crime rates but little poverty and low inequality. Then in the 1990s poverty and crime went down together.
Please, do we really need to turn this into an argument on the utility of guns; the rates of gun violence and the constantly misinterpreted (and nonexistent) “individual right” to keep and bear arms? The issue was the inappropriate use of a weapon in school and this teachers grasping at grandstanding to keep the kids awake.
I spent a long time in the military shooting things and blowing things up. I am not the least bit squeamish around guns. This “experiment” is inappropriate and ignoring the problems in a violent society by defending this action is silly.
By the way, I’m teaching a block on pre-Civil War History. Is it ok if I “sell” a few of the black students to the richer white students and make them do their work and carry their books and fetch their trays in the lunch room for a week or two? To make it really good maybe I’ll advance the black students’ rights as history advances — Back of the classroom. Wait, get out of the classroom until the end of second semester.
I would never do this for the same reason that I wouldn’t do the Thermite demonstration in my classroom or the ammonium dichromate “volcano”.
I take it, then, that you never taught drivers’ ed either, Charlie.
Oh do get over yourself. Where exactly are you calling “the civilised world” that you think nobody owns guns?
…
…
I don’t own a gun either. But when I was a kid in Texas, they were everywhere. When the first Dirty Harry movie came out, a 15-year-old friend of mine got a .44 magnum as a present from his dad. A half dozen of us, ages 15 to 17, went out to the bayou and practiced shooting it. Amazingly enough, considering the hysteria these days, nobody died.
In fact, throughout my childhood, which included rodeo, deer and coon hunting, and the ready availability and unsupervised use of fireworks, nobody I knew died.
This shrieking reaction to the gun-in-science-class incident is a single piece with a post a few days ago lamenting the fact that kids can’t get chemistry sets anymore.
There’s a safety concern involved in the extreme reaction, but there’s a mean-spirited UNconcern with the concept of helping kids learn self-reliance and a responsible approach to life’s dangers.
Every winter, I always say, you have to have one little almost-accident before your winter driving reflexes really kick in. Likewise, I think you have to be steadily inoculated with little dangers throughout your childhood in order to become a careful, safety-conscious adult. It worked for me.
We just had a story in the news where I live about three local boys, 17 or so, who jumped off a 30-foot bridge into a cold lake. All three died. I can’t help but think that real-world lessons throughout the lives of youngsters, lessons in “Hey, some things really can hurt or kill you,” coupled with “Ain’t nobody to blame but yourself,” there might be fewer of these kinds of incidents.
…
…
A lot of those kids have probably been out shooting: they have held a gun near their face, aimed it in the direction of a target, and pulled the trigger. They may have gone hunting with a parent, a situation far, far riskier than the controlled setting of a classroom.
Now *that’s* question-begging.
I disgree with PZ’s characterization of this exercise as a demonstration with a “common object.” The reason it’s a compelling demonstration is not because a gun is “common,” but because it has a mystique about it and firing a bullet is intrinsically dramatic. You could set up the same experiment with other common, low velocity objects, compensate with lighter wood blocks, and teach the identical principle about momentum.
I also wonder if guns are that common in Mill Valley, which is in the SF Bay Area. In some families they might be as common as golf clubs or tennis rackets might be in other families. But there are apt to be families that don’t have guns and don’t really want their kids near guns. You can ridicule that attitude, but I think it’s a sufficiently common view that it would be reasonable to get parental permission to see this display.
On the subject of actual risk, this sounds very safe–with the possible exception of ear protection. The teacher has done this many times before. It’s less dangerous to kids than letting some teachers drive in the parking lot. But I think it’s disingenuous to call guns a “common object” and wonder out loud what the fuss is all about. People have strong opinions about guns.
Finally, according to the article, the schoolboard has explicit rules against bringing guns into the schools. Whether you think it’s a stupid rule or a good one, the teacher doesn’t have the discretion to ignore it. He should be held accountable for any rule violation. There are clear mitigating circumstances, because what he did had educational value. I would expect the parent’s complaint to get a fair hearing as well as the teacher’s side of things. That’s how rules are supposed to work.
If there were a way to do this off of school grounds with appropriate permissions, a lot of problems could be cleared up. He only does it once a year, so I don’t think that would be infeasible.
I’m a liberal Brit who is more than happy with the low rates of gun-ownership over here (“in the civilised world”, heh), but given that guns are legal to own and use in Lapp’s neck of the woods, and that he seems to be taking every safety precaution, I don’t see what the problem is, either.
I’m assuming that Lapp only brings one bullet along, which he keeps on his person until it’s required for the experiment. Personally, I’d clamp the rifle down before loading it, as well, to keep the risks to an absolute minimum.
It’s odd that he’s been doing it for twenty years, and that it’s only just come to light that he needs written permission to conduct the experiment. It’s not as though he could have been especially stealthy about it. And it’s a shame that the authorities have reacted in this instant zero-tolerance fashion. If one person complains, you don’t necessarily have to placate them by giving in to their absurd demands.
Lets see, when I was in school, almost everyone carried a pocket knife.
A lot of kids parked their trucks in the school parking lot, complete with rear-window gunracks loaded with guns.
There was a competative marksmanship team…school sponsored.
Every Year, our chemestry teacher did a demonstration that involved filling a balloon with hydrogen, and detonating it in the classroom.
Even now, my kids school district has an eight-grade archery unit IN THE SCHOOL as a required part of their physical education curriculum.
Never a serious injury from any of these things. If there were, they would have been dealt with on an individual basis as is appropriate for individual instances with unique circumstances and causes.
I don’t see the big deal. The teacher has done this safely and responsibly for decades. Kids love it and they pay attention and learn from it.
Although I could suggest one simple remedy for the whole thing: an optional field trip to the local shooting range to conduct the demonstration.
As someone who is not so long out of their student days, I have to (alarmingly) agree with Charlie Wagner. (Just this once, mind you. I won’t make a habit of it.)
School kids are, by and large, fucking idiots. Who hasn’t been in a classroom where the teacher says “and no, don’t try to test the temperature of the bunsen flames with a thermometer” and five minutes later the room is filled with tiny shards of glass from an exploding thermometer. Yes, idiots, but the world is full of them.
While a firearm may be a common object where this guy comes from that hardly makes it a benign object, or the students any more likely to know how to behave around one. As a teaching aid I would suggest it is rather uninteresting: anyone can look up a manufacturer’s data sheet to find out how fast a bullet coming out of a particular gun will travel.
Replace it with something variable (like an elastic-powered catapult, where the draw distance will vary the projectile velocity) and you have a real physics experiment. Something you can actually graph, and learn something from. And if there’s a problem and someone gets walloped it won’t cause more than a bruise.
BTW, it may not be clear from PZ’s summary that Feinberg has absolutely no connection to this case. He’s “one of the founding members of the National Emergency Assistance Team, which has responded to most of the school shootings in the country” and there is no indication that he lives anywhere near Mill Valley.
A reporter can go fishing for an advocate on any side of an issue. The actual school administrators in this case are all siding with the teacher.
What “irresponsible” lesson does Mr Feinberg think was taught?
People might get the idea that guns aren’t devilish devices that transform anyone who holds them into a psychotic killer.
Can’t have that, now can we?
Actually, “people having ideas” tends to make administrators nervous, period.
The fact that this teacher has done the same thing for decades provides neither justification nor defense. We did a lot of things decades ago that we do not do today.
Just a few years ago parents sent their children off to school knowing that it was a safe haven. All of that changed when two boys in Colorado decided that they had had enough. Now our kids pass through metal detectors and are expelled for having a pocket knife.
The experiment is unnecessary to prove the point and a gun in school is not worth whatever educational value the sensationalism adds.
At my high school, the kids in ROTC were taken across the street to the National Guard armory and given rifles to practice sharpshooting… This was less than ten years ago.
I see at least two major issues here, and I’m not happy with either of them.
1) Feinberg’s job apparently includes counselling students after vaiolent incidents. This gives him a hell of an agenda. It does not make him an expert on gun safety. Also, he is introduced in context of two national organizations — where did he come into this story?
2) Lapp has been doing this demonstration for some 15 years, with full support of his principal, and without previous incident. His training and precautions are described in the article, and sound entirely appropriate.
3) So why is this suddenly an issue *now*, in response to a single anonymous complaint? Apparently, the Marin County DA hadn’t heard about it until a (I assume) reporter told him. So… where was that complaint made to? What responses were in progress? How did the newspaper hear about it?
My suspicion here is that this represents the introduction to Yet Another attack on gun ownership, courtesy of the ShrubCo cabal. Their previous attempts in this vein have been squelched from within their own party, by “old-school” Republicans who declined to be ignored. But these guys keep trying — indeed, they have to keep trying, because they can’t accept any limit whatsoever to their own power. Of course, civilian gun ownership is exactly such a limit.
Picking a California science teacher to hoist as a scarecrow probably reflects an attempt to appease the real conservatives, or at least distract them. [satire] “You see, them libberuls, they got GUNS, they’re shooting them all around innocent kids, cause that’s what their science is really about! [/satire] Somehow, I doubt it’s going to work, but we haven’t seen the follow-up yet.
So then; no driver’s ed, no shop class, no Physical Education, no Home Economics, and no going to and from school. The school can’t have any stairs and no doors on the lockers. What about the danger that the kids will grow up to be oatmeal-brained dimwits and think science is only for ‘scientists’?
You can’t offend anyone, you can’t take any physical risks, “no matter how remote”, you can’t even sell the kids a Coke in the vending machine. Someone remind me, why would they want to go to school?
I’ve seen this demonstration performed in Sweden, without protests. I would have preferred he used a smaller caliber, though, compressed air or .22 at the most.
Wow, what color’s the sky on David’s planet?
Generally, the Brady Bunch and various other gun snatcher groups would hardly be classified as right-wing.
Tell me, who was it that signed the Assault Weapons Ban (aka, ban the scary-looking stuff)? Hint: It was in 1994.
Who are the ones continuously agitating for more laws, more controls, with an outright reapeal of the Second Amendment being the goal?
Yet Another attack on gun ownership, courtesy of the ShrubCo cabal.
Please list at least one. Your BDS is showing.
Quiz question #2:
IF “the people” in the First Amendment means the people, and “the people/person” in the Fourth, Fifth, Ninth, and Tenth Amendments means the people, THEN “the people” in the Second Amendment means ________________.
Not sure why this is a concept bordering on quantum physics in difficulty for some people.
Lockers? What are those? I thought kids these days were all toting their books back and forth in rolling suitcases.
Agreed – but this is a demonstration, not a student performed experiment. It’s not like they’re all being handed a gun and told “not to do anything stupid” with it.
Clinton signed the AWB, and George W. Bush supported its renewal, which failed to pass Congress. You may fairly ding both presidents on that basis. It might surprise some of his supporters that Bush supported the AWB. My theory is this: on every issue he has met where civil liberty was at stake, Bush has been against it.
“Who are the ones continuously agitating for more laws, more controls, with an outright reapeal of the Second Amendment being the goal?”
Not many. No one I know. Now, who wants to amend the Constitution to criminalize flag burning, to ban gay marriage, and to re-institute prayer in public school? Who wants to crack down on pornography? Who wants to ban abortion, RU486, and many other forms of contraception? Who wants to outlaw in vitro fertilization and eliminate embryonic stem-cell research?
The answer to all those is: the religious right, and the political party they now control, the GOP. If you want to play who is the most dangerous to civil liberty, there is no doubt in today’s political landscape where those chips fall. It’s ironic that the political party that champions the second amendment is bent on eliminating every other civil liberty. Despite that, there simply is no group today more dangerous to American liberty and science than the politicized fundamentalists.
Whilst I agree that trying to pin a desire to eliminate guns on “the ShrubCo cabal” is pretty ludicrous, this sounds plenty paranoid to me too.
Also interesting to note: the teacher and everybody at the school who seem to support him are in suburban northern California.
I can’t believe that I agree 100% with PZ on this. I must have hit my head this morning or something..:)
I knew it and I think I warned you. You start out with the issue of how appropriate it is for a high school physics teacher to use a gun in an experiment and invariably the discussion is changed to that teacher’s right to pack heat.
Yo, MegaTroup X, you ask who the “People” are in the other amendments that use that term. Well, they are us and each amendment limits and defines the rights. (ie. people free from search UNLESS warrant based on probable cause.)
Well, the Second Amendment also has limits and defining language. “A well regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
A basic principle in the law is that you give the words of a document, contract or statute their plain English meaning. The law seeks to avoid the hunt for unusual or stretched interpretations. The words mean what they mean in their common meaning and, linked in sentences, mean what they say. That is often not so easy with the 2nd Amendment.
The 2nd starts with a reference to the State and militia and the clear statement of common defense: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State…”
It ends, causing the confusion and all of the needs for interpretation, with that pesky little phrase: “…the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
The question has always been — does “people” mean the population of a state necessary for the formation of a militia to provide for security under the control and direction of a state or does it provide an individual right for the next door neighbor to “pack heat” without government interference?
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco has said the right to “keep and bear Arms” is not an individual right but a right given to the various states, originally intended to maintain effective state militias.
In the unanimous opinion of the three-judge panel, Judge Stephen Reinhardt, following an exhaustive review of the history of the amendment, wrote, “The amendment protects the people’s right to maintain an effective state militia, and does not establish an individual right to own or possess firearms for personal or other use.”
If the Supreme Court agrees with the 9th Circuit each state will get to decide who gets to pack heat and what kind of heat may be packed.
I actually know how to use a mortar and I have a score or two to settle. After the last round lands — I’m outa here.
Hell, let’s give them nuclear warheads to experiment with as well. Everything we do contains a risk of harm, but some things are more risky than others and that is why some things are not allowed in schools – like fire arms. Maybe in some areas and points in history guns are/were common, but certainly not everywhere today. We, as a society, have moved away to a large degree from growing up with guns, which is why I disagree with having them in the school. It actually would have been safer to do this 50 years ago, when dads and granddads used to take their kids and grandkids out to hunt regularly. Obviously this still happens in lots of families, but I am willing to bet a lot of money that it is far less common than it has been historically.
For those of you wondering about Tamalpais High School: It opened in 1908 and serves the communities of Mill Valley, Sausalito, Bolinas, Stinson & Muir Beaches, and Marin City in southern Marin County (i.e. just north of the Golden Gate Bridge). In the county, as of May 22nd, 51.52% of registered voters are Democrats, 22.87% as Republicans, 1.81% American Independent, 2.43% Green, 0.55% Libertarian, 0.08% Natural Law, 0.22% Peace and Freedom, 0.29% other and 20.23% decline to state. Most do not hunt nor go to the shooting range. Military families in the area pretty much disappeared in the early ’90s when bases closed. Lynn Woolsey is our congressperson. It is not a pro-gun area. Nor am I nor are my parents. They like me support Mr. Lapp.
As for what has happened, well the demonstration has been banned by the Superintendent of the high school district. No charges are going to be pressed as all the legal issues presented in the Chronicle piece are actual an issue. Mr. Lapp got permission from the principal as he had done in the past. He did not recklessly discharge the gun (if you have the permission then you can’t recklessly discharge unless you use the gun in a manner other than the one approved by the superintendent or his designee).
Marin IJ Arictle
Basically the writer of Chronicle article was making a big to do about nothing, probably based on a tip of a hysterical parent.
The problem is the superintendent did not base his decision on the actual facts of the danger of the demonstration relative to what is learned but on the fact it has become a big deal thanks to the article suggesting it is dangerous and illegal. That is not how sound educational policy is made. It also sets a bad precedence to students. Instead of teaching students to be rational members of a democratic society the superintendent is saying lets give into irrational fears. My longer response is here.
The worrisome thing about the nanny tendency is that there is no end to it. No matter what the current set of acceptable risks, it’s easy to pick out a few activities that are, or at least seem, more risky and less worthy than the others, often on the emotion of some recent or highly-pulbicized tragedy, and say, “we can at least keep our children safe from this.”
On a brighter note, I have a couple of related photos to share with this blog. Optimist dinghies are a small, inexpensive boat whose design purpose was to allow an easy entry into sailing for children. Part of their design requirement was that they could be built in a backyard garage in short time, though that is not done so much now that they have become a large racing class. Corpus Christi enjoys one of the more active fleets. Here are three young sailors heading out into the bay:
http://static.flickr.com/4/4728215_053954c0de_o.jpg
The next photo shows them in the bay. Their chase boat is in the inflatable on the right, giving instruction to one of them. As you can see, there is nothing between them and the ship channel except water, skill, and common sense:
http://static.flickr.com/4/4728214_7b08551007_o.jpg
If I could find this boy’s parents, I bet I could sell this photo:
http://static.flickr.com/5/4728213_2c20226bd5_o.jpg
He looks about seven years, to my eyes. ‘Twill be a damn shame, when he is my age, if he has to tell his grandson, “When I was your age, I used to sail the bay in a little dinghy. And race. My, we had fun. Well. You can’t do that today. Of course you can’t.”
Since the thread has already drifted into the inevitable side channel, I thought would pose this question to MegaTroopX: Since “arms” in “arms race” and “arms limitations” often refers to fusion devices, can I safely infer that the Second Ammendment guarantees my right to keep and bear them? If not, then in what way the the authors intend to restrict the meaning of the term?
I think I have a higher opinion of today’s children than do you. It’s not that they are idiots; it is that they are ignorant – one is curable, the other is not! They will remain uneducated as long as we don’t grab their attention long enough to educate them. If they remain uneducated long enough then the damage is done, and they grow up to become an idiot, and/or a president.
You want your kids to not blow up a thermometer with a Bunsen burner? Then DEMOSTRATE what happens! Telling someone, especially a kid, doesn’t have the same impact as a professor blowing up a vessel under pressure in controlled conditions.
I don’t know how this experiment was set up, but if it’s considered too risky for where it is at currently, I’m sure a suitable location could be found to perform it. That location could be on the school campus, or at a local firing range.
A lot of physics is counter intuitive; especially to a 14 year old. That’s why physics experiments are so necessary to demonstrate that the professor isn’t off his rocker. You tell a kid that you can extrapolate how many grains of gunpowder were in a fired cartridge due to the amount of force imparted to a block of wood, you’d better be able to back up your claims, or else you’re just another crazy person with an opinion.
Today’s teachers are already in competition with crazy people preaching about perpetual motion machines, free energy devices, or similar pseudoscientific BS.
What happens when some parent realizes chemicals are stored in the chemistry room year round that can be used as poisons, to make explosives, are carcinogens? When a parent realizes for nucleic acid extractions phenol and chloroform are used? Do we ban them as well?
But do teachers use these chemicals as poisons, or to make explosives, or even to perform nucleic acid extractions, in front of their students? Students are not exposed to any of these examples in their high school years, for safety concerns. While these and other examples, including the ballistic pendulum experiment, are intriguing and give a sense of how powerful science is, especially for students who only know so much about the subject, I have reservations for these actually being carried out in a high school setting.
I agree that there’s all sorts of other ways to do the demonstration without guns. Entertaining ways, even. I mean, even if it was a home built crossbow, I doubt the same level of objection would be raised.
Saying that there’s no end to the nanny tendency isn’t warranted by this example. Guns are clearly a special case and parents objecting to guns doesn’t imply objection to other stuff done in schools. There’s a line that can be drawn at guns.
Why not bus the kids to a local firing range and hang the ballistic pendulum from a tree? Keeps the weapon off of school property.
Try having the ass’t principal in charge of discipline fire a .22, and the on-campus police officer use his .357 or whatever it is.
To mmWave:
Whilst I agree that trying to pin a desire to eliminate guns on “the ShrubCo cabal” is pretty ludicrous,
That was my actual point.
this sounds plenty paranoid to me too.
Not really. There are plenty of folks who get listened to, who interpret the “militia” clause as meaning the National Guard (ie, a federal agency), rather than the classic definition, which is sound-minded citizens over the age of 17 (granted, this is a wider definition then is actually stated, but the standard of Con Law has generally been to expand on the side of the individual’s rights).
I don’t find it paranoid that an organization with such a paranoid site (1) gets such a large voice in the legal and political landscape.
(1)http://www2.stopthenra.com/ by the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence (formerly Handgun Control, Inc.)
But do teachers use these chemicals as poisons, or to make explosives, or even to perform nucleic acid extractions, in front of their students? Students are not exposed to any of these examples in their high school years, for safety concerns. While these and other examples, including the ballistic pendulum experiment, are intriguing and give a sense of how powerful science is, especially for students who only know so much about the subject, I have reservations for these actually being carried out in a high school setting.
Posted by: CJS
***************************************************************************************
CJS- Students are exposed to this. Now teachers don’ use the chemicals to poison but those chemicals are there and students are informed of that fact before they use them. It would be negligent if they didn’t. The chemicals are labeled when they are explosive or poisonous. And yes teachers do burn and cause explosions. It is good teaching. Proper precautions are taken. Video demonstrations are boring. As for using phenol and chloroform, they are used. Ethidium bromide is used as well and Isopropanol & ethanol.
Sandals writes: “Even if it was a home built crossbow, I doubt the same level of objection would be raised.”
That’s an interesting observation. Why do you think that is?
“Saying that there’s no end to the nanny tendency isn’t warranted by this example. Guns are clearly a special case.”
Two comments. First, the original discussion was about how chemistry sets have been reduced by safety concerns to the point that they are neither interesting nor educational. Even in this thread, CJS wants to believe that dangerous chemicals like phenol and chloroform are kept away from the hands of highschool students. If he had seen what we did in my highschool’s chemistry lab, he likely would faint. And there are more examples galore. Students are no longer allowed to bring pocketknives to school. They are expelled by “zero tolerance” policies if they share an aspirin with a fellow student. The Coast Guard now mandates life-jackets on everyone under thirteen, who is on a pleasure boat underway. No room for judgment, but just a flat rule. The concern about nanny-ism is not extrapolation from this one incident.
Second, I suspect much of the opinion on this particular incident splits precisely between those who view guns as a special case, and those who don’t. I don’t see why guns are a special case. To you, it is so “clear” that the reason needn’t even be stated.
David, I believe that hoary old chestnut is known as a strawman. There is a difference between personal defensive arms, that are aimed, and a tactical weapon, that destroys everything in range.
A firearm only hits what it’s aimed at, unless you spray wildly like Rambo, or fire into the air like some middle-eastern rally.
I was taught that a shooter is responsible for every round, from the time it exits the wepon till the time it comes to rest.
In the LA riots, certain stores did not get looted. They were the ones with the owners on the roof with rifles and shotguns.
The Second Amendment was written with defense of self and others in mind. Self-defense means yourself, not the police, not the National Guard’s.
Firearms are not risky, Theo; they don’t just go around shooting people. A gun properly handled is no more risky than a spoon. The teacher gave the students a good lesson in risk-management along with the lesson in physics. Then the school superintendent gave everyone a lesson in caving in to hand-wringing nannyism.
This was a controlled experiment. And there are many items in everyday life that require considerable control to avoid injury or death.
It comes down to nothing more than; “A gun! In school!” Zero tolerance = zero brains.
Yo Mega, The LA riot story has been passed around for years, but no one has ever cited any proof.
Prior to the 2nd even being written or ratifified every colony/state had limits on who could own guns. Granted the limits were — White, Christian, landowners, but there were limits. There was NEVER a time when there weren’t some limits on private ownership and use of guns. Since limits were in place there was never an unfettered “right” of an individual to keep and bear. The absolute right has always been “fringed.” The question then has to be: who decides? If the state can limit then we are back to state control and what your state thinks is an appropriate level of citizen preparation and state safety. The Supremes will decide and my bet is that they will follow the 9th Circuit and toss this issue back into the lap of the state legislatures where it belongs.
I’ve been reading the last half of this thread rather sideways, so I apologise if this point has been raised previously, but when most people do this exercise (and it really is rather common, if not usually at High School level) they use a *softgun*.
Yes, that one can still take your eye out if you’re being stupid and unlucky. And no, it won’t make quite as big a bang. But the distinct advantage is that you can have the experimental setup as a permanent part of the inventory. Oh, that and the fact that you won’t have live munitions going off in the classroom.
An aside: When I was introduced to this experiment, we were presented with the following problem: Which of the following methods most accurately measures the muzzle velocity:
– Fire the bullet into a piece of paper wrapped around a fast-spinning wheel, and measure the angle the exit hole makes with the centre – entry hole axis.
– Fire the bullet into a pendulum, and measure the magnitude of the distortion.
– Fire the bullet into a block of metal with a well-known heat capacity, and measure the increase in temperature.
Curiously, the latter was the correct answer, according to the prof.
Of course, it probably depends on which velocity and mass regimes we’re in…
“As someone who is not so long out of their student days, I have to (alarmingly) agree with Charlie Wagner. (Just this once, mind you. I won’t make a habit of it.)”
I have to agree with Charlie too. (But in my case it could become a habit. I think this is the third time, ever.) Since there are perfectly safe methods instead, it’s a no-brainer.
“I’ve seen this demonstration performed in Sweden, without protests.”
Really? I was just going to say that I would be surprised to see this in Sweden due to all the regulations. I’m not an expert, but aside from light air guns I do think you first need a gun license. You have to demonstrate need (military, hunting, competition), skills and safe storage. When you need a usage permit inside city limits, I think (indoor or outdoor ranges, animal control) or it would be illegal.
I would think it unlikely to find a permit released for firing inside schools. Light air gun demonstration I believe, in fact I believe I have seen just the same demonstration.
Uh, of course police also uses guns, and I do believe they have a general city usage permission instead of individual ones. At least they should have.
My first instinct was to agree that there shouldn’t be a problem, and then I thought of the one episode of Boston Public where a teacher displayed a gun. So I would say “it probably should be OK”. Of course with municipal insurance concerns what they are these days, if I was a school administrator I absolutely would not let any gun on the school grounds. But only because of the insurance concerns. (For similar reasons, school administrators are forced to remove diving boards from their pools, a step I think is utterly ridiculous.)
And then I remember the chemistry teacher who sniffed some bromine and was out for a month.
I think one shouldn’t need to use a gun to teach physics. But having said that, the people I have met who have dealt with guns are extremely serious about the safety issues.
CJS- Students are exposed to this. And yes teachers do burn and cause explosions. It is good teaching. Proper precautions are taken. Video demonstrations are boring. As for using phenol and chloroform, they are used. Ethidium bromide is used as well and Isopropanol & ethanol.
There is a difference between using reagents for the purposes you initially gave examples for (making explosives, used as poisons) and for using them in other relatively normal experiments. There’s also a large difference in the use of ethidium bromide and, say, firearms. Chemicals may have some dangerous properties but are an important feature for certain controlled experiments. You can’t say the same about guns. No matter how hard you try, you cannot intercalate DNA with bullets. Guns are used for a handful of specific purposes which we are all too aware of, and it is why some folks consider them a more special case than a store of potentially dangerous chemicals.
Torbjörn, yes it was an air gun. I thought it mattered less than breviety at that point in the discussion, which had basically devolved into cries of “It’s a GUN”. An air rifle is still a gun, they can do more damage than most people think. And yes, you’re right about swedish gun-regulations.
I don’t think it is a strawman at all, though obviously it is absurd. The Second Ammendment says nothing about pesonal self-defense. It mentions militia and people. You want to read “people” broadly. I want to know why we should not read “arms” broadly. If not nukes, what about twin-mounted 20 mm? Hand grenades? What are the intended limits?
On the topic of the thread, I think I am with PZ. With suitable safety precautions a high velocity projectile makes the demonstration much more impressive.
James Wynne said:
So… cops shouldn’t have guns either.
Good work, James. Way to bring a new and artistic flair to anecdotal argument.
The decision is an overreaction and that’s that. There are probably saws and hammers in the custodial closet too. The parking lot is chock full of lethal weapons, and all the keys are in the pockets of the students.
It’s not as if the teacher handed the gun around the class for a look-see.
Again, this is an argument that doesn’t work. I understand that everything we do has some level of risk and that we can talk ad absurdum about pocket knives, keys, cars, plastic sporks, bars of soap, household bleach, stairwells, banana peels, untied shoelaces…but we can also take it the other way. If we let firearms in schools why not automatic weapons? As long as there is a controlled environment and licensed educator there shouldn’t be a problem. What about C-4 explosives? Hand grenades? Howitzers? Cruise missles? Neutron bombs? Again, ad absurdum.
A line needs to be drawn at some point where the potential risks outpace the potential rewards. “Simple” risk-benefit analysis. And unfortunately, this really can’t be a case by case process, so for many people, myself included, firearms-in-schools is where the line is drawn.
Note: I’m not the same as the single-named “David”.
So apparently they cancelled the demonstrations, at least in original form. That’s annoying from my partisan point of view, but the laws had changed over time, so it was probably inevitable. On the other hand, the teacher is probably free to arrange a field trip (next year) to a local gun club or police station.
A number of folks seem to think I’m paranoid about the ShrubCo cabal. Funny, my friends and family used to think the same, but over the last couple of years, they’re starting to think I was ahead of the curve…. Bluntly: the cabal is insane, but once you know *how* they’re insane, that just makes them easier to predict. On the other hand, they’re not getting things all their own way, because delusions, lies, and viciousness can only get you so far! ;-) I still don’t know whether the cabal will “win” in the long run (by looting America to the dregs and getting away with it). But they’ve already done enough damage to leave a dog’s dinner for their successors, and for your grandkids.
The question of whether the Second Amendment applies to state militias or individuals is one that’s been argued both ways, but the real point of the distinction is the power balance between the Individual and the State (in the general sense). An individual right to bear arms, to whatever degree, shifts power towards individuals, whereas the “militia interpretation” reserves the same power to the state governments, while (still) preventing the federal government from claiming a monopoly on military force. Either way is defensible in the general case, but lately both state and federal governments have been getting “uppity”, so I favor the shift towards individual power. Of course, any large-scale test of arms (civil war) would be a gross failure of the American government and nation, but even short of that, the power balance shows up in subtle ways, such as police behavior and regulations, or in how deferential various federal agencies are to public opposition. (E.g., it’s one thing if the NIMBY crowd are carrying signs, quite another if they’re waving rifles or worse!)
Theodosius writes, “this really can’t be a case by case process”.
And why is that? We’re discussing high school, the last education required of people before they reach their majority. One function of high school is precisely to lead juveniles who are almost adult to activities that are allowed adults. Such as driving. And participating in risky sports such as swimming and football.
Obviously, teachers and school administrators can’t choose to teach what is illegal even for adults. Such as detonating nuclear devices. That’s where your reductio ad absurdum fails.
But firearm use is legal, within certain bounds. There’s no reason at all that a highschool shouldn’t have a gun club, or teach classes in marksmanship and safe firearm usage. Or otherwise use a gun in properly controlled teaching environment. Does that mean any such use is appropriate? Of course not. It is the responsibility of the teachers and administration to make wise choices about such things. Case by case.
Quite possibly not, but that has nothing to do with comparative safety. I’m not wild about guns, but I would far rather see my kid around a good-quality firearm than a home-made crossbow; IMHO, the reduction in kinetic energy doesn’t come close to making up for the things that can go wrong in a home-made weapon without quality control. (And unlike a gun, a crossbow can store a potentially-dangerous amount of energy even when unloaded.)
Commenters above have said that the same lesson can be taught with ‘safe’ methods (presumably, meaning equipment that couldn’t hurt somebody if misused). I respectfully disagree; I think there are two lessons demonstrated here. One is the principle of conservation of momentum; the other is the power of scientific methods to make the imperceptible perceptible.
You can show conservation of momentum by throwing a baseball at a block, or just bouncing two marbles off one another. But these things are already perceptible; I don’t need science to watch a baseball in flight and get an impression of how fast it’s going.
A bullet, OTOH – to the naive observer, there’s no way to perceive how fast it goes. It’s outside the range of our perceptions; I can’t tell, by eyeball, whether a bullet moves at 330m/s or at the speed of light. But this demonstration shows how we can use scientific techniques to get a handle on that and find out… which teaches WHY things like conservation of momentum are worth learning.
A firearm only hits what it’s aimed at, unless you spray wildly like Rambo, or fire into the air like some middle-eastern rally.
There is no way to mitigate the attack direction of a hand grenade, except in a general manner. Thus you can’t be responsible for your “rounds” as you can be with a gun.
MegaTroopX: Where does the Second Ammendment say anything about being responsible for your rounds? Or mention firearms? I don’t think you have addressed the basic issue. If “the people” is any person, why is “arms” not any weapon?
The preceding discussions do seem to miss PZ’s point (yeah, I admit to it too). We have a teacher trying to use an unique method to tach, and the admin folks have a spaz attack.
I saw that episode; the teacher didn’t just ‘display’ a gun, he waved it around and threatened the students with it. Not analogous to this case.
I thought some more about what this demonstration taught. Students were exposed to several ideas in addition to the basic physics:
1. When care is taken, risks can be managed
2. Science is real, not just something in books
3. Invisible phenomena can be understood, even predicted, through careful observation and mathematical analysis
4. Guns have a ‘responsible-use’ side, quite antithetical to the ‘gangsta’ side of popular movies and video games
Is firing a rifle in a high school legal?
just realized that I have a typo in my URL attached to my name in the posts above:
it is supposed to be wanderingly.blogspot.com (not much there really)
but I forgot the “s” and got wanderingly.blogpot.com which is definitely NOT my blogging site. Is it a coincidence that the wrong URL is for the “Mega site of Bible studies and information”? Weird.
A few points:
1. Most anti-gun liberals I talk to have never held, loaded, or shot a firearm and thus speak from an uninformed viewpoint, no matter how many articles they’ve read about accidental deaths, handgun killings, etc. They only know that guns should be banned, and make no distinction between the utility of a deer rifle and the purpose of a Desert Eagle Magnum.
2. I’ve found that strictly antigun liberals use the same logic as conservatives who argue that being gay is a death sentence. Hence, lines like “guns are made for killing” and similarly-shaped loads of logical horse manure.
3. I target shoot occasionally, but don’t own a gun. I shoot with my arch-conservative buddy in the Sierra foothills at a range. While guns are in almost constant use there, oddly enough, no one has died.
4. Most gun owners practice gun safety. This teacher apparently does so in the extreme – but from the reaction from the vehemently anti-gun people here, you’d think guns spontaneously pointed themselves and discharged toward the most vulnerable bystanders. Sorry – that’s just not the case.
I believe in gun control, and not the sarcasm-loaded variety that implies the use of both hands. I also believe that handguns should be far more tightly regulated than single-shot and semi-automatic rifles and other “utility” guns, and that any legal gun modifications should require a permit – or else the owner’s gun rights are revoked, like a felon’s.
It gets my teeth a-grindin’ when something so innocuous as this teacher’s well-intentioned and extremely safe demonstration is condemned categorically because it uses a rifle. Did any of these complainers stop to think for a moment how difficult it is to injure one’s self or another with a rifle when strict gun safety is observed?
School kids are, by and large, fucking idiots.
Given the cogent and intelligent post by a Tam student above, I think you’re very mistaken.
All of that changed when two boys in Colorado decided that they had had enough.
Largely because of their absentee suburban parents.
Those kids didn’t receive the message that guns are tools. They didn’t receive vital attention and guidance from their parents and teachers. Administrators ignored cruelty and cliques in favor of stuffing as many kids as possible into a mega-school where individual attention is a quaint joke?
Now, how many of you strictly anti-gun people are double-income or divorced working parents? How many of you push back on the boss who wants to steal more time from your adolescent kid? How many of you ask the hard questions, have the embarrassing conversations, and insist on honesty and accountability from your children?
Guns didn’t cause Columbine. Two kids who’d had enough? They didn’t have nearly enough of the things that counted, some of which are listed above.
The antigun hysteria from some on the left is as bad or worse than anti-gay, anti-immigrant, and anti-science hysteria from the right.
But do teachers use these chemicals as poisons, or to make explosives, or even to perform nucleic acid extractions, in front of their students? Students are not exposed to any of these examples in their high school years, for safety concerns.
Oh, come on.
To complete your analogy, the Tam H.S. professor would have to shoot a student each year to demonstrate the experiment!
i don’t buy the political overtones that are being thrown over Lapp’s teaching methods and the resulting hysteria. would the same apply if Lapp used a high pressure air gun to propel projectiles? how about a small E&M rail gun? it’s clear that to him, a gun powered by gunpowder is just a tool.
couldn’t nefarious teens go about dousing their peers with nitric acid? or couldn’t they douse the school with an accelerant and set it ablaze?
despite my personal skepticism about the value of guns as means of self-defense, it is foolish and wrongly self-assuring to try to protect people by taking away means of harm, whether that applies to prevention of terrorist attacks or trying to keep people from synthesizing various “recreational” drugs.
so when are these folks going to take the ability to drive vehicles away from people? these kill far more teens than any of these methods.
My physics teacher at Hibbing H.S. did a similar demonstration in the mid-70’s. He fired a .22 caliber into a container of sand suspended on a pendulum. We had to calculate the force of the bullet using a measurement of the movement of the target. Like the teacher in the example, he was a meticulous about safety. That particular lab exercise was one of the reasons I thought he was a great science teacher.
Being from a rural hunting-friendly area of northern Minnesota, none of us thought using a gun to study the transfer of kenetic energy was problematic. My opinion hasn’t changed. I think this controversy is over-blown.
PZ, you are soooo full of shit.
Using your logic, a chemistry teacher could bring LSD to school, drop a tab, then illustrate the chemical changes to his brain via an in-class EEG.
I mean, why the fuck not? No student was harmed by this demonstration, and we all know that the little kiddies sure as fuck are familiar with drugs. Hell, the teacher probably scored from one of his students.
Sometimes, really smart people, in an attempt to show us just how hip and free thinking they are, say the dumbest goddamn things.
Sure, it sounds fine on the surface, but you start with using guns, and before you know it they’ve graduated to chemistry sets!
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2006/05/neutering_our_kids_exposure_to.php
Well if the teacher took LSD don’t know how well they would be able to teach. Better to give an animal one and show what happens to it because the teacher can teach and point students to what they should be seeing on the EEG. Or heck an animal ODing on prozac (have seen that one, accident-the dog got into a person’s luggage. Be careful with your meds).
As for LSD the problem it is illegal to do. The gun experiment is not. The Gun Free Zone law of 1995 in California makes provisions that allow guns on schools including for demonstrations approved by a designee of the superintendent and they allow the discharge of the gun. This is why the Marin DA did not press charges. Nothing illegal was done.
I have no problem with the experiment banned if based on the facts of whether it is more dangerous than other experiments/demonstrations done in classrooms. There are tons of dangerous things in schools. What is the rubric? What is the risk to reward? Those that banned it have not provided that information. It isn’t a question of whether something is possible; it is about how probable it is. The gun is on campus one day out of the school year. When not in use the gun is locked in a box that is placed in a locked room. To enter that locked room someone has to go through the classroom which can also be locked. The only person to handle the gun is Mr. Lapp, someone trained to use the tool.
According to the CDC, in 2003 151 kids were accidentally killed by guns in this country. 909 died from poisoning (630 unintentionally). 1,004 kids 1-19 died from drowning. 7,179 from MV traffic. 2,849 kids (0-19) were killed by guns total (including suicide, accidental, homicide). The largest of those was homicide 1,822. Suicide-810. (66 were undetermined). Suffocation was the cause of 724 deaths by suicide in the same age groups (1-19).
How many of those gun deaths were due to improper storage? I don’t know. That is the next question. And what is the rate? What is the rate in teaching situations?
Yet another reason to get rid of those long lines of automobiles that form around schools, jamming traffic every afternoon. It would cut back on global warming too. Let’s ban personal MV traffic to and from schools.
Don S:
I thought this whole business was worthy of a post of my own, in which I paid special attention to your comment.
I apparently screwed up the URL in that last post. Here it is: http://jswynne.typepad.com/gropes/2006/06/crazy_gun_nuts.html
I don’t own a firearm in part because I have been suicidal. But mostly because I’m a lousy shot. That said, I support the right of any person to own firearms, for any legitimate reason. And that includes the killing of any person who threatens his life or the life of another.
I support self-defense. I also support the right of a person to come to the defense of another, even when such an action means the death of the assailant. If it takes a magazine load to stop the mugging of a stranger, then you empty the gun as fast as you can pull the trigger.
Yes, I am a blood thirsty bastard. Your point?
I consider myself quite liberal.
I only support gun control (in the legal sense, not in the “hitting what you aim at” sense) to the extent that I support “car control” – which, by the way, I think is done quite reasonably.
Cars are dangerous. We know this. As a result, we don’t let people who don’t know what they’re doing use one.
The same should go for guns. And by this test, in this case, there is nothing wrong with what the teacher did. He knew how to use a gun, he used it in a safe fashion, and it caused no harm, and quite possibly some good.
As such … I don’t see the problem. I really don’t.
Heh–that’s some “sycophantic echo chamber” you got there, PZ. [/troll]
Am I allowed to be smartass and post the easy answer to a trick question?
When I did the “Balistic Pendulum” lab in my college physics class last fall we used a ball bearing that was fired by a spring loaded gun into a preformed block of plastic. The worst that would happen is it would land on your toes or you glasses if you left them out.
Spend a few hundred bucks on a good class room model and that solves that problem.
With dim hope in my heart I will get the last word on this issue. Please realized that the issue and concern is not science, gun safety or the 2d Amendment. The issue and concern in our violent society and in the post-Columbine era is simply the visceral reaction to a gun in school packed by anyone other than the omnipresent, and sadly necessary, school resource officer. Put simply, there are a number of very reasonable parents who cringe at the thought of a gun in school and they don’t care if it is held in the cold, dying, expert hands of Charlton Heston.
Actually, there is another aspect to this issue which doesn’t seem to be mentioned in the comments. That issue is trust.
The superintendent apparently trusts the teacher to handle the firearm responsibly. This is indicated by the permission granted by the superintendent to the teacher.
The students apparently trust the teacher. One of them has posted here, has observed the demonstration in action, and feels that the teacher can be trusted to avoid mistakes.
On the other hand, the journalist and some of the commenters here on this thread apparently are not willing to trust any teacher to always handle a firearm carefully.
There is some merit to the idea that there is increased risk by introducing firearms into a high school classroom. But once the risks, and controls, have been evaluated and are deemed adequate, the remaining concern is trust. Does the administration trust the teacher to follow the controls? Apparently yes. Do the students? It appears so.
Who doesn’t trust the teacher? Those who are not familiar with the protocols used; i.e. the reporter, his audience, some of the commenters on this thread, and possibly some of the parents.
To forestall some of the possible replies saying that you trust the teacher, but not the protocol, I suggest that before condemning the demonstration take the time to learn the complete protocol (which I haven’t seen on this thread).
Personally, my default position is to trust the teacher. Why? Because the people closest to the demonstration also trust the teacher, and because there is a history of the teacher performing this demonstration without problems.
Cheers,
-Flex
For the last damn time, it’s not about gun safety, science, the right to pack heat or TRUST. It’s about guns in school and there are one or two parents out there who don’t want them. It’s not a bad idea and I trust those parents.
If we can agree on nothing else about the Second Amendment, can we agree that it’s poorly written? (At least if it was not intended to be ambiguous in which case it’s brilliant.) In case anyone forgot it:
If the point is individual gun ownership, then why does it specify a “well regulated militia” as the only explicit justification.
Likewise, if the point is to have a militia, then why does it say “the right of the people … shall not be infringed.”
I also agree with the point about interpreting “arms” broadly. If you don’t interpret it as the absolute right of individuals to bear any kinds of arms at all (tanks, F-16s, nukes) then the amendment does not set an explicit threshold. You can say that the right to have slingshots and potato cannons shall not be infringed, but anything more deadly and you’re in trouble.
Of course, the hardcore 2nd amendment fanatics probably think it does mean they should be able to own a nuke, but I challenge anyone else to convince me that reasonable people will agree on the threshold set by the amendment.
I’m liberal and not at all interested in owning a gun. My pragmatic view is that gun control is a clear public good in densely populated areas and gun ownership should be restricted there. If people really think they need guns for protection in a city, then it should be strictly licensed with an audit trail for every damn bullet. That’s not going to interfere with their ability for self defense in the unlikely event that they have to play subway rambo. On the other hand, I don’t think guns are as big an issue in less densely populated areas; obviously lots of people want their shotguns and hunting rifles. I won’t pretend I can relate, but I respect the will of the majority. Situations like Columbine are very rare, and it’s not obvious what would eliminate them. The big problem with guns is the easy availability in places where people are getting shot on a regular basis.
My own favorite amendment is the one that comes right after the 2nd, which is much better written:
Everyone makes a joke out of this one. It’s a joke because nobody can imagine it happening. Well, maybe the reason it doesn’t happen is because it’s prohibited. I can easily see somebody proposing this as a cost-cutting measure and even trying to sell it as a privilege and patriotic duty to let traveling soldiers stay overnight. In the modern world, it might not even be economical compared to making other arrangements, but I do sleep easier knowing that nobody is going to commandeer my house at least in peacetime.
The way I see it more people have died from falling than from firearms (Odds of Death in 2002). How dare they teach children gravity in physics class!!
I was offline and trying to recall the way a ballistic pendulum works. Once online (e.g. http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/balpen.html) I was happy to find that I was correct about the principle: it’s an inelastic collision (the bullet stops completely) so the momentum of the pendulum right after impact equals the momentum of the bullet before impact. But the kinetic energy is lower (the pendulum is more massive and has proportionally lower velocity, but kinetic energy increases with the square of velocity). The excess energy is dissipated as heat. Finally, the pendulum rises to a certain height at which its velocity is zero and its gravitational potential energy relative to the starting height equals its kinetic energy after impact.
I think one drawback to doing this with a bullet is that you do not have a direct way to measure the velocity for comparison. If you had a slower object, you could get the whole thing on video and probably measure velocity to within 10% or so just by viewing consecutive frames.
I can appreciate the drama of doing this with a gun or crossbow, but suppose you did it with a styrofoam block with a velcro (fuzz) target and velcro (hook) covered balls. This would be safe, and actually fun (providing the students didn’t come expecting to see a gun fired). You could get it on digital video (very cheap these days, not so when I was in school). Then have students analyze frames for both the direct and indirect velocity measure.
The one thing that would add to it, and you’d need something high velocity like a bullet, is a measure of the dissipated energy. It would be pretty cool if you could measure a temperature change in the pendulum and compare it with the calculated energy loss.
Slippery Slope.
Like, does the very real risk of kids killing themselves and others by driving wrecklessly justify the reward of letting them all drive to school every day so we don’t have to bus them or drive them ourselves? Note, I’m OK with teens having licenses. I’m comparing the relative control one has over a teacher using proper safety protocols in a singular demonstration vs. teens driving every single day – it’s amusing to see people abhor the very idea of one and show no concerns about the other. And I’m leading into the next comment:
Begging the Question…. Why not? In fact, it should ONLY be case by case, each on it’s own guidelines and merits.
“I thought it mattered less than breviety at that point in the discussion, which had basically devolved into cries of “It’s a GUN”. An air rifle is still a gun, they can do more damage than most people think.”
I see. No, I’m not blind to the risks with air guns. ;-)
I think an army gun is overkill. I alsoe think a professional hunter or military would say that you pick the gun for the purpose.
Let’s see:
Falls, W00-W19: 16,257 (lifetime odds: 1 in 229)
Intentional self-harm by firearm, X72-X74: 17,108 (1 in 218)
Assault by firearm, X93-X95: 11,829 (1 in 315)
Firearm discharge, Y22-Y24: 243 (1 in 15,329)
Legal intervention involving firearm discharge, Y35.0: 300 (1 in 12,417)
So all in all, deaths by firearms: 29,480. 1.8 times more deaths than by falling.
h thr! jst pssd by cnsdnc whl srchng fr sm rtcls nywy nc blg Wll chck t t Ltr n ,hp y ccpt m s fllwr. by by