Presumably, the teacher —who was hired in 2004 and recognized as the school’s best in 2012 — was mentally stable enough to keep his job even though in 2016 police reportedly investigated his claims that he tried to have someone killed. He was subsequently taken by authorities to be evaluated by medical staff for expressing suicidal thoughts.
One year after that incident, according to a story in the Atlanta Journal Constitution, the same teacher said he wasn’t feeling well, left campus early and was later found by police sitting on a curb, unresponsive to their queries.
Two days ago that same teacher barricaded himself in his classroom and, according to police, fired one bullet out the window when the principal tried to gain entry. No one was shot. This time.
But as the details of the incident are sifted through and a fuller portrait of Dalton, Ga., teacher Randall Davidson emerges, one thing is already crystal clear: there is no immediate, easy answer to the problem of guns and violence.
Davidson’s non-lethal violent outburst could not have come at a better time. It prompts some soul-searching and discussion.
It occured days after a horrific mass shooting at a Florida high school. It came at a time when the president of the United States said that one way of preventing future campus shootings is by having armed teachers on campus. His is a sentiment many of his supporters, gun enthusiasts and the National Rifle Association support.
Davidson’s action came at a time when community and elected leaders claim that stronger, more robust mental health screenings would prevent firearms from getting into the hands of the wrong person. A time when people claim that having more armed law enforcement assigned to campuses would protect children while neutralizing lethal threats.
We don’t know to what extent Davidson was evaluated after his run-ins with police or the state of his mental health the night before his episode. But we do know that he had a gun, brought it onto a gun-free campus and used it.
We don’t know if a school resources officer on campus would have prevented Davidson from locking himself up in his classroom and terrorizing students. But we do know that the one who was assigned to the school, but wasn’t there when this unfolded, played a part in getting Davidson out of the room without anyone being killed.
We don’t know if something similar will ever happen in Sweetwater Union High School District. But we do know that it has happened on other campuses that were just as ordinary as ours.
We don’t know if the “good guy with a gun” will always be “a good guy with a gun” but we do know that a gun will always be a gun. And that people — children — will continue to die because we don’t know how to give up our guns.
