A terrible precedent is being set with guns in public places...

[Flatulo]

192. I'm truly sorry that these events have caused you and your community so much anxiety.

The reality is that gun violence is at an all-time low, but the randomness and magnitude of the recent mass killings are truly disturbing. The Newtown massacre put me into a deep depression for over a month. Most sane people would find the presence of a gunman in their midst disturbing.

But the whole BB gun thing seems a bit over the top for me. Yes, they can be dangerous and can cause injury, but it's extremely rare for someone to be accidently killed by one. I can guarantee you that many, many more kids are injured and killed while playing school sports. And I think it serves no useful purpose to put an entire school, staff and students and parents, into an absolute panic over what is a mostly harmless device.

I think if the teaching staff were to get a small amount of training with the goal of being to tell a real firearm from a toy, it would go a long way towards reducing these false alarms that cause unneeded trauma in the arrival of armoured SWAT units with real assault rifles.

It simply defies common sense for teaching staff to alert the authorities over incidents like children drawing stick figures of guns, or eating a pastry into the shape of one. And a kid walking by the school with a BB gun, which is not even considered a firearm, on his way to the woods to plink, is absolutely no danger to anyone. To cause an all-out panic over it with armed response and frightened children and does far more harm.