Schools Are Training Second-Graders to Attack Mass Shooters

Braden Kling, an eight-year-old from Middletown, Ohio, knows what to do. His school has prepared him for the moment of reckoning. "We have this big board and we hide behind that. If he comes in, we start throwing stuff," he explains. "Pencils, chairs, boxes, books, markers. And then we escape."

In the aftermath of the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, politicians and educators have debated fiercely about how our nation should protect school children—with some schools turning to controversial tactics. Soon after National Rifle Association spokesman Wayne LaPierre proposed stationing armed guards in every school in America, an Ohio school board approved plans to arm janitors. South Dakota recently passed a law allowing teachers to pack heat in classrooms. A high school in suburban Chicago held a drill in which police fired blanks in the halls in order to give staff and students "some familiarity with the sound of gunfire." Unsurprisingly, these kinds of measures have brought with them risks, accidents, and negative reactions.

Perhaps the most controversial approach has been instructing school children to fight back. After Newtown, one commentator was met with derision when she suggested that kids should be trained to "gang rush" a mass shooter rather than to hide from him. The US Department of Homeland Security recommends hiding or fleeing if possible when faced with the threat of a gunman, and fighting back only as a last resort.

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New York Passes New Gun Laws, But Will Nation Follow?

Gun specific measures welcomed by safety advocates, but mental health portions challenged by experts and professional

In what Governor Andrew Cuomo called simply a 'common sense' approach, New York passed the nation's most stringent gun safety laws Tuesday night following swift passage of the bill through the state's legislature.

New York's progress came nearly one month after the Sandy Hook massacre in December and one day before President Obama will publicly announce the White House's approach to tougher federal laws on Wednesday.

Advocates for better gun laws championed the developments in New York, recognizing that political will is all that prevents similar gun laws from being passed in other states or at the national level.
“Governor Cuomo and the lawmakers in Albany have shown tremendous leadership on the critical issue of gun violence.  By making this a priority, the Governor has not only saved lives, but will hopefully inspire leaders in Washington also to take swift action,” said Dan Gross, President of the Brady Campaign.

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How Many People Have Been Killed by Guns Since Newtown?

Since the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Conn., on Dec. 14, we at Slate have been wondering how many people are dying from guns in America every day.

That information is surprisingly hard to come by. The Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, for example, has a tally atop its website of “people shot in America.” That number, though, is an estimate, based on the number of gun injuries and deaths recorded by the CDC in 2008 and 2009, the most recent years for which statistics are available. It seems shocking that when guns are in the headlines every day, there’s no one attempting to create a real-time chronicle of the deaths attributable to guns in the United States.

Well, someone is. Since this summer, the anonymous creator of the Twitter feed @GunDeaths has been doing his best to compile those statistics, tweeting every reported death he can find. He was inspired, he told us in a phone interview, by the Aurora, Colo., shootings and simply wanted to call daily attention to the toll that guns take. Now Slate is partnering with @GunDeaths to create this interactive feature, “Gun Deaths in America Since Newtown.”

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3/4ths of States Ignore Mental Illness Background Checks For Gun Buyers

As the White House eyes new gun-controls following the Sandy Hook school massacre and firearms dealers are seeing guns sales spike, a handful of recent investigative reports suggest that the nation’s state-run system of screening gun buyers for mental illness is mostly a mirage—except in a dozen states where governors want the system to work.
     
Federal prohibits gun sales to anyone who was declared mentally unfit by a court. In Bill Clinton’s first term, Congress passed a law requiring states to report these mental health records to the FBI. But in 1997, the Supreme Court threw out that requirement, saying states could share whatever information they wanted to—or more likely not share it.

Fast-forward to 2012, and as the Wall Street Journal reported, only 12 states account for the majority of mental health records in the FBI database. Mayors Against Illegal Guns, co-chaired by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, reported that 19 states have each submitted less than 100 mental health records to the FBI database.

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