Seriously, what the hell?
A Pennsylvania superintendent has an idea to fight off school shooters. It involves buckets of stones being left in classrooms for children to throw at gun-wielding intruders should they gain entry into a classroom.
Blue Mountain School District Superintendent David Helsel told state lawmakers this month that classrooms had been equipped with river stones as a last resort for students should evacuations fail.
"Every classroom has been equipped with a five-gallon bucket of river stone," Helsel said at the state's House Education Committee on 15 March.
"If an armed intruder attempts to gain entrance into any of our classrooms, they will face a classroom full of students armed with rocks and they will be stoned.
"We have some people who have some pretty good arms. They can chuck some rocks pretty fast."
Helsel said that the measure would be a last resort and that protocols are in place to try and protect students and staff in the event of a school shooting. This involves either evacuating or locking down the classrooms, barricading the doors and implementing the district's installed devices that tightly secure the door.
"We've been trying to be proactive just in case," the superintendent said.
"We wanted to provide some type of last response to an intruder," Helsel said, "rather than crawling under a desk and getting shot."
"How can you aim a gun if you're being pelted with rocks?" he said.
Helsel said he tries "to treat every child here like my own. While I don't like that we need to do this, this response is better than doing nothing."
He added, "If someone can provide a better last-ditch response to an armed intruder that's trying to gain access to a classroom, then I would be open to any idea."
