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Originally Posted by juanbenae
I own guns so I'm not some anti 2A by any means, but I would anticipate a teacher with a firearm in a circumstance like this would not end well.
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You are making a lot of assumptions here, my friend.
"A teacher?" Just who might be teaching kids in a somewhat remote wilderness-ish locale like Bella Coola? What are the chances that this teacher (or these teachers) are avid outdoorsmen (or women), hunters, and very skilled with firearms? We have no idea. Teachers have lives outside of the classroom.
Quote:
Originally Posted by juanbenae
Kids running around unpredictably terrified, sounds like the bear was on victims so who takes that shot? Were these educators supposed to shoot at a bear with a bunch of kids around before the attack commenced?
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More assumptions. What we do know is that these teachers had clear enough sight lines and enough room around the bear to have decided it was o.k. to deploy their bear spray. Who knows, maybe they tried to use it well outside of its effective range (no more than ten to fifteen feet), maybe by then it was very "up close and personal". We don't know. I'm guessing, however, that if they had time and opportunity to deploy bear spray, they had ample time and opportunity to shoot it as well.
Which leads me to this: Goddamned right they should have shot it
before the attack commenced. Once it got inside of a suitable "safety zone", once it was close enough
to attack, they should have dropped it. No question. The safety of the kids trumps every other consideration under these circumstances. "Better safe than sorry."
Quote:
Originally Posted by juanbenae
I guess you could send armed hunter types out with kids/teachers on a field trip in the woods, but that could mess with the kids some too, even had Yogi didn't show up.
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Just how would this "mess with the kids"?
Kids' only aversion to firearms or being around firearms is learned from adults who themselves have some kind of an aversion. Kids who grow up around them have absolutely no qualms about being around them. My family is a great example of that. For generations now, we have all been exposed to firearms from a very young age. I had my first "real" gun at twelve years old (and an air rifle at eight), and God only knows how young my father did before me. My own sons each received .22 rifles on their sixth birthdays. My six year old grand daughter already has hers, and my four year old will have hers in two years.
Parents who shield their kids from firearms do them a huge disservice. They instill in them this "forbidden fruit" syndrome. No good ever comes from that. Far better is a familiarity, satisfying their natural curiosity, and instilling in them a healthy respect for what they can do. Especially if the parents have chosen to live in a wilderness setting such as Bella Coola, knowing that they are absolutely in "bear country". They are living in
their (the bears) house, under
their rules.
So, I too have no idea how all of this went down. I won't make any assumptions. My only point is that they chose to leave a very useful, very important component of safety in the bear woods at home. Not that it would have been useful, I won't make that stretch, it very well may not have been. But they didn't even have that option. They chose not to. To me, that is foolish and irresponsible in the extreme.
We don't go boating without life jackets. We don't drive race cars without buckling the harnesses and wearing a helmet. Granted, the vast majority of the time the boat doesn't sink and the car doesn't crash. But sometimes they do. It's just plain common sense to be prepared for when they do. I find it odd that this same kind of common sense seems to go out the window for many when firearms are involved. Emotion seems to cloud the thinking of many. These same people would never even consider going into the wilderness without "the ten essentials", yet they willingly leave a potentially life saving article at home. I'll never understand that.