NRA's School Security Plan Includes a Bogus School Shooting as Evidence
The National Rifle Association produced its 225-page plan for securing schools from gun violence on Tuesday—and the report cited fake evidence and incorrect facts from school shootings.
The NRA's National School Shield Task Force report cites a mass shooting in 2010, where they write that a 16-year-old shooter killed six people in a locked classroom at Hastings Middle School in Minnesota. Mother Jones cites the actual summary of the 2010 incident at Hastings Middle School, writing that it is a "less useful story of the NRA" because it doesn't appeal to "fear and fantasy":
"Brandishing a loaded handgun at teachers and students in at least two Hastings Middle School classrooms Monday, an eighth-grade student spread terror but fired no shots before being tackled and subdued by a school police officer."
Mark Follman for Mother Jones adds that the NRA's report incorrectly credits an armed security officer at Columbine High School in 1999 and an armed teacher at Pearl High School in Mississippi in 1997 as helping to prevent more deaths, while there is no specific evidence from either incident that the armed security officer or teacher helped to stave off more fatalities.
The task force that assembled the report for the NRA is headed by a former congressman, Asa Hutchinson, and includes former federal law enforcement officials. It contains training programs, tips about building design, and preparedness suggestion. The main focus of the report involves placing armed guards in K-12 schools in America as well as encouraging teachers to carry guns. These suggestions support concerns regarding how the gun industry could profit from NRA's role in influencing school safety policies.
