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Teacher allowed to work after threatening to shoot students

Image by WOKANDAPIX from Pixabay

When we hear talk of someone reportedly threatening to shoot up a school, the natural assumption is that we’re talking about a student, not a teacher.

Regardless, common sense says that you at least suspend someone who reportedly issued such threats until you can at least ascertain if there is any validity to the accusations.

Yet it seems in one case, not only was it not a student, but the teacher was allowed to continue working.

A transgender Florida teacher upset over a hurtful online post was taken to a higher-up’s office for counseling — where she allegedly threatened to shoot some underperforming students.

The Fox Chapel Middle School teacher, who is a transgender woman married to a woman, told the school’s guidance counselor last month she was distressed because she “learned about a social media post where people were talking negatively about her sexual orientation,” according to an incident report obtained by The Post.

The teacher was sent to speak to the counselor because she had expressed to the assistant principal that she was having “bad thoughts” and wanted to shoot some students, the report states.

During the meeting March 24, the teacher told the counselor she “wanted to shoot some students due to them not performing to their ability.”

The teacher then immediately corrected herself and said she would never harm a student.

A notice from the Florida Department of Education, however, revealed that the teacher had remained working at the school until the agency stepped in on Wednesday, prompting complaints from parents who feel the district has been misleading them about what actually happened.

The problem, however, is that making a terroristic threat is still illegal. Further, how many people who seriously wanted to kill students wouldn’t try and cover up their threat?

Now, a lot of people are hung up on this teacher being trans. Following Nashville, that’s been a popular talking point, to say the least. In fact, I’m very uncomfortable with just what direction some of that talk has headed, truth be told.

I don’t actually care if someone is trans or not. Live your life however you want. It’s not up to me to tell you that you can’t, even if it’s something I don’t approve of, so long as you don’t harm anyone else in the process.

Where I tend to have a problem in the other direction is that much of the left’s politics stems from protecting certain “classes” to such a degree that everyone else gets a harsher set of rules.

That’s likely why this teacher was allowed to return to work after issuing a threat.

At the very least, a period of suspension for saying such a thing would be appropriate as disciplinary action if nothing else. That’s if administrators didn’t take the threat as anything remotely serious.

However, that doesn’t appear to be the case.

After all, three guns were taken from the teacher’s house. As such, it’s very difficult to imagine how Florida’s red flag law was invoked over a comment no one took all that seriously.

So they took the teacher’s threat seriously and utilized a law that gun control advocates assure us won’t be misused, but not enough to immediately remove that teacher from the classroom?

I’m sorry, but how does anyone get off telling me I need to give up my right to keep and bear arms to any degree at all when we have people issuing threats being returned to the classroom?

I’m not giving up my guns even under any circumstances, but with this in mind, the mere suggestion I do so is even more insane.

We know that mass shooters tend to not remain in a shell, hiding their plotting from everyone. They tell someone, if not the world, that they have a plan. Threats can and should be taken seriously. If it’s not, then let the dust settle and get back to life as it was. If it is, though, an untold number of lives could be saved.

Unfortunately, at least on Florida school made it clear they have no care for students’ safety.

Clearly.