California high school attacked as Biden meets with NRA

One student is hospitalized and another is in police custody after a shooting at Taft Union High School in rural Taft, California. A 16-year-old student entered a classroom in the school with a shotgun and began firing shots. The teacher began rushing her more than 2 dozen students out the back door. As the students escaped, the teacher and another school staff member responding to the call of shots fired engaged the student in conversation to distract him. “They talked him into putting the shotgun down,” Kern County Sheriff Donny Youngblood said. Reports say teachers began shouting for students to get inside buildings, and the principal used an intercom to tell students to stay inside.

This latest school shooting comes barely a month after 20 1st grade students were massacred at an elementary school in Newton, Connecticut and has rejuvenated a sense of urgency in pro gun control advocates. Indeed, it came on the same day that Vice President Joe Biden met with representatives of the National Rifle Associations to discuss potential methods for curbing gun violence in the U.S. Although the NRA said it was “disappointed” with the outcome of the meeting and reaffirmed its commitment to resist a ban on any type of gun or ammunition, others said the fact that the meeting occurred at all is a good sign.

“I think it’s useful to have these discussions and it’s useful that people representing both the industry and the firearms community will be having an opportunity to provide some input,” said Joe Tartaro, the president of the Second Amendment Foundation and executive editor of Gun Mag. “There’s a lot of things that they can deal with short of enacting a new ban or something like that.”
“There’s a number of issues besides, ‘Let’s impose a new ban or let’s limit magazines,’” Tartaro added. “There are people in the industry or in the firearms community who can see where the holes exist. The gun show thing is something that has been on the table. How it is done will make a lot of difference. The opposition to it in the firearms community may be ameliorated if the specifics of the language are better.”