A cafeteria worker at a South Carolina middle school managed to pull off one of the more baffling ‘oops’ moments in recent memory. They showed up to work with a loaded handgun and then forgot it in the bathroom. Because apparently that’s just something people do now.

Deputies say a district employee found the weapon in a staff-only restroom at Sandhills Middle School. It was loaded. It was left behind. And when questioned, the employee admitted he’d brought the gun to school and then ‘realized’ he still had it on him, prompting him to stash it in the locked restroom like it was a contraband snack pack instead of, you know, a lethal weapon. He was arrested on campus and placed on administrative leave.

Here’s the part that never stops blowing my mind. How do ‘responsible gun owners’™ forget they’re carrying a gun?

This isn’t your phone. It isn’t a pen. It isn’t your car keys. If I had a firearm on me, I’d be acutely aware of its location at all times, because that’s literally the entire responsibility that comes with owning one. But somehow, we keep seeing this same storyline over and over again in schools. Someone brings a gun, panics, and decides the bathroom stall is the closest thing to a secure storage locker.

And honestly, why is it always the bathroom? Do people think the tiles imbue weapons with some kind of safety aura? Guns get left in student restrooms, teacher restrooms, and staff restrooms as if guns are magnetically attracted to cheap toilet paper.

Guns do not belong in schools. Not by accident, not by forgetfulness, and not by whatever mental gymnastics lead someone to believe that setting a loaded weapon on the back of a toilet tank is a reasonable solution. Ever.

What happened at Sandhills Middle is another reminder that we don’t just have a gun-violence problem in this country. We also have a gun-carelessness problem. And in a school environment, both can be deadly.

(Source)

• School cafeteria employee in SC accused of carrying loaded weapon on campus