so many good oklahoma stories...

realizing that this was an AP story - i did a quick google news search - 94 times this news story appears on the internet. fabulous...

Books seen as safety device
A candidate for state superintendent says students should defend themselves from school shooters with old textbooks.
By TIM TALLEY Associated Press
Tulsa World
10/20/2006

OKLAHOMA CITY -- A candidate for state superintendent of schools proposes giving students thick, used textbooks to use to shield themselves from school shooters, he said Thursday.

Republican Bill Crozier of Union City said that if he is elected, he will require that used textbooks be placed under every student's desk for self-defense during a school shooting. Crozier said thick textbooks will stop bullets shot from weapons wielded by intruders.

"People might think it's kind of weird -- crazy," said Crozier, a teacher and former Air Force security officer.

But "it is a practical thing; it's something you can do," he said. "It might be a way to deflect those bullets until police got there."

Crozier and a group of his aides produced a 10-minute video Tuesday in which they are shown shooting math, language and telephone books with a variety of weapons, including an AK-47 assault rifle and a 9 mm pistol.

The bullet shot from a rifle penetrated two books, including a calculus textbook, but the pistol's bullet was stopped by a single book.

Crozier said the demonstration shows that a student could effectively use a textbook as protection during a school shooting.

Oklahoma Highway Patrol spokesman Lt. Pete Norwood is skeptical.

Crozier "probably needs to take a look at some ballistics tests," Norwood said.

"There are some rifles not even Webster's Dictionary will stop."

Crozier said he got the idea after the April 1999 shootings at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., in which two students killed 12 other students and a teacher and wounded 23 others before killing themselves.

The idea gained momentum after a December 1999 school shooting in Fort Gibson in which a 13-year-old boy shot five students in the school courtyard.

All of the students survived.

Crozier noted that one of the students was saved when a bullet fired at him was stopped by books in his backpack.

Since then, several students have been killed in a string of shootings.

In Bailey, Colo., a 53-year-old man terrorized a high school Sept. 27 before killing a 16-year-old girl and himself. Two days later in Madison, Wis., a 15-year-old student fatally shot his principal. On Oct. 2, a gunman burst into a one-room schoolhouse in a Pennsylvania Amish community and shot 10 girls before killing himself. Five of the girls died.

"You don't know where they're going to happen," Crozier said.

"You don't know when they're going to happen. There ought to be some kind of plan to react to it."

He acknowledged that a single textbook would cover only a small area but said students could use books to protect their heads or chests.

Crozier faces incumbent Democrat Sandy Garrett in the Nov. 7 general election for state superintendent.

A spokeswoman for Garrett's campaign, Kimberly Hawkins Sanders, said Garrett had no comment concerning Crozier's idea.