This Michigan university thinks a bad guy with a gun could be stopped by a good guy with a hockey puck

(Image credit: iStock/vencavolrab)

published 28 November 2018

Mark Gordon's unusual idea for combating campus shootings hit him like a hockey puck to the head.

Gordon, the police chief for Michigan's Oakland University, was once struck with a puck while coaching a youth hockey team. It "caused a fair amount of damage to me," Gordon told The Detroit News on Tuesday. So Oakland University's faculty union reasoned it would deter a would-be shooter, and started handing out pucks to students and faculty this month.

The school "has an ordinance against weapons," The Detroit News notes, so officials started looking for an alternative for fighting off potential campus shooters earlier this year. That's when Gordon brought up his unfortunate interaction with a hockey puck. Despite Gordon later admitting this "was not a well-thought-out strategy," this "spur-of-the-moment-thing ... had merit to it and kind of caught on," he said.

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The university's faculty union soon launched training sessions that involved throwing pucks and billiard balls at would-be assailants, seeing as the union's president heard that's a reputable, law enforcement-approved defense method. The union has since spent $2,500 on the idea, delivering 800 pucks to faculty members and slating another 1,700 for students. Oakland University's student congress "has ordered an additional 1,000" pucks just for students, The Detroit News writes.

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Kathryn is a graduate of Syracuse University, with degrees in magazine journalism and information technology, along with hours to earn another degree after working at SU's independent paper The Daily Orange. She's currently recovering from a horse addiction while living in New York City, and likes to share her extremely dry sense of humor on Twitter.