Clarksville ISD employees undergo force-on-force training (Photo: CNN)
American schools in the wake of Parkland and Santa Fe have shown a willingness to try almost anything to stop the next active shooter incident.
Gov. Greg Abbott’s recently released “Safety Action Plan” is a 44-page laundry list of the most popular solutions, including mental health screening, safe gun storage laws, behavior threat assessment programs, and more secure school infrastructure.
On the other side of the aisle, Hollywood types and politicians alike have pushed gun control as a way to stop the next massacre. “How long will we accept weapons of war being used to slaughter our children?” Sen. Dianne Feinstein tweeted the day after Parkland.
Some of these solutions have more merit than others, of course, but none of them will matter the next time a troubled young person steps on campus wielding a firearm. On that day and in that school, only one solution has a chance to save lives: another person with the tools and the training to fire back.
Unfortunately, not all schools are willing to consider this scenario.
“The thing that aggravates me talking to schools is that it seems that violence is the only emergency that they’re comfortable saying they’ll wait on outside help,” Joe Eaton told me in a recent phone interview. Eaton directs FASTER Saves Lives, a firearms training academy designed specifically to help teachers react to active shooter incidents.
“I tell them, if you’ve got a kid that falls in a swimming pool and drowns, you don’t simply call 911 and wait for the ambulance to show up. You jump in the pool, you pull the kid out, you start CPR, and then when the professionals get there you have a patient to transfer to them instead of a victim. Violence has to be the same exact way.”
Some school districts are getting the message, and many have turned to resource officers as a way to have at least one defensive firearm on campus. A recent federal study indicates that the percentage of schools with a security guard, a school resource officer or other sworn law enforcement officer on campus at least once a week has gone up from 42 percent in 2005-06 to 57 percent a decade later.
SEE ALSO: Trump Supports Armed Teachers, ‘Gun Surrender’ Laws; Backs Off Age Restrictions
But while schools may be warming to full-time law enforcement officers, there remains a strong opposition to allowing teachers to perform similar functions.
Teacher’s unions have been among the loudest voices to oppose allowing instructors to arm themselves. I reached out to the National Education Association’s Center for Advocacy (NEA), the nation’s largest teacher’s union, but didn’t receive a response. Still, they’ve made their position clear.
“The overwhelming majority of teachers oppose being armed,” Mary Kusler, the NEA’s senior director, told CNN. “Teachers want to be in their classrooms to teach their children… it is incredibly hard to do that when you’re packing heat.”
Only 18 states allow school districts to grant a teacher permission to carry a firearm on campus, and only four allow a teacher to carry with a concealed carry permit alone, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
More recently, this issue made headlines when some insurance companies decided to distinguish between school resource officers and armed teachers when crafting their policies. These companies refuse to insure schools that allow their teachers to be armed, but industry officials also said that adding school resource officers is generally viewed favorably.
“Putting in more resource officers — that’s additional security — we feel that makes it safer,” Paul Marshall, of McGowan Program Administrators, told the Washington Post. “It’s different when you start pushing it to arming teachers, volunteers, voluntary security.”
The distinction sounds reasonable. Mo Canady, the Executive Director of the National Association of School Resource Officers, told me via email that SROs are all active duty law enforcement officers who undergo a minimum of 40 hours of training in addition to the other training they’ve received throughout the course of their law enforcement career.
“[The NASRO] strongly recommends that no firearms be on a school campus except those carried by carefully selected, specially trained school resource officers,” Canady said in a statement earlier this year. “Anyone who hasn’t received the extensive training provided to law enforcement officers will likely be mentally unprepared to take a life, especially the life of a student assailant.”
Canady also pointed out that school resource officers constantly prepare for active shooter incidents, and they’ve recently stopped several mass shootings.
Teachers are held to high training standards
Still, the training gap between SROs and school employees may not be as insurmountable as insurance companies and the NASRO believe. Many school districts require their armed teachers to undergo extensive training, multi-day courses that are comparable to those completed by school resource officers.
“One of the first push-backs we started hearing was, ‘Only police officers are qualified enough to have a gun in a school,”’ Eaton said. “So, we’ve taken their standard qualification that every [Ohio] law enforcement officer has to pass, and we’ve made it more difficult and held them to a much higher pass/fail line.”
Eaton is referring to the handgun qualification FASTER graduates must complete at the end of the 26-hour course. The Ohio Police Officer Training Academy requires its cadets to score 80 percent or higher on a 25-shot course of fire. The FASTER course requires students to score 93 percent on a 28-shot course of fire, which includes shots from close retention, shots with the non-dominant and dominant hands, shots while moving, and reloads.
Responding to an active shooter situation requires much more than marksmanship, of course, so FASTER students also receive training on how to move safely from an area of danger, how to move people to an area of safety, and how to deal with large chaotic crowds. They also receive a large block of trauma casualty care.
Eaton said that FASTER Saves Lives has trained over 1,300 staff members from 225 different school districts in 12 states.
In Texas’ Callisburg Independent School District, armed teachers must pass a four-day training and then a two-day refresher every year after that, Superintendent Steve Clugston told me via email.
“Our training is very intense and comparable to what law enforcement experiences,” he said. “We do range work, working as a tactical team and live scenario training in our buildings. We do periodic days at the range to practice our training, both in small groups and on our own. I believe we are well trained and have a great deal of confidence in our team.”
SEE ALSO: Organization Trains 770 Teachers for ‘Active Shooter’ Situations
The same is true in Arkansas’ Clarksville Independent School District, where they’ve been training school employees to carry firearms for the last five years. Superintendent David Hopkins told me they’ve trained 25 school employees to carry firearms in their five buildings, and they require an initial 60 hours of training and a 24-hour refresher course every year after that.
The initial training includes CPR, combat medical training to stop puncture wounds and bleeding, legal authority training, judicious use of a firearm training, force-on-force training inside school buildings, and live fire exercises. They’ve hired law enforcement officers to conduct their course, and Hopkins said it’s comparable to northwest Arkansas police departments. By the course’s conclusion, graduates become Commissioned School Security Officers who are regulated by the Arkansas State Police.
In many states, independent school districts have the authority to develop their own training requirements, but some states have also developed minimum standards that school employees have to meet. Many of those standards are exceptionally high and require teachers and school employees to attend multiple-day courses and demonstrate proficiency with a firearm.
Florida, for instance, recently passed the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Act, which allows sheriffs to establish in their jurisdictions a Coach Aaron Feis Guardian Program. These guardians must complete 132 total hours of comprehensive firearm safety and proficiency training, eighty of which are spent on firearms instruction based on the Criminal Justice Standards and Training Commission’s Law Enforcement Academy training model.
Like in the FASTER program, participants must demonstrate a higher proficiency than the law enforcement training model requires. Feis Guardian programs require at least 10 percent but no more than 20 percent more rounds fired than associated with academy training, and program participants must achieve an 85 percent hit rate.
Whether any sheriffs will actually adopt the program is yet to be seen, but 132 hours far exceeds the minimum required of SROs.
It’s the same story in South Dakota, where their “School Sentinel Program” has been training teachers to carry firearms since 2013. The training requires at least 80 hours of instruction in firearms proficiency, use of force, legal aspects, weapons retention, protocol for identifying sentinels, and first aid. School employees must also be interviewed by the school board, pass a physical examination, and hold a valid concealed carry permit.
South Carolina is currently considering a bill that would institute a program for training “School Protection Officers.” If passed, the bill would require school employees to complete a one-week training course offered by the Law Enforcement Training Council and Criminal Justice Academy. Employees must also hold a valid concealed carry weapons permit, keep the firearm concealed at all times, and not have a history of violence.
The list goes on, and while four states allow teachers to carry a firearm with nothing more than a concealed carry permit, the vast majority require training comparable to that completed by a school resource officer. Of course, the benefits of a career in law enforcement cannot be understated. SROs are qualified to perform a wide variety of functions that a teacher cannot, and in an active shooter situation, a sworn law enforcement officer is likely more capable than a teacher or janitor.
Still, it’s important in the debates surrounding school shootings to acknowledge the substantial amount of training most armed teachers receive. In terms of hours, content, and quality of instruction, these courses provide the information necessary for a teacher to respond effectively to a violent situation. If we’re willing to trust a school resource officer with the defense of our children, we should also be willing to trust a highly trained teacher to perform the same role.
Teachers offer unique advantages
Many school districts, including those whose superintendents I spoke with, install both SROs and armed teachers to defend their students. As Canady pointed out, SROs train constantly. They’ve chosen to make a career monitoring school safety, and, unlike teachers, they spend their entire day ensuring the security of students.
Hopkins also mentioned that while teachers and school employees are only trained to handle active shooter situations, SROs offer many additional services.
“[Our SRO is] a great guy. He does a fantastic job,” Hopkins said. “His role is a lot different than the Commissioned School Security Officers. If we have a situation where we have to call the police, we don’t handle it ourselves. We call the police or our school resource officer handles it.”
SROs care deeply about their students, handle their tasks effectively, and provide an invaluable asset to any school district.
All that being said, schools who are hesitant about arming teachers must also realize that armed and highly trained school employees offer unique advantages that SROs do not.
The first and most obvious is economic. Hopkins said that the cost of their SRO is pushing $60,000 per year. While the school shares that cost with the city, the district can train and equip all 25 Commissioned School Security Officers for $10-15,000 per year.
Eaton said in other areas of the country an SRO can cost over $100,000 per year. FASTER, by contrast, will train a teacher for $1,500, which includes a hotel room during their stay in Ohio.
For public school districts already strapped for cash, training teachers to carry firearms can be a cost-effective way to ensure that at least one person with a gun will be on campus to defend against an active shooter.
SEE ALSO: Missouri Legislature overrides governor’s veto, approves arming teachers bill
The ability to arm multiple teachers also means that a mass murderer can be engaged more quickly.
FASTER’s course was developed by John Benner of the Tactical Defense Institute. Benner spent twenty years commanding Hamilton County, Ohio’s, SWAT team, and he also traveled the U.S. under contract with the National Association of School Resource Officers doing similar training to that which he currently provides at FASTER.
Benner “quickly realized that if we put a police officer standing at the front door of a school, told him he was responding to a violent event, that by the time he could get into the school, find the problem, and solve the problem, we’d killed everybody in the room,” Eaton told me.
If a school can only afford to hire one resource officer, he or she may have trouble responding quickly to a mass murder occurring across campus, an event which might be over in a matter of minutes. Five teachers spread across one building have a much better chance of being in the immediate vicinity of an active shooter than one resource officer stationed near the front door.
Teachers are more numerous, and they’re also more concealed.
One student from Santa Fe High School specifically mentioned to Gov. Greg Abbott that students shouldn’t know who has a gun and who doesn’t.
“Arming teachers, and not knowing who is armed, that is what we need,” she said.
Eaton echoed this sentiment.
“[SROs] are a great resource for the communities, but they also have a big bull’s eye on their back,” he said. “And they’re easily tracked, they’re easily monitored. Regardless of how well-trained you are, anyone can be taken if they’re ambushed.”
It’s worth noting that SROs in Maryland and Illinois recently stopped mass murders despite their highly visible positions. Still, a young person thinking about killing his classmates knows he must either take down or avoid an SRO, and he can accomplish either task with some planning. Armed teachers, on the other hand, are impossible to target or avoid if none of the students know which of their instructors are carrying a firearm.
Finally, schools have the ability to carefully select which teachers they arm, an option not always available with SROs.
“We heard a lot about Parkland when the SRO didn’t go in, a lot of people said well it just proves it can’t work,” Eaton said. “The reality is that law enforcement is just like every occupation out there. Half are above average, half are below average, and you don’t get to pick who’s coming to help you on that day.”
By choosing the staff, overseeing their training, and monitoring the qualification level, schools can help ensure that only the best, most willing candidates are entrusted with the responsibility of responding to an active shooter situation. Hiring an SRO doesn’t always give school districts that ability.
Conclusion
SROs and armed teachers both offer schools a last resort defense against an armed intruder. While mental health screenings and gun storage laws might help long-term, no school should be defenseless if and when those measures fail.
SROs are understandably preferred over armed teachers by many school districts, but those superintendents—and the American public at large—owe it to their students to investigate every option at their disposal. School districts across the county have already proven that teachers can be trained to carry a firearm safely and engage an active shooter effectively.
The best argument in favor of armed teachers has been tragically enacted time and again by defenseless instructors like Aaron Feis, who throw themselves in front of bullets to protect their students.
“In every school building right now in the United States, there are certain school staff who would willingly stand between somebody with a rifle and these kids,” Eaton said, speaking of his experience interacting with thousands of teachers at FASTER. “And they’re going to do it tomorrow whether they have any chance of surviving or not.”
Schools have an obligation to give these men and women the tools and training necessary to help them return to their own families every night. Districts across the country have taken those steps, and it’s time more of them did the same.
I believe that arming teachers is a good idea, but how about looking at the cause for the need for armed teachers? One X pres with his Anti-Discipline directive and his Dear Colleague letters (Save A Thug), plus these, Common Core, Affirmative Actions, Every Child Succeeds, No Child left behind, and Every Child Matters are at the Root of the problem don’t ya think? Any of these that stop logic and common sense actions to keep trouble makes, children with mental problems, and just plane ol thugs out of our schools should be discarded. If any of you would like to read the full doc on what this x pres did to our schools here it is….https://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/letters/colleague-201401-title-vi.html
I am the principal of a large charter school in Florida. Our local sheriff implemented the Guardian program and we are taking advantage of it. We have hired one guardian and are in the process of adding another. I prefer military veterans with extensive combat experience. I do not want an active shooter situation to be the first time that they have been shot at. Our Guardian carries a Glock 19X and a Kel Tec RDB17 bullpup in .223. We would have gone with an SBR, but because we are a 501(c) 3. the lawyers and paperwork were a nightmare. Our Guardian also wears a plate carrier with level III+ plates at all times. Additionally, he has front and back 6″x11″ patches that read (school initials) and “Guardian” in large red letters on black background. Not so much to advertise his presence, but to make him recognizable to law enforcement, if we were to have an actual active shooter, so he doesn’t get shot in all the confusion!
I realise that I’m a little late to the fair, here, but I’d urge you to change the color to YELLOW on black, and preferably Day-Glo (fluorescent) yellow. Red on black provides relatively poor contrast, and in a high-tension situation, contrast is everything as far as readability goes.
If you want to verify that red/black is significantly poorer than yellow/black, get a copy of Pagemaker or a similar editor, and create two black rectangles with the text in red on one, and yellow on the other. Use a similar font to the one on the vests. Then desaturate the two images (desaturation removes the “color” part of the color and leaves grey behind–in Pagemaker it’s under Image->Adjustments->Hue/Saturation). Then back away from the monitor slowly. At some point it will become obvious that the red is much less readable than the yellow.
And, since “GUARDIAN” is not a word often used in everyday life, it will be harder for police coming on the scene to process the word. It will cost them additional seconds to interpret it. The words they are used to seeing are “POLICE”, “–PD”, “FIRE”, “–FD”, and sometimes “SHERIFF” and/or “FBI”. So you might want to change the text to “SCHOOL [in smaller type above] POLICE [larger type]. The goal is to make it *easy* for responders to see a label they do not have to think about, since if they have to think, and the “guardian” moves while they’re thinking, they might well shoot him/her reflexively.
“The overwhelming majority of teachers oppose being armed,”
I guess that makes teachers on par with the general public, and that is fine but that does not mean that no teacher should be armed. We protect our politicians and our celebrities, none of whom are of greater value then our children, with guns and rely on signs advertising our kids as an easy target to protect them. Duh, I wonder why a mass shooter chooses a “gun free zone” as a place to show what a big shot they are. Grow up NEA. Stop being politically correct and do your job.
Teachers who won’t protect their students in the gravest extremes are cowards. They will ALWAYS be the first responders in a school shooting scenario, and if they are not willing to be prepared, they should at least support those who are willing to do whatever is necessary to protect their students. Teachers should either lead or get the heck out of the way for people who care enough to stop this evil.
For many years maintained mandatory martial arts training and or firearms training for teachers. I note above the question who is going to pay for this training? Simple the individuals will. Why? Who paid for their education? Most always they did. I believe not only should the educators be educated with the everyday curriculum they should be as part of their education training know how to defend themselves and assist in protecting their charges if need be. I concur with other posts the amount of time for basic firearms training and believe yearly proficiency training must be required and accomplished. Have come to the conclusion to many educators think their employment to be be one of complete safety, it’s not and do think many may be fooling themselves. Am from the west and raised there, schooling starting in the mid 1950’s finishing high school in the late 1960’s. There were classmates just as in any normal school setting who were not model students and liked to raise a ruckus and there were some who would challenge teachers and classmates and fisticuffs would occur. No doubt in some cities over the years there have been other lethal means to hurt, maim or kill besides firearms. Training for teachers should be rounded out and required means of self defence and being competent in assisting the defence of their students.
Yes armed Teacher are better then throwing rocks, and almost as good as our LE with their handgun. My point is our LE should carry long guns, SBR, Short Shotgun, you get the idea. We should use half the money we spend keeping almost every Government Building Secure with Guards, and protecting our elected offical while they are playing ball, and use that to protect our KIDS. Now The Rub, from a Gun Guy, yep I have been gunning since about 12, and full time since 16, or 50 years now and counting. But, you won’t like some of my ideas to keep US safe. I stand a good chance any place accept in our Gun Free Government Buildings, so I don’t worry much about me as I will shoot back Period.
OK here we are complaining about the complainers which is just the same old same old. Me, Gunner for 54 years, NRA brought me in at age 12, and I am still going strong. The NRA sure ain’t what it use to be. My take is simple, I have lived with gun regulations like They are trying to pass again, and they did not hurt me. I look at this this way, Gun don’t kill people, yet people with guns kill people……. My challenge, meet me in the hallway at school, bring your Fav Daily CC (I have had one for about 40 years, so u should have one), I will bring one of my AKs or maybe my SKS BullPup, either way I will have a 30 rd mag. Guess what no one will meet me, but maybe if we did limit the mag to 10 rounds they would show up. Yet we want our Teachers to use a small CC pistol against me and my 30 round mag. Now if you are able to see but still cannot see this, I feel Sorry For You. But, please get out of the way as we can protect our kids and ourselves, and at the same time protect The 2nd!
OK here we are complaining about the complainers which is just the same old same old. Me, Gunner for 54 years, NRA brought me in at age 12, and I am still going strong. The NRA sure ain’t what it use to be. My take is simple, I have lived with gun regulations like They are trying to pass again, and they did not hurt me. I look at this this way, Gun don’t kill people, yet people with guns kill people……. My challenge, meet me in the hallway at school, bring your Fav Daily CC (I have had one for about 40 years, so u should have one), I will bring one of my AKs or maybe my SKS BullPup, either way I will have a 30 rd mag. Guess what no one will meet me, but maybe if we did limit the mag to 10 rounds they would show up. Yet we want our Teachers to use a small CC pistol against me and my 30 round mag. Now if you are able to see but still cannot see this, I feel Sorry For You. But, please get out of the way as we can protect our kids and ourselves, and at the same time protect The 2nd!
OK here we are complaining about the complainers which is just the same old same old. Me, Gunner for 54 years, NRA brought me in at age 12, and I am still going strong. The NRA sure ain’t what it use to be. My take is simple, I have lived with gun regulations like They are trying to pass again, and they did not hurt me. I look at this this way, Guns don’t kill people, yet people with guns kill people……. My challenge, meet me in the hallway at school, bring your Fav Daily CC (I have had one for about 40 years, so u should have one), I will bring one of my AKs or maybe my SKS BullPup, either way I will have a 30 rd mag. Guess what no one will meet me, but maybe if we did limit the mag to 10 rounds they would show up. Yet we want our Teachers to use a small CC pistol against me and my 30 round mag. Now if you are able to see but still cannot see this, I feel Sorry For You. But, please get out of the way as we can protect our kids and ourselves, and at the same time protect The 2nd! Dave
Several School Districts in Texas arm personnel with long guns as well as their concealed carry. I know because I work for one.
I will forever feel that arming teachers is not the best idea. Properly controlled entrances equipped with metal detectors and trained personnel with their firearms in plain sight would be a huge deterrent. Attacks outside the school could also be countered by these armed personnel. Not allowing uncontrolled gatherings on school property would also be a deterrent. It’s not rocket science! People with an intent to do harm to others will always find a way to accomplish this without the use of firearms. We’ve all been witness to this. Bad people will not follow any rules.
After high school, I was able to work at the school I had attended, first as a monitor/tutor, then later with my own class room. I know, from experience and from discussions with fellow school staff, that students are the main fear. Often the active shooter is or was a member of the student body you’re protecting. Most teachers don’t want that responsibility, ‘I may have to shoot one of these kids I’m teaching,’ ‘One of these “proven to be mentally developing and mostly unstable” kids might see a chance for fame, attention, cry for help, etc and take my weapon.’
Those in education do know that how kids are raised, their social and home influences, and the state of youth culture as a whole is the main danger.
Would you be the only one with a weapon, among 30-40 potential threats you also have to protect? And they know you’re likely armed?
The best way to keep kids safe is keep them home, or support a private school you’re involved with, one that can not only teach more efficiently with smaller classes, but protect better because of smaller classes.
There sure is a lot of back and forth on this issue,and there should not when it comes to your children, a parent will more than likely die for there child and when those children are in the classroom thay are the instructor’s children and some of our voters and politicians have taken there Constitutional wright away to “Bare and carry” aren’t those instructors citizens also? yes I believe instructors should be allowed to protect children in there charge but only IF they chose to do so NOT mandatory.
There was a small school in Texas around the turn of the century whare three drunken renegades decided to go and scalp some students ( one student of color and two not) that had injuries the other twelve did not, the instructor had a Winchester in the corner, grabed and shot the three, killing one injuring the other two. One of the town’s people was furious blaming the instructor WHY DIDN’T YOU GRAB IT SOONER my child could have been killed!
About the issue of confusion over who is a good guy with a gun vs a bad guy with a gun – armed school personnel should be given an armband or hat or sleeveless jacket that they can quickly put on to identify themselves.
I have heard this point brought up in interviews of instructors and organizers of the FASTER program. They say that the police have a way to know who is legitimately armed. And no, they aren’t saying how.
Given the number of cops who shoot innocent homeowners or other cops working undercover, I would take that “have a way” claim with a grain or twenty of salt.
It doesn’t make a lot of sense. We are constitutionally protected to carry a firearm for defense EXCEPT the place we need it most for our kids.
Why can’t a willing teacher, who voluntarily obtained a CCL and is comfortable with firearms, elect to defend herself? Why is it ILLEGAL to protect yourself inside a school? Shots fired, “OK kids, get behind me, lay down, I’ve got a forearm and I’ll protect you best I can.”
If I were the student, I’d choose to be in that teachers classroom over the human shield teacher every time. Wouldn’t you?
In Texas….They Can.
A lot of issues with arming teachers….
1. Where is the money coming from to pay for the training, weapons, and ammo when funding for teachers salaries is already laughably low?
2. What happens when a teacher ends up shooting a student or other staff member in their attempt to take down the assailant, since of course, there aren’t going to be many opportunities to shoot the assailant without another classroom(potentially full of students) being past the target?
3. What happens when law enforcement arrives, and they see someone inside the school with a gun drawn, teacher or otherwise? Are they supposed to wait to have a convo with the armed person to ensure they’re not the bad guy?
4. What if more than one teacher is armed and they encounter each other in the school? Are they supposed to assume the other teacher is not the shooter? How do they know for sure?
As the owner of a semi-auto pistol and a well equipped AR-15, I am very much pro-gun, but I’ve yet to hear an argument for arming teachers that has made an ounce of sense.
I think it’s pretty easy. Nobody pays for teacher training, firearms, or ammo, just like no prepaid for yours. What should happen is lift the restriction in schools for faculty to carry if they choose with their CCL.
Nobody is talking about sending the teacher running through the halls hunting an assailant as a first responder.
Just give them a chance to defend against someone crashing into the room with a gun pointed at them and bad intentions.
And curious, since there have been documented school shootings, how many casualties have been incurred from bullets passing through the walls. Zero? Even by shots fired from the invader trying to kill as many as possible? Defender firing 3-5 rounds at a known invader is going to be extremely low risk.
1. At a cost of $ 1,500 per armed teacher its not that much money. Partnerships with local law enforcement, businesses, and citizens really helps. In rural Texas the donations pour in.
2. Frangible ammunition and training.
3. Readily Visible vest that is Easily Identifiable and kept with your firearm. Train and plan with your local law enforcement.
4. See number 3.
5. Don’t assume that School Districts that arm their teachers have not thought of these scenarios and then planned and trained for it just like any other business or organization does in case they have a disaster.
If you are serious about a problem you work to overcome. When Law Enforcement is 15 minutes away you simply choose to not be a bystander while someone shoots your students. We have active shooter drills just like fire drills. Our students and teachers (armed and unarmed) are trained. We train for the worst and hope for the best.
Lots of mealy mouthed reasons not to arm teachers but none of them refute the best reason to do it,…. you will stop an active shooter in their tracks. Imagine if the principle at Sandy Hook had been packing a Glock instead of love and good thoughts. That coward would have been down and out before he shot a single child. But then the mainstream media would have butchered her for shooting before she knew his intent. PC BS!!
I am a proponent of civilians being armed when they have the legal ability to do so and have been trained in both firearms safety and the legal responsibilities and restrictions of defense using a firearm. However, I am not in favor of arming teachers in order to fight against an active shooter. When the police arrive on scene, they may see the teacher with a firearm and shoot him/her because they appear to be the active shooter.
Won’t the police shout commands to drop the weapon first, before shooting? Maybe. More than likely though, in a true Active Shooter situation, the police will shoot at the first person they see with a firearm because the scene will be chaotic, with dozens, hundreds or even thousands of people involved and the police do not know who is who. The police will only one thing for sure: that someone with a firearm is shooting and killing people. I think it invites disaster, with an innocent person, who is trying to save others, being shot. It would be better to reinforce classroom walls and doors for ballistic protection and/or have ballistic reinforced safe rooms near every handful of classrooms where people can evacuate to.
There are certainly flaws to this idea too, so as a community, let’s communicate our ideas to the person or group(s) who is responsible for ensuring public safety.
After the Parkland shooting, another sheriff from Florida released a study showing that the average mass shooter has completed his task within 3-5 minutes. The first cop on the scene doesn’t get there until 9 minutes, and the geared-up SWAT team maybe by 30 minutes. An armed teacher can be done taking down the perp before the “confused” police even show up.
I will gladly risk being mistakenly shot by the police rather then go down like a lamb to the slaughter along with innocent children. Give me a gun and worst case I will go down fighting and Best case take the coward with me. Without a gun, the victim count is automatically increased by one not including the innocents I might have saved.
All of this is hypothetical garbage until you have at least one shootout including a well-armed school staff.
If you wish to say that shootouts were prevented, I have a picture of an owl over my desk to prevent seagulls. I have not had any seagulls on my desk, so the owl picture works 100% of the time.
Definitely get rid of the resource officers. They are cops that do not have the intelligence to handle most situations by themselves. Also, the majority of them are perverts and should not be around children.
The “Florida MSHSPSA” SPECIFICALLY EXCLUDES CLASSROOM TEACHERS from the being “Armed School Staff”. It basically eliminates 95%+- of the school staff from the potential pool of volunteers. It also allows school systems/districts to totally opt out and n8t participate regardless of stalls desire to protect their students or themselves. Gun control driven paper tiger!