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Virginia Tech Victims
creditL jokohok

The first three articles in this series may be found by entering “School Attacks: Saving Lives 2018” in the SMM search bar at the top right of the home page.

This updated article continues with answers to additional issues raised in Part 3.

QUESTIONS, ANSWERS AND SOLUTIONS, PART I (continued):

Q: WHAT ABOUT SCHOOL LIAISON OFFICERS?

Some schools have armed police officers on their campuses during school hours, more have part time officers, but most have none.  School liaison officers are expensive; they are of little use to a day-to-day patrol force, yet their salaries must come, in part or whole, out of a police budget.  Even if a school has an assigned liaison officer—and this is true primarily for large high schools–-the odds that the officer will be on campus when an attack occurs, or will be in the part of the building necessary to take immediate and effective action are small.

 A case in point is the Parkland Attack, where a school liaison officer, Deputy Scott Peterson, was present, but for a variety of reasons as yet not clearly understood, did not enter the building where the shooting was occurring.  Obviously, a part of the problem in that incident is the high school campus has at least 12 separate buildings, radio communications were hampered due to long-known equipment issues, and the usual fog of war confusion was present.

The duties of these officers do not include continuously monitoring entryways, and it wouldn’t matter if they did; schools have far too many to cover, even if a school is housed in only a single building.  In addition, officers can’t be at most extra-curricular activities, which usually occur after school hours.  After eight hours a day, they’re on overtime, and have to make choices about when and where they’ll be present.

Many schools have the populations of small towns with multiple buildings.  Modern schools are like mazes to those that don’t work in them daily.  Those most likely to know who doesn’t belong on a campus and what is happening on a moment-by-moment basis are those that work there: teachers.  They are also present at each and every activity of a school, during the normally scheduled school day or at extra-curricular activities.

I noted in an article about the NRA’s 2012 proposal to put police officers in every school, while it would be better than nothing, it’s simply not possible.  There are too many schools (more than 100,000), too few police officers, and for the brokest nation in the history of the world, irrational to consider.  There are, by most estimates, some 800,000 actively serving police officers in America, but that includes federal officers, and even that number is too small to adequately do their jobs.  Sending any of them, full time, to schools means the public is even more vulnerable. To hire enough officers to adequately protect every American school–it would require 300,000–is impractical, unnecessary, and simply unaffordable.  Worst of all, it would not address every threat, particularly that of multiple attackers, as I noted in this bit of 2014 fiction. 

Virginia Tech Amtermath
credit: washingtonpost

Time is no longer on the side of the good guys.  When an active shooter or shooters enter a school, if they are not engaged and stopped immediately, the only factor determining the eventual death toll will be their good will or lack of marksmanship.  No one possessed of good will would be carrying out a mass murder attack on a school anyway, and when the targets are children and mostly female teachers trapped in small classrooms without cover or concealment, one need not be an Olympic quality marksman to wreak havoc.

Many schools do not have two-way intercom systems, so a teacher seeing an armed attacker in a hallway may have no way–other than their own cell phone, which may or may not work inside the school–to notify the office, warn other teachers, or to call the police, short of running down that same hallway to do it in person. While the police speed toward the building, a process that will take at least five, if not many more, minutes, children and teachers will die. That, at least, is indisputable.


Q:  TEACHERS CARRYING GUNS? 

One significant reason violent crime has uniformly declined in right to carry states is even though only a small fraction of the population carries a concealed weapon, the likelihood is high some honest citizen will be carrying a handgun virtually anywhere at any time.  Knowing this, criminals can never know who will be armed and must assume everyone might be.  Therefore though only a small portion of the honest population carry concealed weapons, they provide a protective, deterrent effect for the general public far out of proportion to their numbers.  Criminals fear the guns of armed citizens far more than those of the police.  The police are predictable and criminals are used to dealing with them, but citizens just might choose to shoot them out of fear, or worse, anger.  It is also indisputable that criminals take pains to avoid armed citizens.

Looting In Ferguson
credit: st.louis.cbs.local

Tragically, cities and states that use every legislative trick in the book to disarm their law-abiding citizens have high crime rates, and higher murder rates. Circa 2018, Baltimore, Chicago, Detroit and other usual suspect cities are experiencing record numbers of shootings and murders by gunfire, and due to the Ferguson Effect,  police officers, to protect themselves, are avoiding criminals.

How many citizens carry concealed weapons? Official state records vary from 3-8 million. But because an ever-increasing number of states (16 circa October, 2018: Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Idaho, Kansas, Maine, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Texas, Vermont, West Virginia and Wyoming.  Some nine more are in the process of approving it) no longer require any permit–constitutional carry–and many citizens may reasonably be presumed to carry regardless of what the government tries to regulate.

One can safely believe the numbers are significantly higher than official records would indicate. Many Americans take the Second Amendment at its word, and refuse to recognize any governmental power to restrict the right to self-defense (governments have powers; individuals have rights). Such people are unlikely to respond to surveys. Add in the number of people whose vehicles contain handguns and long guns, and the numbers are likely much higher.

S&W Bodyguard .380 ACP Pistol

What is the value of a teacher’s life?  If they have an unalienable right to self-defense, a right the state can’t confer and may not take away, how is it they lose that right when they cross a school property line?  How can it be that a teacher has the right to protect their life, and the lives of their own children, everywhere but at school?  Do school property boundaries truly determine the value of the lives of teachers and school children?  At present, in most states, they do.

Those already licensed for concealed carry provide a ready pool for schools.  Many people assume the police are all expert shots. Not so.  Many police officers are required to qualify with their firearms only once a year.  The courses of fire are commonly easy–a trend that government mandates to ensure “diversity” in police forces has made necessary–and passing scores laughably generous.  Many officers fire their weapons only once yearly (and clean them less often).

Shooting skills can be learned by virtually anyone, and a great many citizens exceed the police in shooting skill.  Non-police, private shooting academies have far higher standards than most police forces.  This is not to denigrate the police in any way–they do a difficult job well–but putting on a police uniform does not endow the wearer with magical shooting powers beyond the reach of teachers.  Most teachers are women, and firearms teachers know women often make the best students, commonly lacking the preconceptions and ingrained bad habits present in many men.  They also tend to inherently respect the power of firearms.  I suspect many people around the nation might be surprised to discover how many teachers–male and female–are quite competent with firearms, and how many routinely carry concealed weapons (depending on one’s state of residence, personal experience may vary).

Publicizing that teachers are allowed to carry, suggesting they are carrying, but taking pains to ensure no one knows who or how many are armed in any given school, will confer upon all teachers, students and schools the benefit of making every school a harder target.  This is so even if no one is carrying, but no rational person should ever rely on bluffing where lives are at risk. This kind of information will tend to be leaked, and someone will always call such a bluff.

No one should be required to carry a firearm against their will.  Even if one school in a district has no one on campus carrying a concealed weapon, as long as the public doesn’t know that but reasonably believes that some are, the school retains the deterrent effect of appearing to be a harder target.  Schools need all the deterrent they can get.

Anyone planning a school attack, knowing the Smallville School District allowed concealed carry, even encouraged it, but the Pleasantville School district next door did not, would surely attack the easier target.  Terrorists and school shooters are deterred only when they believe their mission might be thwarted, which tends to cause them to shift to a softer target.  Currently, virtually every American elementary and secondary school is a soft target.

Q:  THE POLICE ARE HIGHLY TRAINED.  TEACHERS CAN’T HAVE THAT SAME LEVEL OF TRAINING.  WON’T THEY DO WORSE THAN POLICE OFFICERS?

Police after the Virginia Tech Attack, after everyone was wounded or killed.
credit: christianscience monitor

In virtually every school shooting, the police have had no active role in stopping shooters, who usually commit suicide before police are in a position to see, let alone stop, them.  Police officers are indeed extensively trained, but only because their jobs require a wide range of knowledge and skills.  The skills they need to stop a school attacker are few, specific, and do not require years of study and lengthy on the job experience to learn and master.  The same is true for teachers.

Teachers are no different than anyone else licensed to carry a concealed weapon.  In virtually every state, they must learn the law relating to the use of deadly force—these issues are the same for police officers–and demonstrate basic proficiency with their handgun.  This would be a good starting point for schools, as long as the bureaucratic tendency to over-regulate–demanding everyone carry the same gun, holster, and requiring unrealistic and unnecessarily lengthy training, etc.–is suppressed. It would be wise for school districts to underwrite tactical training, but this is not absolutely necessary, nor is it difficult or expensive to do or to learn.

Some argue that teachers must focus on teaching and because of this, cannot possibly be aware of their surroundings or effectively protect themselves or others.  This is dangerous nonsense on stilts.  Anyone can learn to be more aware of their surroundings, to develop “situational awareness.”  And if a teacher carrying a concealed weapon never uses it, as will be–hopefully–the case for all but a few across the nation, their attention to their normal duties is unchallenged.  If they must use it to repel a school attack, their attention will be distracted from teaching for only a few minutes, a distraction for which I suspect most teachers, students and parents will be eternally grateful.  After an attack is stopped, it’s a safe bet everyone will have a few days off.

Some educators, politicians and deluded citizens argue that the mere presence of a gun on campus, even carried by police officers, somehow damages a mystically pristine educational atmosphere.  That they would rather allow people to die to maintain their delusions is all one need know about them.

Police officers, because of the very nature of their jobs, make mistakes in shooting far more often than citizens.  They are required to rush into ambiguous situations and often aren’t sure who is innocent and who is a threat.  People on the scene–teachers–know precisely who the bad guy is and what needs to be done.  The police virtually never have to make such decisions in school shootings as the killer has commonly killed as many as he pleased, and himself, before they can lay gun sights on him. Their role tends to be helping the wounded and dying, protecting an enormous crime scene, and traffic control.

At Newtown the killer—who would want his name mentioned here—was confronted by a locked, remotely controlled main entrance door.  He simply shot his way, within seconds, through the floor-to-ceiling plate glass window next to the door.  In that situation, there would have been no confusion about what was happening.  There would have been no question the killer had deadly intent and anyone near him was in imminent danger of serious bodily injury or death.  Who could doubt what he intended to do if he got into the school?  Armed staff could have shot him while he was still trying to break into the school, though that process took only seconds, and no one need have been injured.  No highly advanced and technical skills would be required, only the ability to shoot straight, and at that point in the attack, when no students or other innocents were in danger, it would matter little if staff members firing on the shooter missed a few rounds.  Even those rounds might have caused the shooter to turn tail and run. As it was, he was able to kill for ten minutes, and could have taken an additional five–perhaps more–before the first officer entered the building.

The demolition of Sandy Hook Elementary School

By all means, take this link and learn the unmistakable lessons of Newtown.

Remember too that in elementary schools, most teachers, principals and support staff are female.  They tend to lack the size, strength, training and aggressiveness to incapacitate an attacker hand to hand.  Even if a principal is a world-class martial artist, this is meaningless unless they can get close enough to an armed attacker without being shot, and even then, their chances aren’t good.  In such circumstances, time and distance are the determining factors, and schools are full of long, open hallways with no cover, or even concealment, for the unarmed defender.

But a slight woman with a handgun is fully as dangerous to a murderer as a strapping man at the distances found in school attacks.  When Mrs. Manor and I were last required to qualify with our handguns, I fired a perfect score, and she, using the same make and model of handgun–Glock 26–fired only a single point less, outshooting–with ease–every other man present by a substantial margin.  In school attacks, firearms are truly equalizers and lifesavers, particularly for female teachers, just as they are for women outside school property boundaries.

Of course, shooting stationary paper targets is different than shooting at human beings intent on taking one’s life.  However, the same dynamics apply to attacker and those being attacked.  Arguing against the means of protecting lives because of logistical issues is missing the point in a rather large, obvious and potentially deadly way.

Are we truly prepared to say that when an armed madman breaks into a school and begins shooting, women shouldn’t have the means to protect their lives because they have chosen education as a profession?  Because they’re women, and saving themselves and their students would somehow be a betrayal of feminism?  That’s the very real and deadly effect of current policy.

Walther P22, .22LR, 10 round magazine.  One of the common handguns used in the Virginia Tech Attack.

Next Tuesday I’ll post the fifth article in this series, which continues to address the issues involved in actually saving lives, rather than merely feeling safe, morally superior, or sending messages about what some want the public to believe, regardless of reality.