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To find the articles in this updated series, enter “School Attacks 2020” in the search bar of the SMM home page.

One More Question:

In researching this updated series, I ran across a number of naysayers whose arguments went more or less like this:

We can’t let teachers carry guns in school. They’ll be shooting students that are fighting or behaving badly!

Underlying this sort of hyperbolic thinking is the idea that there can be no possible reason a teacher would have any need for self-defense in school.  Also implied is teachers are too stupid and/or emotional to deal with such issues, and seeing any sort of misbehavior or criminal behavior by students, would be compelled to shoot them.

Coleen Ritzer

One wonders what Coleen Ritzer would have thought about that. In October of 2013, 24 year-old high school math teacher Ritzer was attacked by a 15-year-old student that followed her into a women’s bathroom after school, beat her and slashed her throat.  She was raped and her body abandoned near the school. Her school, like most, prohibited armed teachers.

The point of carrying a concealed weapon is not that we know, or can guess with any degree of accuracy, when a deadly attack might occur, what type of person might commit it and what might motivate them. We carry because we have no idea when or where we might be attacked, when or where our lives might hang in the balance.

We do not carry a handgun because the only possible scenario is an armed outsider might one day attack the school and try to shoot many people, and we might be close enough to stop them if armed, though that is more than sufficient reason. We carry because deadly threats may occur at any time, anywhere, even in our homes or our schools.

credit: wordcrunch.com

Anti-liberty thinking does not go so far as to admit it might be legitimate for a teacher to use their concealed handgun to stop a stereotypical school attacker, but to stop a student who suddenly pulls a knife and attacks because he is out of his mind over a lost girlfriend, on drugs or a sociopath?  Surely not.  Psychologists, by the way, estimate sociopaths to be about 5% of the population.  My police experience indicates it could be as high as 10%, but that may be due to situational experience.  Still, if you happen to live in one of those places where the number of sociopaths is higher than average…

One may use deadly force when one–or another–is in imminent danger of serious bodily harm or death, and the attacker has the means and opportunity to cause serious bodily harm or death, and is actually putting one in jeopardy. Go here for a basic primer on the use of deadly force.   It is also important that the person being attacked is innocent, that they have not provoked or participated in the attack–it’s not a case of mutual combat–and that the force used to stop the attack is proportional to the force used in the attack. One doesn’t shoot someone that is threatening to throw an empty milk carton, but someone armed with a gun, and shooting at others, must be–and can be–legally and immediately stopped.  This is, of course, not the only possible scenario where lawful, lethal force may be employed.

A related misconception is children are harmless. While it would certainly be far more difficult to justify shooting a 6 year-old than a 15 year-old, if that 6 year-old had a gun and appeared able to point it and pull the trigger, they are no less a deadly threat than the 15 year-old. Kids can and do seriously injure, even kill others, including teachers, as I noted in: The Ferguson Effect: They’re Just Harmless Widdle Kiddies. 

Obviously, no rational teacher would want to harm a student in their care, but sometimes, thankfully rarely, it is necessary. A few years ago I had to restrain a student that was ruthlessly beating a fellow teacher. While I would have been justified in causing him some degree of injury, I was able to do it without hurting him, but most people don’t have those skills, or the will and experience necessary to use them.  In that case, I saw the attack, and before I was aware of moving, had crossed some 30 feet and was restraining the attacker.  I was able, within seconds, to talk him into submitting.

As I’ve previously noted, teachers carrying concealed handguns are not police officers. They are no different than any citizen carrying concealed. They are not in any way obligated to engage in law enforcement activities, and obviously, should not. Unless and until a deadly force situation occurs, no one need ever know they are carrying a handgun. For most teachers, this means no one ever will.

The ultimate point is teachers should carry concealed handguns not because they work in schools, but because they are around other human beings, just as they are everywhere outside their school. Unless we are willing to declare, in law, teachers are to be denied the right to self-defense because they have chosen to be teachers, and their students are likewise denied that protection because they are school children, there can be no legitimate reason to disarm teachers, rendering them and their charges at deadly risk in worst case scenarios.

THE PURDUE STUDY:

Several years ago I corresponded with Dr. J. Eric Dietz, who, with the help of three co-author/students, was working on a study on how to mitigate active shooter attacks. What security measures, the study sought to answer, were effective in stopping attacks, or at least, in minimizing casualties? Dr. Dietz wrote that the study was not yet complete, but let me know when it was. A download is available here. 

Those wishing to be informed about the methodology of the study should download it. It is only 25 pages long and very readable, even for the scientific layman. Basically, the study used computer modeling based on data from actual school attacks to determine which of four scenarios would be most effective:

Scenario 1: A normal school. No access control or security present, no one carrying handguns, concealed or otherwise.

Scenario 2: A school where 5%-10% of the staff are carrying concealed handguns.

Scenario 3: A school with an assigned school resource officer–an armed police officer.

Scenario 4: A school with a school resource officer and 5-10% of the school staff carrying concealed handguns.

The study correctly controls for common variables and influencing factors, and there has been very little media coverage or scientific criticism of the study. Dr. Dietz was interviewed for a brief, local news article: 

For the past year, Dietz and his students have used data from real-life events including the Virginia Tech and Sandy Hook Elementary tragedies to analyze further. Research shows it takes, on average, 12 minutes, for police to respond to a school shooting in the United States.

Dietz said it’s the reason why every second counts.

They found adding one armed school resource office in school could reduce response times by 80-percent. Casualties dropped by nearly 70-percent.

Researchers also determined arming up to 10-percent of a school’s teachers and faculty could decrease casualties by 10-percent.

‘We have to put everything on the table and try to get emotion out,’ said Dietz. ‘We’re not looking to arm schools and we’re not trying to create gunfire fights in schools. We’re just looking at it with a police and science point-of-view and how we can benefit children in schools.

Imagine that. I suspect the very absence of criticism is a sign anti-liberty/gun proponents—which is much of the Media–do not want to give the study any publicity. When the Clinton Administration did a study on the defensive use of guns in the hope of finding justification for gun bans, they were horrified to find Americans use guns to stop crimes up to 1.5 million times a year, commonly without firing a shot. They did everything they could to disown and bury the study.  Fortunately, they failed.

The Purdue study credits those that support “run and hide” drills, and other security measures previously mentioned in this series, but notes that their methods do not assess actual data from past attacks, nor do they serve to stop attackers. In the contemporary school security business, Purdue’s is very much an unusual approach. It shouldn’t be.  Unless any security program can actively deter attacks, and when they occur, minimize casualties and stop the attacker(s), of what value is it? Are we truly willing to say “well, the Security Inc. plan can’t actually stop an attacker, and lots of people will die before the police can respond, but we’re willing to pay a great deal of taxpayer money and accept a reasonable number of casualties to give the appearance of security?” That’s what’s currently happening in most American schools.

The study notes:

In 2012 there were an estimated 1,214,462 violent crimes nationwide. This includes all violent crime, including those in which firearms were used. This represents a decrease of over 12.9% from the 2008 level, a 15.4% decrease from the 2011 to 2007 level, and a 15.5% decrease from the 2011 to 2002 level10. At the same time firearms ownership increased sharply, by over 61%, or over 118 million between 2004 and 201211. Additionally, during the timeframe of 1999-2000, a full 58% of firearms related deaths were labeled as suicide, 38% as homicides and 3% ruled unintentional death by firearm. [skip]

The evidence of growing firearm popularity and growing strength in both numbers, statistics relating to crime and usage, and laws allowing their use create an undeniable data set that suggests that increased firearms ownership and access does not contribute to increased crime, anecdotally, it statistically results in a reduction.

The study observes that virtually all mass shootings take place in “gun free” zones—confined areas–where large numbers of people are present. To those paying attention to this issue, this is not surprising. Deitz’s discovery that it takes the police an average of 12 minutes to respond to these attacks is, if anything, generous.  The Sandy Hook attack is an excellent example.  It took school personal about five minutes to make a call to the police after the attack began. The first officer arrived within about four minutes of receiving the radio call, but no officer was actually able to enter the building until nearly 10 minutes after that first officer arrived, which was nearly 20 minutes after the attack actually began, and as is virtually always the case, the police had no hand in actually stopping the attack. In any school attack, there will be several distinct early phases (these are my observations, not those of the study).

It should also be understood that a police officer’s arrival time is not a true indicator of their potential effectiveness.  Arriving in the parking lot of a school whose interior is maze-like to outsiders is just the beginning of a race against time.  It could easily take any officer five or more additional minutes—under the best of circumstances—to find and engage a single shooter.  If more than one is present, every calculation becomes far more difficult.  The process goes like this:

(1) Attack/Disbelief: The attack begins, but it takes time for school personnel to understand what is happening. Many people will simply freeze, unable/unwilling to believe they are actually in deadly danger.  In parts of the school only slightly distant from the immediate action, most people will remain entirely unaware of the attack. There is virtually never an immediate call to the police in the seconds following the initiation of an attack.

(2) Call/Organization: It will take time, usually several minutes at the least, for someone on site to make a call, for the police dispatcher to answer, assimilate the information, make a coherent radio call to officers, and continue to take information. At Sandy Hook, the first two steps took more than five minutes.  At Parkland, about the same amount of time. 

(3) Initial Response: This will depend entirely on how many officers are available, how far they are from the school, traffic patterns, weather conditions, and the quality and accuracy of the information the officers are receiving from their dispatcher. Often, that information is at least partially incorrect and out of date. A gunman may be reported at the front doors of a school, but he was actually there four minutes ago when the call was made, or the person calling was panicky and hard to understand, the call was garbled and he was actually at the back door.  Another important factor is the responding officer’s almost certain total lack of knowledge of the layout of the school. At Sandy Hook, this initial response took four minutes.  At Parkland, the first officers didn’t enter the school for eleven minutes, though they arrived within about four minutes.  By then, the killer had abandoned his rifle and fled.

(4) Organization At The Scene: Officers are now trained to immediately enter, find and assault any shooters, but not every officer everywhere, and at Sandy Hook the first officers were confronted by people outside the school that could have been involved in the shooting. They had to control and identify them before they could enter the building. This phase took ten minutes.  At Parkland, every police effort was made ineffective because the school security video was on a 20 minute delay(?!)—those reporting to the responding officers were describing activity and locations at least 20 minutes old—and the officers weren’t told about the delay until long after the killer fled.

(5) Entry And Search: Just entering a school accomplishes little. Officers still have to find the attackers, who could be anywhere, avoid being shot themselves, and stop the attackers, hopefully without collateral damage. Had the Sandy Hook attacker not killed himself at least five minutes earlier, this would have taken an additional two minutes or more, and cost more lives.  When the police entered at Parkland, the killer had already escaped five minutes earlier.

You had better believe in these days of the Ferguson Effect, police officers are very, very cautious about shooting anyone.  The idea of accidentally shooting a schoolchild is surely all but paralyzing.

All of this takes time, precious time, and while all of this is going on, people are dying. The study notes:

Multiple examples of active shooter incidents and the response time for law enforcement can conclusively deduce that the longer an event transpires, the more casualties will be incurred. Additionally, soft targets such as schools or other mass gatherings of people otherwise unable to defend themselves make a more enticing target. Additionally, the ability for first responders to arrive, organize, and begin addressing the issue almost always results in reacting to the damage already done.

This is unquestionably true, but is seldom stated in the media. What, then, can be done?

The increased likelihood of active shooter events has proven that even in areas with robust police and military presence, the ability for active shooters to inflict mass damage quickly is not preventable with external law enforcement or responders that must be called to the scene. This implies that readily available deterrents and responders, in the form of concealed carry personnel on scene have a greater ability to end an active shooter situation sooner than waiting for law enforcement to arrive. Much of this discussion focuses on select singular events. The situation becomes much more complicated when law enforcement officers are forced to deal with multiple shooters or multiple locations. As Frazzano, 2010 stated, ‘Though smaller jurisdictions might have special tactics law enforcement squads, those squads will not likely be able to deal with active shooter scenarios that include multiple shooters in multiple locations with their own-source resources.

So what works? Which of the scenarios were most effective in actually minimizing casualties?

As seen in Figure 18, the number of casualties in all other scenarios is less than that of the basic scenario. The comparison between having a resource officer and having teachers and staff with concealed weapons shows that a resource officer is able to decrease casualties and response time more effectively due to the resource officer being able to maneuver towards the threat while the teachers and staff remain static. The effectiveness is most improved, however, when both a resource officer and concealed carry personnel are present. Not surprisingly, increasing the percentage of concealed carry personnel improved the response time and decreased the number of casualties.

Since the basic scenario showed the highest number of casualties, the other scenarios should all be considered successful in minimizing the negative effect of active shooter phenomena. Having a resource officer on duty reduced casualties by 66.4% and response time by 59.5%. Having 5% of personnel carry a concealed weapon reduced casualties by 6.8% and response time by 5.4%. Increasing the percentage of personnel with concealed carry to 10% reduced casualties by a total of 23.2% and response time by 16.8%. Combining 5% concealed carry personnel with a resource officer reduced casualties by 68.9% and response time by 59.7%. The final and most successful scenario of 10% concealed carry personnel with a resource officer reduced casualties by 70.2% and response time by 62.7%.

None of this should be surprising to those open to logic and common sense. Active shooters in schools may be most effectively stopped, and casualties most effectively reduced, where there are more armed teachers and staff and a school resource officer.  They compliment, not replace, each other.  Based on my experience as a police officer and educator, I’ve no doubt the computer models give too much weight to a single school resource officer.  If that officer is off campus when an attack begins, they will likely have no effect at all, and in terms of ability, they may be no more effective than many teachers.  As I’ve also noted in this series, most schools have no full time resource officer, nor will they.  It’s just too expensive, and there is not nearly enough to do to keep an officer busy full time, particularly in elementary schools where children and teachers are most vulnerable. Sharing an officer among even two schools means they cannot be present at least 50% of the time in either school, and present only during normal school hours in any case.  The most cost-effective means of saving lives is allowing the arming as many willing teachers and staff as possible, and publicizing that fact without revealing details.

Circa 2020, many school districts, acting out of misplaced and rationally unsupportable anti-police animus, are eliminating all police presence on their campuses.  This reduces options to essentially two: schools are entirely unarmed, or teachers/staff are allowed to carry concealed handguns.  In the former situation, students and staff have no protection at all.  In the latter, they do.  We already know how long it will take the police to arrive, orient, and potentially stop an attacker.  We also know, that with a very small number of exceptions, the police have had no role in stopping school attacks.  It must be presumed the police will not be able to save lives, but will be reduced to rendering first aid, guarding the crime scene, and investigating after the fact.  I’m not denigrating the police, who would absolutely love to stop a school attacker.  I’m merely pointing out the realities of time, distance and the fog of combat.

Once again, no teacher should ever be required to carry arms.  It must be voluntary.

The Purdue study does not measure the deterrent effect of armed staff–the presence of armed staff being well publicized–however, the reality that such attacks take place almost exclusively in gun free zones powerfully suggests that disarmament, particularly advertised disarmament, encourages attacks. Attackers are only deterred when they know an armed response awaits them at a potential target.

In the next installment of this series, which I’ll post next Tuesday, I’ll explain the federal law related to gun-free school zones, and ask and answer several pertinent questions.  It is my hope America won’t have to suffer a Beslan-like attack–or many such attacks–Newtown and Parkland were more than enough–before we implement the unquestionably most effective means of deterring and stopping those who would harm our children.  Never has the danger been greater.

I hope to see you next week.