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Benjamin Franklin

“Those who would give up essential liberty in exchange for a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

Benjamin Franklin

The murders in Newtown, CT, Parkland, FL, Sante Fe, TX, Uvalde, TX and elsewhere have reignited the contrived controversy over school shootings.  I say contrived because, thankfully, and despite what the media and anti-liberty/gun cracktivists—I know: one-in-the-same–would have us believe, mass shootings are not increasing in frequency; their numbers remain minute, particularly for schools that empower staff to carry concealed weapons:

Even National Public Radio, an outlet not historically fair to gun owners, the Second Amendment, and realistic means of protecting children and teachers, discovered statistics about the numbers of supposed schools shootings, whether from government or anti-liberty/gun banning organizations, are wildly, falsely exaggerated. 

Leftists, despite incontrovertible evidence their simplistic and freedom-destroying solutions—gun bans, “universal background checks,” closing the nonexistent “gun show loophole,” “red flag” laws, magazine capacity bans, “assault weapon” bans and confiscation and “gun free” school zones—do not work, they can’t possibly work–never cease pushing them.  They patiently wait and renew their demands whenever a mass murder occurs, hoping to push over-reaching and ineffective legislation through the Congress while emotion might overpower reason. Within 24 hours of two California Deputy Sheriffs being ambushed and gravely wounded, Joe Biden pushed for gun control, citing weapons and magazines not used in that attack:

“What will it take,” they angrily and emotionally demand, “for us to pass common sense gun legislation?”  Fortunately, hopefully, it will take a nation willing to disregard fact and logic, and willing to abandon their fundamental rights in exchange for ephemeral promises of safety.  We’re not there yet, and no one should mistake willingness to temporarily cooperate in a pandemic—particularly after they’ve learned it was unnecessary and destructive–with willingness to eternally surrender fundamental liberties.

On second thought, such legislation is ineffective only in that it will do nothing at all to prevent school shootings, and even less to stop killers motivated to murder innocents in the future.  Such legislation is effective only in limiting and hampering law-abiding American’s right to self-defense, and in putting even more power in the hands of Federal politicians and bureaucrats protected by taxpayer paid armed security, but desperate to deny the same protection to those they believe themselves uniquely suited to rule.

The first three installments of this series (enter “School Attacks 2022” into the SMM home page search bar) outlined an unprecedented, dangerous and very real issue facing American schools today: attacks by active shooters, whether disaffected or deranged citizens—student or adult–-or Islamic terrorists, foreign or domestic.  Such attacks are rare, but there is, virtually everywhere, nothing deterring or stopping them.  With Joe Biden’s disgraceful and dangerous flight from Afghanistan, the threat of terrorist attacks on American soil has greatly increased.  Our wide-open southern border is an invitation to terrorists, and schools have always been among terrorist’s favored soft targets.  This article and the next will deal primarily with truly effective solutions, and with commonly raised objections to the only truly effective way to protect children and school staff when a school attack occurs.

QUESTIONS, ANSWERS AND SOLUTIONS, PART 1:

There is only one simple update in school policy that can change American schools, as has been the case in Israel, from soft to hard–-or at the very least harder–-targets: allow willing teachers and other school staff to carry concealed handguns.

This policy can be implemented at little or no cost to taxpayers, and mechanisms, both legal and practical, for its implementation are already in place.

In the last few years, more Americans than ever before have become first-time gun owners:

The National Shooting Sports Foundation® (NSSF®), the firearm industry trade association, surveyed firearm retailers recently and estimates that over 3.2 million people purchased a firearm for the first time during the first half of 2021 [the trend continued through 2021 and continues in 2022].

Among them are surely teachers and other school staff, adding to the already substantial number of Americans who would provide a ready, low or no cost, legion of deterrence and protection for our schools.

Circa 2022, every state allows its citizens–at least on paper–some degree of concealed carry. Most are “shall issue” states; qualified citizens must be issued a license.  In the Bruen Decision, decided in June, 2022, the Supreme Court ruled the Second Amendment does acknowledge the individual right not only to keep firearms at home, but to carry them for self-defense in public.  Most states have already altered their concealed carry laws to reflect that reality, though a few, such as California and New York, continue to obstinately make concealed carry as difficult as they can.

However, circa September, 2022, 24 states: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas,  Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, West Virginia and Wyoming, allow any law abiding citizen not otherwise disqualified by mental illness or past criminal status––to carry a concealed handgun with no state testing or licensing. This is known as “constitutional carry.” Many of the residents of those states do obtain a license so they can enjoy reciprocity with neighboring states.  Additional states are in some part of the process of introducing or passing constitutional carry, though it’s a near certainty blue states will not.

These laws have been a uniform success in that every state that has passed a shall-issue concealed carry law has seen reductions in violent crime, mass shootings, and no corresponding increase in shooting incidents.  The kinds of wild-west shootouts anti-liberty activists predicted would break out at the slightest provocation have universally failed to materialize.  Firearm accidents of all kinds have been dramatically declining for a century, due to the efforts of the NRA and gun owners.

The Supreme Court in Heller, which was again confirmed in Bruen, noted the basis for the Second Amendment was the fundamental, unalienable right of self-defense.  If self-defense applies only within the home or on one’s property, then only there does their life have value.  They have no right—only a state defined, granted and rescinded privilege–to protect it elsewhere, including on school property.  They are, in essence, subjects, not free men.  The state decides whose life has value, and where.  At the same time, the Court noted that states retain a compelling governmental interest in prohibiting weapons to convicted felons, the mentally ill, and in “special” places, though the exact limits of this interest remain unclear

credit: abcnews

For reasons having little to do with rational thought, and less to do with protecting the lives of children, schools have traditionally been thought to be places where guns ought to be banned, even for those who would protect them.

Those licensed to carry concealed weapons are uncommonly law abiding, and only a tiny percentage (much less than a single percent) have had their licenses suspended. Such suspensions are almost always for technical violations of the law such as unintentionally carrying a handgun into a prohibited area. Concealed carry has been so universally successful and beneficial no repeal legislation has been seriously considered, let alone passed, in any adopting state, rather the right has been expanded through Constitutional Carry.

Citizens, including teachers, may carry concealed weapons on school grounds in as many as 23 states, subject to various restrictions.  Considering the heated nature of debate on this issue, it’s rather hard to find absolutely definitive numbers.

In Utah, more or less unrestricted carry has been the rule for many years, and as everywhere else, the horrors predicted for such carry just haven’t happened. Texas, for example, allows carry in K-12 schools with the written permission of school authorities, though relatively few K-12 Texas schools have been so fortunate. On September 1 of 2017, a new law allowed all Texas teachers to keep firearms locked in their vehicles on school property, a good step, but still far from what is safe effective and necessary.

Since 2016, students and teachers have been able to carry concealed weapons on the campuses of Texas colleges. As always, all manner of horrors were predicted, and one professor retired in protest of the new law, but he was already in the process of retiring, rendering his noble sacrifice something less than noble or sacrificial. Protests at the University of Texas in Austin have become, in the best Austin tradition—weird–as students have begun to dangle dildos from their backpacks as a reminder some students might be carrying concealed weapons. I remain unsure of the connection.  Perhaps they think if too many people carry dildos, one of them is bound to go off?  Or carrying visible dildos is a symbolic protest, a leftist narrative of the mythical phallic symbolism of male privileged gun ownership, sort of a double secret phallic symbolism/dog whistle?

Universal experience with concealed carry on school grounds reveals no one is endangered by the law-abiding, and the incidence of violent crime on campus decreases. It should be remembered, however, public schools, and particularly colleges, are notoriously reluctant to admit violent crime occurs at all, such admissions tending to shatter Democrat/Socialist/Communist articles of faith and notions of “safety” based on D/S/C narratives and feelings rather than rational planning and policy.

Q:  SCHOOLS ARE GUN-FREE ZONES.  WON’T GUNS MAKE SCHOOLS MORE DANGEROUS?

Gun free zones?  Only for those that obey the law and are consequentially, no threat.  “Gun free zones” did not stop the Columbine killers, the Newtown killer, the Parkland killer, the Santa Fe killer or the Uvalde killer, or any other maniac intent on harming students and staff, nor will it stop those intent on harm in the future.  Such laws ensure only schools are easy targets, victim disarmament zones, special preserves where shooters can be assured they don’t have to worry about an armed response, and will have ample time to kill before the police can possibly arrive.  A gun-free zone sign in front of a school provides, for some, a false sense of security of the cruelest kind.  That kind of illusory security is comforting to killers who may be certain their victims will be unarmed and unable to resist them.

As I noted in the first article of this series, the state of the art in contemporary school “safety” consists primarily of running, hiding, locking classroom doors, and as a last resort, making a mass, suicidal charge at armed gunmen while throwing things at them.  Sadly, most policies don’t encompass the final option, which, if all that remains is hiding and waiting to be murdered, is a practically and morally superior—if ineffective–option.

But what happens if a killer attacks school children in a sports stadium, while they are waiting outdoors for a bus, or on a playground?  Behind which doors will children hide then? Where will they run?  Where can they hide?

What rational parent would prefer their child engage in a last-ditch rush against an armed, murderous gunman?  Few are comfortable with the idea of prominently posting a sign in front of their home advertising the fact they are unarmed.  Yet the same people are somehow comforted to see essentially the same sign in front of their children’s school.

Signs and laws confer no protection. They suggest and provide for only the possibility of punishment after a violation of the law restricting guns on school property, after the maimed, and the bodies of the dead, have been removed.  For people planning the mass murder of children, and death by suicide—by their own hand or the hands of the police–-no sign, no pitiful, feel good/virtuous law, can possibly be a deterrent.  In many large cities, prosecutors refuse to prosecute crime, particularly violent crime.  What deters monsters there?

The monsters threatening our children don’t play by American criminal justice system rules.  Boldly standing ready to prosecute school murderers, who commonly kill themselves during their attacks, for gun law violations is an exercise in futility and will be no comfort to surviving family members.  This is particularly true of the Uvalde precedent of more than 300 police officers who stood by and did nothing for 77 minutes while children and teachers were murdered.  Only the affirmative acts of those prepared to effectively defend themselves and innocent school children when and where attacks occur offer real protection

Gun Free zones are dangerous, but only to those forced to be disarmed within their boundaries.

It’s true police officers love to catch really bad guys, however, post-Ferguson, post the 2020 “summer of love,” Baltimore, Minneapolis, Portland, Seattle and other pubic safety disasters, there is significant evidence the police are becoming very, very cautious and reluctant to engage in potentially dangerous confrontations. The “Ferguson Effect” is operative across the nation, forcing officers to avoid confrontation whenever possible. Even courageous and diligent officers have no legal obligation to protect any individual citizen. 

On June 27, 2005 the U.S. Supreme Court announced its decision in Castle Rock v. Gonzalez.  In this case, the estranged husband of Gonzales defied a restraining order and kidnapped their three daughters, ages 7-10.  Over many hours, the police were repeatedly called, even begged to act.  Mrs. Gonzales eventually went to the police station and begged for help, but they did nothing.  Not long after her last, in-person appeal for help, Gonzales’ husband committed suicide by cop by firing on the police station.  Shortly thereafter, his three daughters were found, dead, in his nearby pickup truck.  He murdered them before attacking the police station.

Gonzales sued, and the Supreme Court affirmed decades of lower court precedence in holding that the police have a duty only to deter and investigate crime for the public at large, but not for any individual; the police could not be held liable even though they did nothing to assist Gonzales despite her repeated, obviously valid and pitiful pleas for help.

This might seem outrageous, but it is rational and necessary.  Most would be amazed, even shocked, to learn how few officers are patrolling their community at any time of the day or night.  It is impossible for the police to guarantee protection to any individual, and if they could be successfully sued for failing to provide such protection, what city could possibly afford a police force?  Who would become a police officer knowing they’d spend every day and every dime fending off lawsuits?

Police agencies are always understaffed.  As a consequence, they staff their shifts with the most officers when most are required: evenings in general and Friday and Saturday nights in particular.  Police agencies virtually always have the fewest officers working during weekday shifts when school is in session.

The police, pre-Ferguson Effect, loved to catch bad guys in the act, and still would love nothing more than to stop school shooters, but the police are primarily reactive rather than proactive.  There aren’t many of them—fewer still in these “defund the police” days of rage and lunacy–and they’re not well prepared to deal, in terms of weapons, training or procedure, with actual terrorism, which employs military methods, weapons, tactics and objectives.  By the time a police officer is notified of a school shooting, students and staff will already be wounded and dead, and more will die as the police rush to the school.  It is true more police agencies are changing their response models and training regarding school shootings, but such things take many years to fully implement, if a given local law enforcement agency is implementing them at all, and training and policy can’t warp time or shorten distances.  Even the best policies don’t matter if the police won’t act.

Polluck has become an advocate for real school safety, eschewing reflexive anti-liberty/gun rhetoric

In the Parkland shooting, multiple officers were present, but they did not enter the building where the shooting was occurring—it was an enormous campus with multiple, widely separated buildings–until it was too late.  The on-campus school liaison officer arrived at the building about two minutes after the first shots were fired, but apparently paralyzed by fear, did not enter and warned others not to approach the building.  The first officers entered the building about 11 minutes after the attack began, but the shooter abandoned his weapon and left the building some five minutes earlier.  His attack lasted only about six minutes.  The responding officers, not realizing school security video was on a 20 minute delay, were unsurprisingly slow in responding to the wounded, some of who were shot though locked classroom doors.

Of three unarmed coach/security officers in the involved building, one tried to attack the shooter and was killed.  Two followed the contemporary rules of school safety and hid. They survived, but were later fired. One somehow doubts the family of the dead coach is glad he was forcibly unarmed.  He was proclaimed a hero.  One suspects his family would rather have him alive.

We all, of course, know of the Uvalde disaster.  There, a local police officer was called by his teacher wife.  She told him she’d been shot.  He rushed to the school, but as with everyone else that day, was forcibly removed, not allowed to save their loved ones.  It took so long to stop the killer, she bled out and died.

We are solely responsible for our safety and that of our families. We always have been; we always will be.

No matter how well trained and prepared responding police officers might be, the immutable issues that matter are time and distance.  The police in Newtown, Connecticut took only about nine minutes from the beginning of the attack to arrive at the school, but much longer to enter the building. By the time they did, the killer had been long dead by his own hand and everyone he chose to kill was dying or dead. The first officers at Uvalde arrived within four minutes, but did nothing for more than an hour.  Unless officers are present–-within handgun range of the shooters–-when an attack begins, many children and teachers will die before they can arrive and more will die before they can find the shooter(s).  In the history of American school shootings, police officers have rarely had any effect on the outcome.

NOTE:  I’ll repeat throughout this series I am not denigrating the police, who—we pray Uvalde was a bizarre, non-repeating exception–would love to stop a school shooter in the act, or even before they can act. However, the realities of very few police officers—particularly in this time of police hatred and defunding—and the realities of time and distance make it very unlikely they can ever be of any real help.

When a school attack occurs, some number of students and teachers will die unless their school can answer this question about their preparations with more than security theater: what are school personnel prepared and able to do when and where an attack occurs?

The next installment of this series, to be posted next Tuesday, will pose and answer additional pertinent questions. I hope to see you then, gentle readers.