You’re right that we need to fix the areas that broke down. But we also have to harden access and have enough armed staff, be that specially trained teachers like they have in Argyle Texas, or paid armed officers, there has to be enough armed people that at least one of them can get to every part of the building in 2 minutes or less. We will not always have the red flags like this time so just fixing where the red flags were missed or ignored will not fix the problem.
Clearly, LE failed at every level in this incident. And having armed adults on site is similarly useless unless they have compelling motivation to neutralize the threat.
There is also serious doubt that even armed teachers would have the requisite temperament and motivation to “run to the sound of the guns” when the time comes. If LE won’t respond without overwhelming superiority, why would anyone expect an English teacher to do better?
For all the prattle about “community involvement” and security costs it seems obvious to me if ANYONE were putting the safety of the students first they would be suggesting REAL community involvement by training armed parents to volunteer their off time to provide security.
NO ONE is going to have higher motivation to neutralize threats than the student’s own parents.
Furthermore, because such security would be on a voluntary basis an armed aggressor wouldn’t know whether they were facing one armed opponent, or a dozen.
OK, so the Parkland High School. Five acre campus. A dozen buildings. Three thousand students. How many armed guards do you figure they will need?