Posted on 12/15/2012 6:37:47 AM PST by marktwain
Imagine that you ran a school district, and some rich foundation, worried about school shootings, gave you the following offer: We’ll hire armed security guards for you, who could try to do something about the school shooter. These aren’t going to be highly trained police officers, just typical security guards, given some modest training and subjected to basic background checks. It’s not like they’re highly skilled; security guards rarely are. But they have a basic understanding of how to shoot, and when to shoot.
They wouldn’t deal with ordinary trespassing, vandalism, and the like, nor would they be at all guaranteed to be effective in the event of a school shooting (who can offer such a guarantee?). But they’d provide someone on the ground who could try to interrupt a killing spree. And the foundation is paying, so it’s virtually no cost to the district. Would you say yes?
I imagine that you probably would. You probably wouldn’t much worry, for instance, that the guard would go crazy and himself start shooting — theoretically possible, to be sure, but unlikely. You’d figure that someone who can defend the school with a gun during an attack (as opposed to the police, who will come in many precious minutes after the attack begins) is better than no-one.
Nor would you object in principles about there being a gun in school, since it’s in the right hands. Just like people who have money often to pay for armed neighborhood-wide security patrols, and don’t insist on the unarmed kind or no patrol at all, you’d probably think that this free security guard would probably be helpful.
But wait! The foundation has just learned that its investment portfolio has done very badly, and the grant doesn’t go through. But someone else suggests: Instead of hiring special-purpose security guards, why not take some of your existing employees — teachers, administrators, and the like — and offer them a deal: They’d go through some modest training and subjected to basic background checks, and in exchange they’d be given the right to carry the same guns that the security guards would have had.
Indeed, this way you could have not just one security guard but several (if several staff members sign up). And you might get people to do this even without paying them, since they might value the ability to defend themselves and to not be sitting ducks should the worst happen. (If there’s some union contract or labor law that precludes that, that can of course be changed, if people think this is a good idea.) Maybe Assistant Principal Joel Myrick, who confronted the Pearl, Mississippi high school shooter with a gun, after Myrick went to the car to get it, might have participated in such a program if it had existed, and had let him keep the gun in school.
And no need to call the licenses given to those who participate in the program “concealed carry” licenses, just in case some parents and others don’t like the concept. Just call them “volunteer security guard” licenses, though you might expect that most people who sign up for this will also have licenses to concealed carry on the street. Of course, if a killer does show up, maybe some of these volunteer security guards will just cower in the corner rather than trying to defend the students, or attack the killer. But it seems more likely that someone will confront and try to stop the killer if that someone is armed then if that person is disarmed.
What’s your answer to that? Is there some reason why the armed security guard is safe and helpful, but the armed teacher, administrator, or staffer — er, the teacher with a volunteer security guard license — would be useless and a menace?
I like your idea, it’s a shame we have to be sneaks about it, but as the saying goes, “better judged by 12 than carried by 6.” I doubt given the situation, no jury would convict anybody protecting the kids.
Make the kids wear bullet proof vests and helmets. Lock the classroom door.
I bet you would be one of those that would let the kids play football also.
Let’s add some historical data to this thought experiment.
In Washington DC EVERY public high school had a JROTC corps of very size, up until some time in the late sixties or early seventies when the JROTC program was abandoned.
EVERY DC public HS had an JROTC armory.
These armories stored M1 rifles lacking only a firing pin. They also stored demo and training 1911A pistols, BARs, M1 carbines, and a few other weapons I can’t recall at the moment.
Again lacking only a firing pin.
Every DC public HS had a JROTC rifle team which stored its .22 cal target rifles in the same armory in rifle safes as opposed to the lockable open wood racks for the M1s.
While in uniform Cadet officers and Sgt Majors carried US Army dress sabers. Our drill teams mounted chromed bayonets on their M1s.
By the early sixties only two public high schools had white student majority populations, yet there were NO shootings of any kind much less stabbings employing any of the JROTC weapons. In fact I don’t recall any one brandishing an exposed knife blade during a school fight. And plenty of us young bucks carried pocket knives daily.
The only one event causing concern came about when a new foreign student fearing a tardy citation chose to store his M1 in his hall locker rather than be late for his next class after drill. Within minutes of the regular rifle count before armory lock-up, the student whose rifle was missing was identified. In the meantime male faculty members and cadet officers had manned all the exits. The offender was lead to his locker by the principal and the reg Army JROTC advisor, a major, to recover the M1. The culprit was detained pending arrival of his father and expelled from school.
So what changes occurred between then and now?
It’ll never happen. There is a basic flaw in your premise: School administrators these days aren’t as interested in childrens’ safety as they are in feeling good about their own efforts. They’ll never admit they’ve been approaching this thing from entirely the wrong direction.
This doesn’t include just the issue we have here of the massacre. They still persist in implementing failed teaching policies like Whole Word learning of reading, as opposed to Phonics.
This includes administrators of many private schools.
The flaw is overwhelming because the liberals own and dominate the school system, of course that meant the public schools, but for a private school its another matter.
We need to overhaul, boot out the gun free communists or just keep our children out of the propaganda centers. Its solely because of the liberals we have these incidents. They have invaded every aspect of our life, and they always fail taking others down with them.
I broke my arm playing neighborhood pickup football in someone's front yard as a 10-yr. old. My interest in the game forever waned.
Uh, the army uses M-16s?
Common sense; therefore liberals will howl and protest that it won't work.
Imagine the country schoolhouse when this nation was a frontier west of the Mississippi. There had to be a rifle in the corner of the schoolhouse in case of bears, mountain lions, deadly snakes or bandits. Most boys and many girls over the age of 6 could shoot. Common sense.
Today, our bandits are the mentally ill or they are jihadists (same thing). Teachers and staff just need to keep a gun handy in case one comes around. Parents need to insist on it.
Homeland security has already bought up all the ammo schools would need for the next 1,000 years.
Not just guns in their lockers but guns in their unlocked vehicles in the school parking lot. There was hardly a guy sitting at his desk who didn’t have a knife in his boot.
It was maybe 8 years ago that I found a .22 shell in the boys’ restroom and the principal didn’t bat an eye. Just a couple years ago, many kids brought pictures to school of the deer and turkey they shot the evening before. I’m afraid, even pictures wouldn’t be tolerated today.
People protested because they couldn't get in the swimming pool at Glen Echo. /sarcasm
Terrorists – coming to a school near you
Police ill-equipped to defend against an American Beslan
WND
Published: 04/02/2007 at 1:00 AM
Note: Killology Research Group website does not seem to still be actively updated.
Mass Slaughter In Our Schools: The Terrorists' Chilling Plan?
By Chuck Remsberg
Senior PoliceOne Contributor
School Safety Notes and Articles About School Safety by Col. Grossman
Preventing School Violence
School Shooting Contingency Plans & Considerations
”Preparing for School Attacks" published in The Police Marksman
School Safety Notes, Articles, And Links About School Safety by Other Authors
Rise in 'shool terror attacks' - New Important Article
A School Lockdown/Emergency Drill Success Story
Rapid Response/Active Shooter Lesson Plan
Safe 2 Tell
If I were a teacher, I’d have a gun stached in my classroom. No one would know. We, in my classroom, would not be slaughtered by a gunman who needs to enter the door of my classroom - ever. Approach my door during a situation like this, and bam! Open the door, bam, bam. Thank God, I can shoot. Thank God I have the right to self defense, but if I did not, I still would not be with children under my care and without deadly self defense.
Liberals lie. The shooter was legally denied gun ownership. If they manage to ban guns or make self defense criminal, we will have an even bigger slaughter in this country. Look to Mexico for our future if Liberals win this “moral of the story” struggle. We will be slaughtered by the sons of Obama’s liberalism.
Wonder how our chicken new world would view the legend of Davy Crockett, born on a Tennessee mountain, who “killed himself a bear” as a toddler of 3? They wouldn’t get over themselves whether to be more alarmed at the boy, the bear, or the gun. The boy himself probably thinking “this is cool: that’s how you turn this monster beast into a bearskin rug!” Boys will be boys (and girls girls) if you give them the right leadership and half a chance.
My students have always thought it was great. But how they can get clear up to jr high age and not see it is beyond me.
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