Posted on 12/25/2012 11:01:02 AM PST by raptor22
School Safety: Critics of the National Rifle Association's call for armed security guards at our schools respond that one famous school did have a sheriff's deputy on scene. But without him, the toll would have been much worse.
After remaining silent on the mass shooting at Sandy Hook, the NRA's Wayne LaPierre held a press conference Friday to condemn another tragedy in a gun-free zone and to advocate the placement of armed security guards at our schools as is done at airports, banks and other public venues.
"It's now time for us to assume responsibility for our schools," he said. "The only way to stop a monster from killing our kids is to be permanently involved and invested in a plan of absolute protection."
LaPierre called for a national school security plan, including an appropriation from Congress for armed guards in every school. "The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun," he said.
As we have pointed out, the shooter at the theater in Aurora, Colo., had other theaters between his home and his ultimate target that he could have chosen. Yet, the one he picked was the one that publicly proclaimed itself gun-free.
We've also observed that in other school shooting incidents, such as at a high school in Pearl, Miss., the shooter's spree was cut short by the presence of an armed citizen able to shoot back.
Yes, the critics respond, and there was an armed security guard at Columbine High School in 1999. Yet, 12 students and a teacher were killed by two armed intruders, as if that disqualified the solution of placing armed guards, possibly unemployed army veterans, at each of our nation's 100,000-plus schools.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.investors.com ...
In related news...
Israel Rejects NRA’s Guns-In-Schools Claim
http://matzav.com/israel-rejects-nras-guns-in-schools-claim
Israel’s policy on issuing guns is restrictive, and armed guards at its schools are meant to stop terrorists, not crazed or disgruntled gunmen, experts said Monday, rejecting claims by America’s top gun lobby that Israel serves as proof for its philosophy that the U.S. needs more weapons, not fewer.
Far from the image of a heavily armed population where ordinary people have their own arsenals to repel attackers, Israel allows its people to acquire firearms only if they can prove their professions or places of residence put them in danger. The country relies on its security services, not armed citizens, to prevent terror attacks.
Though military service in Israel is compulsory, routine familiarity with weapons does not carry over into civilian life. Israel has far fewer private weapons per capita than the U.S., and while there have been gangster shootouts on the streets from time to time, gun rampages outside the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are unheard of.
The National Rifle Association responded to the Dec. 14 killing of 20 first-graders and six adults at a Connecticut elementary school by resisting calls for tighter gun control and calling for armed guards and police at schools. On Sunday, the lobby’s chief executive, Wayne LaPierre, invoked his perception of the Israeli school security system to back his proposal.
“Israel had a whole lot of school shootings until they did one thing: They said, ‘We’re going to stop it,’ and they put armed security in every school and they have not had a problem since then,” LaPierre said on the NBC News show “Meet the Press.”
Israel never had “a whole lot of school shootings.” Authorities could only recall two in the past four decades.
In 1974, 22 children and three adults were killed in a Palestinian attack on an elementary school in Maalot, near the border with Lebanon. The attackers’ goal was to take the children hostage and trade them for imprisoned militants.
In 2008, another Palestinian assailant killed eight young people, most of them teens, at a nighttime study session at a Jewish religious seminary in Jerusalem. An off-duty soldier who happened to be in the area killed the attacker with his personal firearm.
Israel didn’t mandate armed guards at the entrances to all schools until 1995, the Education Ministry said - more than two decades after the Maalot attack and two years after a Palestinian militant wounded five pupils and their principal in a knifing at a Jerusalem school.
Israel’s lightly armed school guards are not the first or the last line of defense. They are backed up by special police forces on motorcycles that can be on the scene within minutes - again bringing out the main, but not the only, difference between the two systems.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor spelled it out.
“We’re fighting terrorism, which comes under very specific geopolitical and military circumstances. This is not something that compares with the situation in the U.S,” Palmor said.
Because it is aimed at preventing terror attacks, Israel’s school security system is part of a multi-layered defense strategy that focuses on prevention and doesn’t depend on a guy at a gate with a gun.
Intelligence gathering inside Palestinian territories, a large military force inside the West Bank and a barrier of towering concrete slabs and electronic fencing along and inside the West Bank provide the first line of defense.
Guards are stationed not just at schools, but at many other public facilities, including bus and train stations, parking lots, malls and restaurants.
“There are other measures of prevention of an attack taking place, which are carried out 24 hours a day, seven days a week, all over the country,” police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said. Many are not for public knowledge.
Gun lobbyists who might think Israel hands out guns freely to keep its citizens safe might be less enamored of Israel’s actual gun laws, which are much stricter than those in the U.S. For one thing, notes Yakov Amit, head of the firearms licensing department at the Ministry of Public Security, Israeli law does not guarantee the right to bear arms as the U.S. Constitution does.
“The policy in Israel is restrictive,” he said.
The critics who complain that guards won’t work are actually ghouls who want more school children murdered. Never forget that Chris Christie was trashing the idea as he boarded his own New Jersey State Police helicopter: http://s.wsj.net/public/resources/images/OB-OD249_christ_E_20110601152712.jpg
Ummm. Duh? How do they differentiate between the two?
In the meantime, schools who are aware of this and do nothing should be held responsible for not enacting reasonable precautions against disaster. They and the state have assumed responsibility for the safety of the children entrusted to their care.
The essence of the second amendment is the distribution of power to the people to ward off tyrants. The rational goal of the gun grabbers is to disarm the citizens so the elite can rule without the consent of the governed.
The NRA should make a point of pointing out the worldwide historical value of these two points. Show the hypocrisy of the left.
No amount of staffing of armed guards is going to prevent the slaughter of children by lunatics. They will just include them in their plans. It's a dumb proposition. It is OK to point out that the elite often use body guards or carry themselves, but it's worth noting the vast number of victims are no t the political or cultural elite. Also harping upon hunter's rights just imposes the image of Bambi's mothers' killer. Hunting is not t he reason for the second amendment. Keeping the despot at bay is the single purpose.
I found out yesterday from my Grandson that they have had an armed guard at their school for a couple of years now. And they train for lockdown situations.
Ok, so if it’s to stop a terrorist and not a crazed gunman, that’s completely different..../sarc.
(What BIZARRO world do we live in now?????)
First they have this gun free zone, secondly you have to sign in when you enter a school building and finally they have phone lists where someone contacts the first name and then they contact two or three others and so on down the line. What more can a school do to protect their students? (yes, sarc)
You noticed that, too! LOL!
Gardner was off campus eating lunch with the school narc at the time.
Gardner said he got a call from a custodian that he was needed in the school's back parking lot. A few minutes later, he encountered Harris, and the two exchanged gunfire. The exchange with Harris lasted for an extended period of time, during which Harris' gun jammed.
Gardner fired four rounds from his Sig Sauer .45 from a distance of 60-70 yards, none of which hit Harris who then retreated inside the school. Gardner did not pursue the shooter. It should also be noted that Gardner was not wearing his prescription glasses when he exchanged fire with Harris.
I CA in 1989, a madman used an SKS to kill kids on the playground. While he did enter school grounds, he could just as easily have done this from outside the property.
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Terrorists yell Allah Akhbar and carry AK-47s and disgruntled gunmen are quiet and carry Bushmasters, duh.
I didn't know either until after this latest shooting that armed SROs are common in a lot of schools. Clinton asked for another round in 2000.
Flashback: Clinton Requests $60 Million to Put Cops in Schools
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Journalism/2012/12/21/Flashback-Clinton-Cops-in-Schools
Evidently liberals don't have a problem with it if suggested by a liberal. They took them out of schools in in upstate NY in 2010.
Can you imagine the line of thought that must go through a liberal’s head at the after action review to consider lessons learned from Columbine...
“Holy crap, my school needs a phone tree ASAP!! I am awesome!”
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