Monday, December 31, 2012
Arming School Staff--an Addendum
The first ten minutes are critical to survival!
Screaming deniers are emotionally driven in their unthinking rejection of a few armed school staff per school. They are simply ignoring the facts of the crazed shooter situation.
1. The police are at least 10 to 15 minutes away after being alerted from any school, most of the time.
2. This means that a shooter has all the time he needs to massacre many defenseless children and school staff virtually unopposed.
3. Shooters are smart enough to remain some 10 or 15 yards away from their targets, thus avoiding being rushed by the staff or students. Rushing the shooter only hastens their deaths. A smart shooter would hold one gun with several rounds while he reloads his other guns just to thwart rushers.
4. Virginia recognizes this problem of protection as well as other unruly situations in middle and high schools by providing a law officer for the schools, some 500 or more of them, but, only 27% of the law officers are in grade schools.
5. There are three options available in Virginia to increase protection of students and staff: (1) Place law officers in all grade schools; (2) Arm school staff (with proper training and vetting); and, (3) Do both. This could be an individual school’s choice depending on the situation, but the better choice is to do both.
6. The reason that doing both, assigning a law officer and one or more staff to the schools, is obvious--they back up each other in the event of an attack, especially if the shooter is familiar with the school and goes for the law officer first. But the shooter would be faced with an unknown number of armed staff fully alerted by his actions in breaking into the school and shooting at the law officer.
7. Only school staff that volunteer to be armed and trained would be allowed to carry their weapons in the school. The training of staff would have to cover safety, accurate shooting, and shooting under combat pressure, plus training in the school itself by professionals to ensure that the individuals are qualified to handle a weapon.
Further, they should be vetted for their ability to cope with the pressure situations that may arise; this training also done by professionals. Only after they satisfy the professionals would they be allowed to carry their weapons in school. Drills in the schools themselves that expose the possible situations to the staff and show them the right responses in their particular school would better ensure that the staff response to a threat would be instantaneous and appropriate.
8. The least expensive solution is to arm and thoroughly train one or more staff. The staff volunteers could be required to purchase their own weapons and ammunition, but their training should be paid for. In the event that no staff members qualify and pass the testing, the only remaining choice is to provide a law officer.
Training is the key to this approach, and there are quite a number of establishments that offer such courses (for a fee, of course). Trained professionals are eminently capable of sorting out the individuals capable of being armed from those that would represent a problem if armed. Thanks to our several wars in the past ten years we have a sterling supply of combat- experienced and professional veterans to turn to for the training.
The first ten minutes are critical to survival!
Screaming deniers are emotionally driven in their unthinking rejection of a few armed school staff per school. They are simply ignoring the facts of the crazed shooter situation.
1. The police are at least 10 to 15 minutes away after being alerted from any school, most of the time.
2. This means that a shooter has all the time he needs to massacre many defenseless children and school staff virtually unopposed.
3. Shooters are smart enough to remain some 10 or 15 yards away from their targets, thus avoiding being rushed by the staff or students. Rushing the shooter only hastens their deaths. A smart shooter would hold one gun with several rounds while he reloads his other guns just to thwart rushers.
4. Virginia recognizes this problem of protection as well as other unruly situations in middle and high schools by providing a law officer for the schools, some 500 or more of them, but, only 27% of the law officers are in grade schools.
5. There are three options available in Virginia to increase protection of students and staff: (1) Place law officers in all grade schools; (2) Arm school staff (with proper training and vetting); and, (3) Do both. This could be an individual school’s choice depending on the situation, but the better choice is to do both.
6. The reason that doing both, assigning a law officer and one or more staff to the schools, is obvious--they back up each other in the event of an attack, especially if the shooter is familiar with the school and goes for the law officer first. But the shooter would be faced with an unknown number of armed staff fully alerted by his actions in breaking into the school and shooting at the law officer.
7. Only school staff that volunteer to be armed and trained would be allowed to carry their weapons in the school. The training of staff would have to cover safety, accurate shooting, and shooting under combat pressure, plus training in the school itself by professionals to ensure that the individuals are qualified to handle a weapon.
Further, they should be vetted for their ability to cope with the pressure situations that may arise; this training also done by professionals. Only after they satisfy the professionals would they be allowed to carry their weapons in school. Drills in the schools themselves that expose the possible situations to the staff and show them the right responses in their particular school would better ensure that the staff response to a threat would be instantaneous and appropriate.
8. The least expensive solution is to arm and thoroughly train one or more staff. The staff volunteers could be required to purchase their own weapons and ammunition, but their training should be paid for. In the event that no staff members qualify and pass the testing, the only remaining choice is to provide a law officer.
Training is the key to this approach, and there are quite a number of establishments that offer such courses (for a fee, of course). Trained professionals are eminently capable of sorting out the individuals capable of being armed from those that would represent a problem if armed. Thanks to our several wars in the past ten years we have a sterling supply of combat- experienced and professional veterans to turn to for the training.
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