By Chris Wagoner:
School shootings have been brought to the forefront by all of their media coverage, and for good reason, the victims are children. Sadly, the school location does not matter, it can happen anywhere. So why do the bad guys pick schools? In interviews with many of the school shooters, it was found that they knew they had a lot of people in a confined area and that no one would be armed. In other words, a school is an easy and target rich environment where they were not likely to encounter armed resistance.
Some of the school districts and law enforcement agencies across the country have started a program, putting a uniformed police officer in schools. They are called ‘school resource officers.’ This program has a lot of great benefits to it. Kids get to know that police are not the bad guys, and they get to interact with and sometimes befriend the officers. Adding an armed police officer to the school has the added benefit of placing someone at the location at all times in case a law enforcement response is needed. But the problem with this program is of course like anything else in law enforcement, money. It costs money to place these officers in every school. Salaries, benefits and other fringe items can add up. Even with the comparably low pay most officers get, it is still more than the school board or police departments want to spend. Bottom line: It all boils down to the money. The schools where the program has been instituted have been exceptionally successful, with kids, parents and the officers giving it high praise.
But what about the schools where these attacks have taken place? None of them had school resource officers in them, or any form of armed security. Of course not, because most bad guys are cowards and who wants to be shot at while trying to kill innocent people? No one. In some places throughout the nation guns are now being recognized once again for what they are, tools of safety. As such, some areas are starting to arm members of the school’s staff. Team members, both administrative and teachers, are volunteering to be trained by law enforcement and then carry the firearm at school. All I can say is it’s about time! This program needs to take off and become the new norm in our schools. Teachers love teaching, and some do not want to be armed. That is completely fine and I have no issues with that at all. But those teachers that are concealed firearms carriers already, or want to be, in order to protect your children should be allowed to do so and subsequently they should be trained. What a great statement it makes about the teacher that wants not only to teach your child while they are at school, but also wants to ensure their safety! Good for them!
In Colorado, as reported by the Associated Press, “The Hanover School District 28 board voted 3-2 to allow employees to volunteer to be armed on the job after undergoing training. The district’s two schools serve about 270 students about 30 miles southeast of Colorado Springs, and it takes law enforcement an average of twenty minutes to respond to calls. The district currently shares an armed school resource officer with four other school districts.”
Separately, this week it was announced that the Polk County Sheriff’s Office and Southeastern University are partnering together to start the ‘Sentinel Program’ in the state of Florida. This is a one-of-a-kind program that enables authorized and comprehensively trained employees of the university to carry concealed firearms on campus for the purpose of rapidly responding to an active assailant on campus. So even colleges are getting in on the program. Maybe people are finally beginning to realize that to stop a bad guy with a gun you cannot shout harsh words at them, you have to meet force with the same amount of force, or more, to be able to stop the violence.
I do not understand the mindset of someone that says if you make gun free zones, people are safer. How is that at all possible? The only people that listen to the ‘gun free zone’ request or laws are law abiding citizens who you don’t have to worry about in the first place. But do the evil madmen who go on killing rampages and shootings follow those rules or laws? Of course not, and you are more than naïve if you think otherwise. These areas are nothing more than a false sense of security and simply put, they don’t work. I also find it hard to wrap my head around people who say that guns are dangerous. Do people do bad things with guns? Of course they do, but more people are hurt or killed with things like clubs, bats, knives and the like. I don’t get it, don’t these anti-gun types even try and research things at all for themselves? You cannot blame an inanimate object for the actions of a person that wields them in a criminal fashion. More people get stabbed each year than shot, therefore are knives evil? Of course not.
So to add a level of real security and defense to our schools, a few places across the country have finally realized that by arming and training our teachers that want to carry, they are helping to drastically reduce the odds of mass violence. The more armed and trained teachers we have, the safer our children will be and is that not what everyone wants in the end anyway? There is a reason that they do not have school shootings or attacks in Israel. It’s because all teachers are armed, and when they go on field trips, they have armed security and armed parents along. Now, why do they do that? Because they had terrorist attacks on a school bus. How did they stop it? They armed teachers. Makes perfect sense to me, and obviously it works.
So start sending emails to your school boards and local sheriff’s office or police department. Tell them that you want them to consider arming the teachers in your area to help protect the children. It’s getting done, and I am willing to bet that you will not see one single shooting in those schools that have them. Just going out on a limb there in that prediction. It’s time for people who are against firearms to stop letting fear and a lack of knowledge get in the way of common sense. Common sense dictates that it takes an armed person to stop another armed person, why do you think cops carry firearms?
Chris Wagoner is a Senior OpsLens Contributor and U.S. Army Veteran . He has been in law enforcement the last 35+ years. He specializes in LE Firearms Instruction, and is in charge of a large Police Academy in North Florida. In his spare time Chris is a freelance Military Reporter and owner/founder of the Largest Military Videos Channel on YouTube “3rdID8487”.
