Active Killer events in schools are statistically hyper-rare. But school shootings do happen, and it is not a bad idea to think more about them and to consider options and solutions.
This most recent attack in Texas presents us with the outrageous spectacle of armed police officers standing guard outside the school while the murderer carried on within. More, while parents outside fought and pleaded to get into the school to try to save their kids, cops engaged the parents, handcuffing them, rather than engaging the killer.
Take a few moments and ponder this situation. In general, the carriage of firearms is strictly prohibited on school properties, often with the threat of grave punishments. In my state of North Carolina, it is a felony to possess a firearm on any school property. Just to possess it. Not to use it harmfully, or display it threateningly, but to have it safely concealed on your person, regardless of whether you have a concealed carry permit.
Think this through for a moment. A citizen with a concealed carry permit—an obviously law-abiding person who has gone through the trouble and expense of the extensive background checks and such involved in getting this government permission to exercise a Constitutionally protected right—stands on the sidewalk outside a school zone, and remains a law-abiding citizen. That citizen takes two steps onto school property and thus commits a felony. This is insanity.
But because of these rules and the outlandish punishments that are threatened against those who violate them, you can generally assume that schools are truly gun-free zones. Another term for such places is “soft targets.” Someone looking to cause the most harm with the least risk will invariably pick a soft target. The problem with deciding to shoot at folks outside of “gun free zones” is that people there might have guns, as a would-be mass murderer discovered recently in West Virginia.
It’s unsettling to write about hardening up our schools. Don’t we wish there were no crazed murderers about, looking to massacre harmless children? And yet, in our depraved culture, unsurprisingly, we find no shortage of hopeful murderers. Though there are many causes, including fatherlessness and the corresponding loss of the virtue of religion, it is glaringly obvious that our murderous culture will breed murderers. We can have a “gun control” conversation another day, though the short version of my response to gun control is that unless we go full Australia, it is manifestly pointless—and we manifestly should not (and Constitutionally cannot) go full Australia.
So hardening up the schools is an obvious consideration. Obvious. In Uvalde, the murderer simply walked through an open door—a door that was supposed to be locked. I do not say that the murdered couldn’t have gotten in otherwise. But he didn’t have to. Locking doors is a pretty simple idea. Let’s start there.
But I would like to urge Catholic school administrators to consider another pretty simple idea. Let your staff—if they want to—carry their firearms, just like they do off duty.
We are told that teachers and school administrators do not need to be armed, and shouldn’t be. Those guns are dangerous and, besides, the school staff aren’t properly trained to handle active killers. We need to let the professionals handle it.
The things wrong with this line of thinking are too numerous to mention or address individually. The timeline, for one thing, doesn’t work—by the time the shooting is recognized for what it is, the cops are called, the cops arrive, and the cops enter, there has always been a long time for the killer to rampage unimpeded. Uvalde makes this shockingly and disgustingly clear. But Uvalde is not, and cannot be, an outlier. At Sandy Hook, officers entered the building at 9:44. The first 911 call was made at 9:35. The shooting is believed to have started at about 9:34. So it took roughly ten minutes for the police to arrive at the scene of the murders.
At the Parkland mass murder, the shooting started at 2:21 or so. At 2:22, School resource officer Scot Peterson arrived at the building where the murders were happening and remained outside doing nothing. At 2:27 the first Coral Springs officers arrived on the scene. Officers did not enter the building until 2:32, in a four-man team. Evidently, two officers had tried to enter a different building at 2:29. By then the murderer had already left the scene.
Obviously, the police do not always cringe and cower. Justin Garner, for example, walked alone into a North Carolina nursing home to stop an active killer. But even if the police arrive quickly and immediately engage the murderer, there is still a delay. Eight people were killed before Garner stopped the killer in Carthage.
How difficult is it to see the problem here? No matter how fast police are sent to the scene, there is (a) no kind of guarantee that they will respond appropriately and (b) a huge time lag.
I cannot offer solutions to (a) apart from referring to Fr. Stravinskas’s recent homily on manhood. But I can offer the obvious solution to (b). Allow teachers and administrators who wish to carry firearms at school to do so. Unlike the police, who are not there, the school staff is there. The time lag is reduced or perhaps even eliminated when the people who are present can effectively fight back. Again, ask the fellow in West Virginia about this. (Well, you can’t, because an armed citizen who was present when the shooting started killed him before he managed to murder anyone. But you see what I’m getting at.)
There are, undoubtedly, things to iron out. A Catholic school administrator who wants to protect kids from mass murderers will have to think through the best rules to establish. We might ask, for example, whether an armed school staff member must receive specialized training, and if so, what kind, and how much?
I’m strongly in favor of anyone who owns firearms receiving serious professional training. And the complexities of an active killer situation do probably demand some special skills and knowledge. That’s why I’m heading this month to Ohio to take a class called FASTER Saves Lives, a 3-day training program for teachers and administrators. I’ve had pretty significant defensive training in the past, with some great teachers, including Craig Douglas, Ernest Langdon and Chuck Haggard, among many others, but this class focuses on schools.
Unfortunately, it will be irrelevant to my work life. I’m sorry to say, I’m unwilling to risk a felony conviction for bringing my gun to work. Since I’m far more likely to fall and hurt myself, or to have a heart attack, and to have my gun discovered by EMS, than I am to be anywhere in the vicinity of an active killer on campus, I make the gamble to go without my gun. I’ve got some legal self-defense methods available while I’m at work, to be sure—not that I’d like to try them out against an active killer. But we all make our choices.
Still, the question here isn’t whether people should get training—the answer to that is yes—the question is whether they should be required to get training. And the answer to that, in my view, is, let’s talk about it. The sooner, the better. But let’s talk about it in this context: by agreeing that allowing teachers and administrators to carry guns is an obvious move, and then let’s quickly sort out the best ways to bring that situation into being. School is basically over for the year. Let’s be prepared to start the fall with new policies in place.
This issue of training is often used as an objection to the proposal of allowing school staff to carry their guns: “Oh, we don’t want all those untrained people with guns in schools!” But that’s not the correct way to think about it. The right way to think about it is this: given the realities of the culture of death, we do want armed teachers in schools because it’s the only way to actually have a chance of stopping an active killer. Now, what’s the best way to handle having armed teachers?
Along those lines, let me also say that people often talk about “arming teachers,” as though there were some plan to snag Mrs. Smith out of her third-grade classroom and force her to strap on a gun. Obviously not. If Mrs. Smith has no interest in carrying a gun, then I don’t want her to carry a gun. It’s a serious commitment, and I don’t want anyone doing it who doesn’t really want to do it. I’m not interested in arming teachers. I’m interested in allowing armed citizens, who are teachers, stay armed when they’re teaching, just as they are in other parts of their lives.
The cult of expertise and specialization that dominates our world prevents us from accepting simple solutions and answers. Note how people will so often attack homeschoolers, saying they are not “properly trained”. As though teaching a kid requires “certification.” This is the same nonsensical thought that underlies the notion that we have to leave protecting kids to the highly-trained professional cops. It’s nonsense. Parents are the primary educators of their kids, and they are also the primary protectors of their kids. Nobody outranks us in this matter. Catholic school administrators: you are entrusted by the parents with the children. You must do your best to keep them safe. This means you must allow your employees who wish to bear arms to do so.
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In our time, our revered teachers loved to carry the Rosary Beads with them to school and to their places of work. To them, the Rosary Beads were powerful little missiles of mass construction.
How about just banning guns by anyone other than police? Too simple? In this latest shooting, even the police who are trained and paid to do their job did not intervene immediately because they were too scared, and overpowered, so imagine a poor teacher grabbing his or her gun and firing across a classroom filled with students… the likelyhood of their actually hitting the assailant? And it never occurs to anyone in your country that it’s not happening anywhere else, or only extremely rarely? So you wonder, is it me/us and the rest of the world is insane, stupid, getting things wrong, or maybe my/our approach is wrong, flawed? Boh.
Overpowered? Have you ever been in the military or law enforecement? Here, every car contains an AR15 or shotgun. They were going up against a single untrained 18yr old boy. They mainly did not go in due to a locked steel door. They did not carry the initial.contact due to lack of fortitude and they (even with only Glock handguns) could have laid down enough suppresive fire to allow closing in and nuetralizing. There are 120 guns for every 100 Americans, 99.5% never use a gun to harm anyone, and banning is neither just nor even possible as the only folk who would pay attention to the ban are the 99.5% who are harmless. The insane and the criminals would only laugh as mass shootings only happen where large concentrations of helpless sheep stand waiting for slaughter.
“it never occurs to anyone in your country that it’s not happening anywhere else, or only extremely rarely”
Respectfully, that is a false statement. https://fee.org/articles/the-myth-that-the-us-leads-the-world-in-mass-shootings/
How about just banning guns by anyone other than police?
Brilliant. Then only the criminals and the police would be armed, just like Chicago, Detroit, Baltimore, New York, et al already are.
The naivete of people never ceases to amaze.
The ideas in this article are ludicrous. As a veteran I can tell you that being in a high stress, chaotic and frankly terrifying situation that involve firearms needs extensive and constant training. A three day training camp will not cut it. Note how our police and military are constantly training for these situations. An active shooter situation in a school is one that would be a challenge to a SEAL Team. The idea that an out of shape, barely trained teacher could take on a deranged shooter who is most likely better armed and perhaps wearing body armour while screaming teachers and children run for cover etc. is pure fantasy on the part of the writer.
BTW I find it odd that an article that bemoans “expertise” is written by a person who makes sure to put “Dr” in front of his name, has all of his degrees listed in his bio and name drops with whom he’s “trained”. It seems expertise does matter. He should remember that when he advocates for barely trained teachers to pull a gun in an environment and situation that would tax the most highly trained operators of our police and military. Real life is not a video game or a movie.
Well and truly said. Thank you.
You suggest that a situation such as Uvalde would be a challenge a SEAL team. Perhaps. A key reason for that is because the team going in would likely have minimal to no knowledge of floorplan, personnel or students. A trained, armed faculty member would have intimate and immediate knowledge of all three…a key advantage in a high-stress situation.
You make reference to “out of shape, barely trained teacher[s]…”. Those are controllable variables that can be improved with proper and sufficient training. Remember, these are volunteers we’re talking about. If they care enough about this, they’ll be willing to sacrifice to achieve and maintain the capabilities necessary to be effective deterrents in situations such as Uvalde. I would also expect that, if it’s important enough to a school district, they won’t have an issue reallocating some of the ample resources currently dedicated to myriad progressive causes to training that can help children in their charge stay safe.
Agree LexCredendi
I agree completely with you Carthusian. Your points are quite valid. Maybe a solution would be to embed in a gun, a tiny device that could be detected by an external warning system of some sort. Thus an alarm would be activated, and doors automatically closed.
As a teacher, I did find the remarks by the author about teacher to be insulting, i.e. “as if you need certification.” On the other hand, if there were highly trained individuals at the school who could stop a killer, there would be value to that. It doesn’t seem plausible though.
Perhaps you glossed over the following:
“Let your staff—if they want to—carry their firearms, just like they do off duty.”
and
‘Along those lines, let me also say that people often talk about “arming teachers,” as though there were some plan to snag Mrs. Smith out of her third-grade classroom and force her to strap on a gun. Obviously not. If Mrs. Smith has no interest in carrying a gun, then I don’t want her to carry a gun. It’s a serious commitment, and I don’t want anyone doing it who doesn’t really want to do it. I’m not interested in arming teachers. I’m interested in allowing armed citizens, who are teachers, stay armed when they’re teaching, just as they are in other parts of their lives.’
Perhaps you simply chose to ignore both.
armed police officers standing guard outside the school while the murderer carried on within
There is no other story here
Well, the Pope and the folks at the Vatican are 1) surrounded by a wall and 2) have the Swiss Guard, who are armed with traditional halberds and with various types of pistols (Glock and SIG) and submachine guns (HK-MP7) when acting as body guards.
.
So, yeah, let qualified/trained teachers be armed.
.
Better yet, start a gun club and shoot clay pigeons. Maybe start historical re-enactment group. Get out the fife and drum corps. This could in fact be very educational. Lot of ways to work in history and even higher math (if you want to study cannon ball tragectory or build a trebuchet and do a pumpkin toss)
When you consider that outside of a war zone, it is five times more likely a homeowner’s gun will injure or kill a loved one or family friend than an intruder, plus Dr Toner’s admission that school shootings are “hyper-rare,” I can’t see this idea being taken seriously. It seems like little more than a ploy by arms dealers to hype sales of their weaponry.
The US is gun crazy. Let’s move against the stream and hold to our values as Catholic Christians. Unless we want to hunt or shoot at targets–neither of which we can do in schools–let’s keep the guns at home. And the arms dealers unhappy.
The author never said he was in favor of requiring teachers to be armed. His proposal relates only to those who volunteer, and are deeply committed to fulfilling the rigorous responsibilities, for such a role. To quote: “If Mrs. Smith has no interest in carrying a gun, then I don’t want her to carry a gun. It’s a serious commitment, and I don’t want anyone doing it who doesn’t really want to do it.”
You also criticize those you stereotype by saying “…Anything to shift the blame and responsibility onto someone else.” Were you reading a different story? The author is specifically talking about those who would willingly and voluntarily take on a very serious responsibility and accountability, and to fulfill the training and requirements that attend such responsibility. That’s about as far from shifting blame and responsibility onto someone else as it possibly could be.
Please re-read the article and present specific objections to the author’s points.
“Please re-read the article and present specific objections to the author’s points.”
Don’t hold your breath. Joe K. has a long history of making comments at CWR that are loaded with insinuations, half-truths, and outright lies. Perhaps he has troubles with reading comprehension; perhaps he struggles with truth; perhaps he simply disdains orthodox Catholics.
It will not work. Most people today simply do not know how to handle a firearm, certainly would not wish to carry one, and how would they be secured otherwise in a school setting?
Steel exterior firedoors, steel classroom doors, all with locks and kept locked, buzz-in main entrance and an armed guard at main entrance with some manner of screen for protection. This would have worked at Uvalde and near every other mass school shooting. Ditch backpacks to take care of the rest. The stuff kids are forced to lug today is obscene and guaranteed a lot more disability claims at younger ages in the future from young bones contorted by insane daily mule loads. Teach them at SCHOOL.
One infers that Dr. Toner has never seen what 9mm, 7.62 mm, and the fashionable .552mm rounds do to people of all ages. One also infers that Dr. Toner has never work the night shift in an emergency room. One also infers that Dr. Toner has never made the first day of recruit training.
Mr. Lawrence Hall was raised on a farm in a hunting and fishing culture. He barely graduated from high school, dropped of college minutes before being dropped by administration, and then did foreign studies in Viet-Nam and Cambodia. He later worked his way through the University of San Diego by also working night shifts – double shifts on the weekends – as an ambulance driver and subsequently an LVN in ER and ICU. He later earned a Master’s in English from a nice little redbrick university, also at night, while teaching high school and then community college as a part-time faculty adjunct of no status at all. He writes in his local newspaper and tends his garden.
You can “infer” whatever you want. There still is no point to your post.
Please forgive my poor usage and, worse, my stridency, but I have seldom encountered someone so ignorant.
It seems that teaching has become a nightmare job. Our teachers are already overwhelmed with administrative paperwork, mandated reporting, and teaching to the annual test requirements. Can’t imagine the stress they are under. I don’t think arming teachers will improve the situation for teachers and students.
Cliche time – ‘When guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns.”
Why is it a cliche? Why has this saying lasted so long, no matter how many raised eyebrows it occasions from those wiser than we mere mortals?
Because it’s TRUE.
The USA permits its citizen to bear arms. For self-defense I assume, as in a measured response (Within the confines of the law ) but sadly the threat of violence breeds violence, naturally, people live in fear, not just the vulnerable hence a never-ending expanding circle of the use of violence as a means of self-protection between the perpetrators, victims and sadly often innocent bystanders.
Some time ago a ‘teacher’ in the USA said to me “I carry a gun into the classroom as the pupils need to feel safe”. From this side of the Atlantic, the mind boggles as in effect he was inciting fear in young minds and in doing so contributing to the never-ending expansion of violence.
Quote from a post under different Article “We might be actually approaching a consensus that 18-year-olds are children in our society.
I hope so in relation to the possessing of weaponry as the definition of Adult-is “fully developed and mature” very few eighteen old (If any) meet this definition although some possess more common sense than others, and as you say ” many see themselves as “teenagers” which at eighteen they still are.#
As Christians, our consciences should impel us to look to the Common Good while understanding that these mass killings fuel fear, resulting in more weaponry being sold into the public domain, so we see an ongoing ever-increasing cycle of violence within society.
Quote see the link below “nearly all K-12, and college and university shooters are insiders, and likely familiar with the layout of a building and current safety policy.
VOA Special Report | History of mass shooters (voanews.com)
So, in the ‘context of attacks within educational establishments age is a determinant as the vast majority of assailants are young men aged 13 to 22 years.
For Christians Wisdom (Justice) should embrace the practicalities of our earthly life
One of the gifts of the Holy Spirit is Wisdom; Wisdom is both the knowledge of and judgment about “divine things” and the ability to judge and direct human affairs according to divine truth; “It is a Way of life that is lived” and if lived with the Holy Spirit’s gift of “Knowledge which is the ability to judge correctly about matters of faith and right action so as to never wander from the straight path of ‘justice’ (Natural law)
With the given understanding of that age of the assailants are a determinant ’ Wisdom (Common sense) tells us that eighteen-year-olds with young adults? should not be permitted to purchase ‘assault weaponry’ and handguns when they are still within the educational system.
This would not be a panacea for all school shootings nevertheless it would be a positive move in the right direction ‘towards sensible gun laws’ while at the same time demonstrating to American citizens that the government understands and takes its responsibility seriously to protect the young within the education system that they provide.
kevin your brother
In Christ
My Catholic university has unbelievably lax security. Those of us with marksmanship skills and gun permits are not allowed to carry on campus. (I’m a retired military police officer, and even I cannot carry.) Concerned about “sexual harassment” complaints (which have never been lodged against the faculty) all faculty doors were replaced by doors with huge glass windows. The same was done with all classroom doors. And none of these doors can be locked from the inside. They can only be locked from the hallway and with a key. Every central stairwell in the main classroom buildings is a massive chokepoint, making rapid evacuation impossible. Access to the campus is easy and unimpeded by anyone or anything. I just hope I am retired before we have any incident, because we are all sitting ducks for any disgruntled student or terrorist.
Switzerland has very rates of gun ownership and yet very low gun crime. Venezuela has very low rates of gun ownership, very strict gun laws (including a total ban on handgun ownership) yet it is considered probably the most dangerous country in the world when it comes to gun crime. So apparently, stricter gun laws is not the panacea the lunatic left tries to claim.
To give the author his due, we have an incident in the USA where a teacher retrieved a handgun from a car and engaged boys shooting at a school and stopped an otherwise slaughter.
That being said, very few teachers would be qualified to go armed, or opt to deal with the very serious difficulties of securing such a sidearm in a school setting, police must use retention holsters to help against gun grabs and many officers still shot with own sidearms annually. Teachers could carry compact concealable firearms, but those are also the ones hardest to shoot with any accuracy, and also be the least effective in effect.
Meanwhile, the minority of such armed teachers happening to be where needed and when needed it very low. And, combined with the riskiness of accidental shootings with most modern Glock-type/safetiless sidearms and generally poor marksmen with such guns, plus the possibility of a gun grab by a student, says the idea simply unworkable.
Again, had already known, and bragged off by the Uvalde school district, sagety measures been actually implemented, nearly all of today’s dead would be instead be alive.
Would also add that any armed guard at entrance should never be taken away from that post for any reason, “unless properly relieved” as general orders for military clearly state.
Right on, Dr. Toner! Get that firearm training and keep up-to-date with practice. You may get shot at Wake, but your training will protect your family and home, if not your school.
People will dismiss you for various silly reasons, not remembering or reading about the hundreds of events where a “good” person with a gun stopped a “bad” person with one. They do not want to know; it is better for them to pretend.
Why not NOW institute three (JUST THREE) common-sense procedures:
1. LOCK THE DOORS….ALL the time.
2. Hire armed school officers; one MANDATORY requirement: must be an military vet with active duty experience……can be currently in the National Guard (not likely to turn tail like happened in two school shootings).
3. TRAIN and arm volunteer teachers and staff. Very important: VOLUNTEERS.
Anyone who says these will not work makes little sense. These make sense.
Press on!
A few quick points. First, when I sent this piece in, I had not read Greg Ellifritz’s article on the shooting: https://www.activeresponsetraining.net/analysis-of-the-uvalde-school-shooting-and-implications-for-the-future . Ellifritz, who I would generally trust on such matters, argues that the police non-response wasn’t a courage problem, but a tactical error. My read of Ellfritz’s article suggests he’s right about that, but maybe a little too diplomatic about it. If it was a tactical error, it was a tactical error with horrifying consequences and made without any real justification. But I still accept that I wasn’t sufficiently charitable to the cops involved, and I recant that error.
I was asked if I am familiar with the damage caused by gunshots. The person who asked that question lumped 9mm rounds in with 5.56 rounds, which suggests the asker is not nearly as knowledgeable as he implies. But my answer is: yes, I am, and that is precisely why I want there to be some reasonable and immediately actionable method to stop the people who go to soft targets and murder children unchallenged. I would have thought that was obvious.
Another commenter suggests banning all guns, except, of course, for the police–who can always be trusted, needless to say, to do the right thing with them. As I said in the article, I wasn’t writing about gun control. That’s a separate issue. But if you want to push that line effectively, you will indeed wind up with Australian-type rules. This commentator made that point for me once again quite nicely. Anyway, try getting that passed by the time school starts up in the fall, OK? I’m guessing it’s just words. Whereas simply removing a bad rule that disarms teachers who Would Already Otherwise Be Armed can be done Right Now.
Should there be cops outside of all schools? Metal detectors, special doors, whatnot? Maybe! Also not really part of this article’s argument. Also not nearly as easy to implement. Also, there was a cop at Parkland, you may recall. So… not exactly a complete solution, right?
Last, I have no problem with expertise. I do have a very serious problem with the cult of expertise that demands some kind of official licensing before citizens are allowed to act like citizens. And the specialist as such tends to be blinded to the vision of the whole. So there are some major dangers with trusting too much in in experts. But again, that’s another article. Or you could read some Wendell Berry or something. 🙂