Every idiot that comments on this topic should be physically forced to read this article. It's the best and most comprehensive look at the topic I've read or heard.
I have two minor comments:
I would argue the purpose of TSA is to get people to adjusted to random tyranny. The old system enhanced with bomb sniffing dogs and looking for nervous people is more effective. That's how Israel used to handle it, and they were much more effective than our system of full body cavity searches for grandma.
Root Causes? Marxism. Every kid in school today is taught by Marxists who learned from Marxists. That's why toy guns are banned and we still have shootings versus 50 years ago when bringing your rifle to school so you could hunt that afternoon didn't result in shootings. How is Marxism connected. The root of Marxism is the oppressor/oppressed narrative of history. You are one or the other. If you buy into this line of reasoning, you can either be a victim or the victimizer. If you don't identify as a an evil oppressor, you've been victimized by society. Every one of the school shooters that wrote something about why they did it identifies themselves as a victim. Our society puts victimization on a pedestal, thereby pushing more people into the victim camp and increasing the odds of school shootings (or other strikes at random strangers).
Also, your previous article about fatherlessness and violence applies here too. The overwhelming majority of school shooters are the children of single mothers. Marxism applies here too. Marxists of all stripes aspire to destroy the nuclear family as it is an obstacle to their pursuit of power.
And the decline of the importance of religion. Funny, Marxists try to destroy that too. I'll cite your article on the robot dogs as my evidence that it matters.
"The old system enhanced with bomb sniffing dogs and looking for nervous people is more effective."
Didn't you hear that profiling is inherently racist? We can't do that. It doesn't matter that it's more effective if it can any way be used to perpetuate social injustice, even (especially) if only on a subconscious bias.
Glorifying victimhood (and manufacturing victimhood where it didn't exist before) is definitely a big ongoing problem here, and overlaps with the social media egregore that creates a hierarchy based on social justice with the least disadvantaged at the bottom. Every bit of Obvious Damage or Approved Non-Standardness you can cultivate will elevate you respective of your peers.
1) Marxism is deader than dead, everybody is a Rawls fanboi now
2) The oppressor/oppressed narrative is basically the entire human history, not "Marxism". Everybody always wants their enemies to look evil.
Here is our real problem. There is the classic drama triangle, the victim, the victimizer and the saviour/hero. Usually, the center of the narrative is the hero, but in recent years the culture got too victim-centrim. This is not a "Marxist" conspiracy, but simply women got a louder voice now in the public discourse, and it leads to a more empathic approach. Empathy is great, but I think we need to bring heroes back to the narrative.
because (difficult math warning) people care roughly 400x more about white kids who are shot while they are in school than black kids who are shot while they are not in school, and this, setting race aside for the moment, is the heart of the emotional issue, and isn't entirely unwarranted.
Also with the above statement I feel the need to point out, on the rational side of irrationality, that the reason that black kids aren't being shot in school is because inner city schools actually take physical security seriously. We know hardening schools works, because we have examples. We just need the will to fund it.
Schootings as Terrorism is a solution that could have some traction. The current subject of scrutiny, who we know more about in 24 hours than we know about the Las Vegas shooter in 7 years, was investigated for making school shooting threats on a Discord chat last year. If that sort of thing is treated as terrorism, it gives more tools to deal with it, including an easier path to psych evaluations and pulling the subject from school, and could maybe help pressure the media to cover it differently and possibly take a bite out of the proven copycat effect.
CdrSalamander has been beating the drum about the obvious, big downward shift in mental health since 2012, which coincides very closely with the eruption of social media. There's ample evidence that unrestricted access to social media by minors can be catastrophic. This is partly bad parenting and partly unwillingness of social media sites to institute meaningful age checks, because teens are very profitable for them.
I think the trend in schools towards banning smartphones will help the school shooter issue some. I think it would help even more if parents bought their kids flip phones instead.
"Plugging the shooter in an embarrassing way and releasing the footage immediately disincentivized future shooters instead of incentivizing them."
Much like how being mobbed by passengers and crew has turned aircraft terrorism into an exercise in embarrassment for the perpetrators since 9/11. And it shows in the rarity of such attacks since then. I assert that this willingness to defend ourselves has done more to protect us when we fly than the TSA's intrusions.
We seem to think that we ordinary folks shouldn't have to concern ourselves with self-defense like this, since we are not "qualified professionals" in that aspect of life and might get it wrong*. We have to understand that there may come a time where - right or wrong - we are the only ones available with any answer to deliver.
Perhaps the most crazy thing about 9/11 is it almost completely stopped airplane hijacking’s.
Whether or not it affected anyone’s likelihood of actually hijacking - people default to “the next 9/11”. If it’s just some people holding their plane hostage to get some political support like earlier ones, who cares enough to act? If it’s 9/11, it’s literally a worst case scenario where even losing your life trying to stop them is worth it (the Pennsylvania flight).
Peoples willingness to risk extreme harm to stop hijackers shot up tenfold, and it won’t go back down for decades.
I suspect you could get the usual anti-gun crowd to agree on the surface that school shootings are terrorism but they’d have completely different viewpoints as to why they consider it terrorism. If portrayed correctly and thoughtfully though it may be a golden bridge.
The issue has never been guns. The issue is education of the culture. My dad went through the depression and every male student brought their 22 rifle to school and leaned them up on the back wall. It was their responsibility to hunt fresh game to bring home food for the family. In the 70 and 80s our school had gun club and we all brought our guns to school. I ask you, where were the school shootings? I never recall hearing about them.
Outstanding! It would be interesting to know what percentage of school shooters were "subject to FBI investigation" prior to the shootings. It seems like an awful high number so I'm thinking that should be included as part of the solution. As to your suggested Presidential action, I was picturing Our President filling the role and after I stopped laughing, I tried to read it to my wife. I'd get through about 2-3 words and have to catch myself again. It's a shame you don't have a sense of humor! Keep up the GREAT work!
Naw. Neither of those 2 would have had the stones to even come close to imagining something like this! I'm not saying Trump would actually do anything like this but it struck me as funny as hell imagining exactly that.
First, thank you for the homicide stats. As you stated, the usual suspects will ignore all of that and clamor yet again for ridding the country of certain inanimate objects.
I live in Barrow County, and am a bit familiar with the county’s preparations for an event as happened yesterday. The biggest point I’d like to make about that is that several months ago the county used a teacher work day, when the kids would not be in school, to run a drill for a scenario like this. As you know, we perform only up to the lowest level of our training.
How are you supposed to shape kids into growing up into anti-2a voters if you don't use their time at school to terrorize them with active shooter drills where they're only asked to do the exact same things they already do for a tornado or fire drill?
I like the idea of identifying threats against schools as terrorism and getting the feds involved. When the FBI inevitably overreacts by focusing on the wrong target (prog Mom's boy) in the wrong school (white suburban) it will cause liberal women to shriek about the violation of whatever rights they imagine junior may have to post gun memes. This should result in an overdue re-balancing of the scales of justice. It would also have the benefit of giving the three letter agencies something potentially worthwhile to focus on instead of Catholics attending Latin mass. Treating school threats as terrorist threats may also be effective in reducing school shootings, although the phenomenon will probably just migrate elsewhere.
Good article. You might reconsider your dismissal (on subjective grounds) of arming volunteer teachers. There are more firearm-friendly teachers than generally perceived, because such teachers do not advertise their interest in an environment that is often hostile to gun ownership. Volunteers who are given additional screening and training could possess concealed weapons. This would provide a deterrent effect (would-be shooters must now calculate what they cannot see). And no publicity seeking youth wants to be ignominiously gunned down before capping a slew of students. Also, data from mass shootings shows that the casualty rate is much lower when private citizens intervene (with guns) than when police are the first to respond, mainly due to the longer time interval before police arrive. Even in schools with permanently assigned officers, there may be a delay as the officer recognizes the threat and moves across campus to interdict. Even if only one in twenty teachers were armed, there would have been a 10 percent chance that one of the two slain math teachers would have had a better chance of defending themselves and the others. In virtually all mass shootings, the killing of innocents stops as soon as the perpetrator comes under fire. More teachers might volunteer as the stigma of gun ownership dissipates and as more teachers realize they don’t have to be little more than meat shields for their students. Not all teachers would qualify based on temperance or ability.
In my high school, there were too many fights and too much chaos for me to think that there would be good outcomes with arming teachers. Particularly if the problem itself (school spree shootings) is so inordinately small. I think rural schools with redneck problems might be better suited to redneck solutions. My high school was the opposite school with the opposite problems.
That’s a reasonable point. In my school, teachers were virtually never involved in fights. And fights between students broke up the moment a teacher appeared. Certainly, an armed teacher should be very, very reluctant to enter into a physical altercation unless deadly force was already in play.
Basic concealed weapons courses teach you of the importance of avoiding fights entirely, due to the risk of escalation—if not by the gun carrier, then when the other combatant grabs you around the waist and discovers the gun. The same would have to be taught to armed teachers: Don’t get into a fist fight or a wrestling match between students. You and your gun are there to counter lethal threats (or threats of great bodily harm) only. You do not pull your gun to stop a fist-fight.
I completely agree that a school where student-teacher combat is common is probably not a good test site for the armed-teacher experiment. I would conduct the experiment with selected schools and selected teachers, which limits the ability to generalize the results, but it would allow the identification of some strengths and weaknesses of such a program. I know a number of teachers who are sober and responsible enough to handle the duty. And, again, it is better than being a meat shield. Now that some schools have implemented such programs, we will see…although the statistical rarity of such events will limit what and how quickly we learn.
Anyway, thanks for a thoughtful and thought-provoking article.
Urban high schools seem to be at somewhere around zero risk for a mass shooting, for a set of well defined reasons, so not much benefit is going to be realized with arming staff past the cops and SROs that are already there for urban school reasons.
This, too, is a good point. Violent, urban schools which already have a significant police presence are probably at lower risk for random, mass shootings (other than gang/drug violence). But, I would like to know if that is so. Suburban schools with less endemic student violence are better candidates for an armed-teacher program.
HWFO, I don't frame this as "arming teachers." Rather, my stance on this is "Stop preventing responsible adults from protecting themselves and others; y'know, like at the grocery store?"
Until you've seen an urban high school from the inside, don't project your experiences into that environment. It's closer to an open-doored jail than it is a university.
I will defer to your experience here. I was not thinking about any specific subset of school, but the specific subset of responsible American adult who is competent to carry and use a firearm. Some of these folks choose the career of teacher. I'm not convinced that preventing these adults from protecting themselves and children (like I would do in my local grocery store if necessary), should lose that right to protection simply because they're inside a structure named "school."
And as a veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom myself, I totally agree that a bunch of us sitting outside schools with Hawiian shirts and slung rifles would be a very strong deterrant.
Yeah, this is my take. My ... ex-brother-in-law (how's that for an awkward construction?) is a current 4th grade teacher, and a former United States Marine.
It's flatly absurd that he can't have a CCW on him in case of emergency.
One of the teachers killed at Parkland had a CCW but couldn't carry at school. I have seen accounts that say he was a capable shooter. He died trying to protect students but wasn't allowed to have the right tools.
As for the dude in a plate carrier, an active shooter will simply wait until he is out of position as was the case with the SRO at Columbine or just kill him as was the case with the two officers at Beslan(since we are talking about terrorism). Waiting for police response is also a non-starter. Average response time after the 911 call is 6 minutes while a killer will shoot about 10 people per minute. The only solution is to arm teachers and staff. But screen and train them. Also harden school buildings to give the staff barriers and choke points to hold long enough for the cavalry to show up. Teachers, administrators, custodians and other staff have shown incredible heroism in these incidents but they didn't have the tools to be effective.
Yes and no. It is perfectly true that that was what passes for a 'private' school in the US (which is better than what they call private schools in a lot of countries). However:
1) I don't know her whole history of schooling.
2) Most 'private' schools live in a bubble of Government definition of school and school law. Was it legal for their teachers to be armed?
3) I believe that it is the entire society which produces these shootings, of which a huge portion is government schooling.
In reference to option 2 - I don’t see how arming school administrators disincentivizes suicidal people. It’s obvious that dying is a big part of the point for many of them, which you go on to point out in option 3.
I think you make a reasonable point, but it's worth mentioning that most of them don't end up dying, they shoot until someone returns fire and then they give up. Returning fire quicker should obviously be a part of the overall package.
“Severe action” to adjust the incentives of the spree shooting machine might look something like this, if I were President of the United States… 😂they need the yass emoji on substack
Fantastic article! It's a very rare problem, but one that the antis feel the need to inflate. On Twitter a few hours ago, Amy Swearer broke down the "school shootings" in Georgia listed by Everytown today. Predictably, most were accidental discharges, outside of school hours, in parking lots after sporting events, or involved justified force from SROs. One was a school bus being shot with a BB gun.
This isn't to lessen the horrific reality that real school shootings happen, but most people seem to think that they happen every day in America because of the broad definitions groups like that use. And because of that, I get why so many think that the problem is the hardware (guns). And to your average Sally Housecoat who has never seen a gun in real life that wasn't on a cop's hip, that might seem perfectly reasonable. This is why I try to take any of my wife's friends shooting who will go. I only bring 22s and no targets of humans, and try to make it fun. To a person, all of them have asked about getting a gun after having a good experience with them. Take a lib shooting if you ever get the opportunity.
Every idiot that comments on this topic should be physically forced to read this article. It's the best and most comprehensive look at the topic I've read or heard.
I have two minor comments:
I would argue the purpose of TSA is to get people to adjusted to random tyranny. The old system enhanced with bomb sniffing dogs and looking for nervous people is more effective. That's how Israel used to handle it, and they were much more effective than our system of full body cavity searches for grandma.
Root Causes? Marxism. Every kid in school today is taught by Marxists who learned from Marxists. That's why toy guns are banned and we still have shootings versus 50 years ago when bringing your rifle to school so you could hunt that afternoon didn't result in shootings. How is Marxism connected. The root of Marxism is the oppressor/oppressed narrative of history. You are one or the other. If you buy into this line of reasoning, you can either be a victim or the victimizer. If you don't identify as a an evil oppressor, you've been victimized by society. Every one of the school shooters that wrote something about why they did it identifies themselves as a victim. Our society puts victimization on a pedestal, thereby pushing more people into the victim camp and increasing the odds of school shootings (or other strikes at random strangers).
Also, your previous article about fatherlessness and violence applies here too. The overwhelming majority of school shooters are the children of single mothers. Marxism applies here too. Marxists of all stripes aspire to destroy the nuclear family as it is an obstacle to their pursuit of power.
https://hwfo.substack.com/p/everybodys-lying-about-the-link-between
And the decline of the importance of religion. Funny, Marxists try to destroy that too. I'll cite your article on the robot dogs as my evidence that it matters.
https://hwfo.substack.com/p/on-cops-belief-and-chainsaw-faced?utm_source=publication-search
I love your idea of how to handle to Uvalde situation and inspire better behavior. The comparison to Nashville was great too.
Oh man, pulling out the Chainsaw Dogs reference. It's been a while since I read that one.
That was a GREAT article!
You know, you're right. On a reread it's quite good.
Share it then. :)
Well... I have! So there! 🤣
"The old system enhanced with bomb sniffing dogs and looking for nervous people is more effective."
Didn't you hear that profiling is inherently racist? We can't do that. It doesn't matter that it's more effective if it can any way be used to perpetuate social injustice, even (especially) if only on a subconscious bias.
Glorifying victimhood (and manufacturing victimhood where it didn't exist before) is definitely a big ongoing problem here, and overlaps with the social media egregore that creates a hierarchy based on social justice with the least disadvantaged at the bottom. Every bit of Obvious Damage or Approved Non-Standardness you can cultivate will elevate you respective of your peers.
1) Marxism is deader than dead, everybody is a Rawls fanboi now
2) The oppressor/oppressed narrative is basically the entire human history, not "Marxism". Everybody always wants their enemies to look evil.
Here is our real problem. There is the classic drama triangle, the victim, the victimizer and the saviour/hero. Usually, the center of the narrative is the hero, but in recent years the culture got too victim-centrim. This is not a "Marxist" conspiracy, but simply women got a louder voice now in the public discourse, and it leads to a more empathic approach. Empathy is great, but I think we need to bring heroes back to the narrative.
I see nothing here worth discussing.
because (difficult math warning) people care roughly 400x more about white kids who are shot while they are in school than black kids who are shot while they are not in school, and this, setting race aside for the moment, is the heart of the emotional issue, and isn't entirely unwarranted.
Also with the above statement I feel the need to point out, on the rational side of irrationality, that the reason that black kids aren't being shot in school is because inner city schools actually take physical security seriously. We know hardening schools works, because we have examples. We just need the will to fund it.
Schootings as Terrorism is a solution that could have some traction. The current subject of scrutiny, who we know more about in 24 hours than we know about the Las Vegas shooter in 7 years, was investigated for making school shooting threats on a Discord chat last year. If that sort of thing is treated as terrorism, it gives more tools to deal with it, including an easier path to psych evaluations and pulling the subject from school, and could maybe help pressure the media to cover it differently and possibly take a bite out of the proven copycat effect.
CdrSalamander has been beating the drum about the obvious, big downward shift in mental health since 2012, which coincides very closely with the eruption of social media. There's ample evidence that unrestricted access to social media by minors can be catastrophic. This is partly bad parenting and partly unwillingness of social media sites to institute meaningful age checks, because teens are very profitable for them.
I think the trend in schools towards banning smartphones will help the school shooter issue some. I think it would help even more if parents bought their kids flip phones instead.
"Plugging the shooter in an embarrassing way and releasing the footage immediately disincentivized future shooters instead of incentivizing them."
Much like how being mobbed by passengers and crew has turned aircraft terrorism into an exercise in embarrassment for the perpetrators since 9/11. And it shows in the rarity of such attacks since then. I assert that this willingness to defend ourselves has done more to protect us when we fly than the TSA's intrusions.
We seem to think that we ordinary folks shouldn't have to concern ourselves with self-defense like this, since we are not "qualified professionals" in that aspect of life and might get it wrong*. We have to understand that there may come a time where - right or wrong - we are the only ones available with any answer to deliver.
-------------------------------
* this thinking is another example of what I call "the problem behind the problems" ... https://thenayborhood.substack.com/p/cutting-to-the-chase
Perhaps the most crazy thing about 9/11 is it almost completely stopped airplane hijacking’s.
Whether or not it affected anyone’s likelihood of actually hijacking - people default to “the next 9/11”. If it’s just some people holding their plane hostage to get some political support like earlier ones, who cares enough to act? If it’s 9/11, it’s literally a worst case scenario where even losing your life trying to stop them is worth it (the Pennsylvania flight).
Peoples willingness to risk extreme harm to stop hijackers shot up tenfold, and it won’t go back down for decades.
I suspect you could get the usual anti-gun crowd to agree on the surface that school shootings are terrorism but they’d have completely different viewpoints as to why they consider it terrorism. If portrayed correctly and thoughtfully though it may be a golden bridge.
Also rebranding it gets you access to all that sweet budget excess - it’s a smart move
The issue has never been guns. The issue is education of the culture. My dad went through the depression and every male student brought their 22 rifle to school and leaned them up on the back wall. It was their responsibility to hunt fresh game to bring home food for the family. In the 70 and 80s our school had gun club and we all brought our guns to school. I ask you, where were the school shootings? I never recall hearing about them.
My grandfather brought his, now my, 28 gauge to school everyday.
Nice choice, very handy little 'meat of opportunity' guns.
You mean trying to think thru a problem by actual analysis and common sense could be a solution??
Outstanding! It would be interesting to know what percentage of school shooters were "subject to FBI investigation" prior to the shootings. It seems like an awful high number so I'm thinking that should be included as part of the solution. As to your suggested Presidential action, I was picturing Our President filling the role and after I stopped laughing, I tried to read it to my wife. I'd get through about 2-3 words and have to catch myself again. It's a shame you don't have a sense of humor! Keep up the GREAT work!
It was specifically a fantasy about *me* as POTUS, not necessarily the current one nor this year's candidates.
No need to explain. I assumed that but as soon as I envisioned Trump in the role, it just struck my funny bone...
You didn't misspell "Biden?" or <giggle> "Harris?"
Naw. Neither of those 2 would have had the stones to even come close to imagining something like this! I'm not saying Trump would actually do anything like this but it struck me as funny as hell imagining exactly that.
Big aha. Thanks!
First, thank you for the homicide stats. As you stated, the usual suspects will ignore all of that and clamor yet again for ridding the country of certain inanimate objects.
I live in Barrow County, and am a bit familiar with the county’s preparations for an event as happened yesterday. The biggest point I’d like to make about that is that several months ago the county used a teacher work day, when the kids would not be in school, to run a drill for a scenario like this. As you know, we perform only up to the lowest level of our training.
that sounds way too responsible.
How are you supposed to shape kids into growing up into anti-2a voters if you don't use their time at school to terrorize them with active shooter drills where they're only asked to do the exact same things they already do for a tornado or fire drill?
I like the idea of identifying threats against schools as terrorism and getting the feds involved. When the FBI inevitably overreacts by focusing on the wrong target (prog Mom's boy) in the wrong school (white suburban) it will cause liberal women to shriek about the violation of whatever rights they imagine junior may have to post gun memes. This should result in an overdue re-balancing of the scales of justice. It would also have the benefit of giving the three letter agencies something potentially worthwhile to focus on instead of Catholics attending Latin mass. Treating school threats as terrorist threats may also be effective in reducing school shootings, although the phenomenon will probably just migrate elsewhere.
Re: migrating elsewhere: see treating root causes.
Have the feds labeled Catholics attending Latin mass as threat? That would be news to me.
https://catholicherald.co.uk/fbi-spied-on-traditionalist-u-s-catholics-from-coast-to-coast-new-evidence-reveals/
> "if you have a fourth that’s not just a troll response"
*sad trollface*
made me laugh
Yay! 😁
But seriously, it's almost like he knew I was coming... 🤪
He hardened his comment thread against entities such as yourself...
😭😭😭
Good article. You might reconsider your dismissal (on subjective grounds) of arming volunteer teachers. There are more firearm-friendly teachers than generally perceived, because such teachers do not advertise their interest in an environment that is often hostile to gun ownership. Volunteers who are given additional screening and training could possess concealed weapons. This would provide a deterrent effect (would-be shooters must now calculate what they cannot see). And no publicity seeking youth wants to be ignominiously gunned down before capping a slew of students. Also, data from mass shootings shows that the casualty rate is much lower when private citizens intervene (with guns) than when police are the first to respond, mainly due to the longer time interval before police arrive. Even in schools with permanently assigned officers, there may be a delay as the officer recognizes the threat and moves across campus to interdict. Even if only one in twenty teachers were armed, there would have been a 10 percent chance that one of the two slain math teachers would have had a better chance of defending themselves and the others. In virtually all mass shootings, the killing of innocents stops as soon as the perpetrator comes under fire. More teachers might volunteer as the stigma of gun ownership dissipates and as more teachers realize they don’t have to be little more than meat shields for their students. Not all teachers would qualify based on temperance or ability.
In my high school, there were too many fights and too much chaos for me to think that there would be good outcomes with arming teachers. Particularly if the problem itself (school spree shootings) is so inordinately small. I think rural schools with redneck problems might be better suited to redneck solutions. My high school was the opposite school with the opposite problems.
That’s a reasonable point. In my school, teachers were virtually never involved in fights. And fights between students broke up the moment a teacher appeared. Certainly, an armed teacher should be very, very reluctant to enter into a physical altercation unless deadly force was already in play.
Basic concealed weapons courses teach you of the importance of avoiding fights entirely, due to the risk of escalation—if not by the gun carrier, then when the other combatant grabs you around the waist and discovers the gun. The same would have to be taught to armed teachers: Don’t get into a fist fight or a wrestling match between students. You and your gun are there to counter lethal threats (or threats of great bodily harm) only. You do not pull your gun to stop a fist-fight.
I completely agree that a school where student-teacher combat is common is probably not a good test site for the armed-teacher experiment. I would conduct the experiment with selected schools and selected teachers, which limits the ability to generalize the results, but it would allow the identification of some strengths and weaknesses of such a program. I know a number of teachers who are sober and responsible enough to handle the duty. And, again, it is better than being a meat shield. Now that some schools have implemented such programs, we will see…although the statistical rarity of such events will limit what and how quickly we learn.
Anyway, thanks for a thoughtful and thought-provoking article.
Urban high schools seem to be at somewhere around zero risk for a mass shooting, for a set of well defined reasons, so not much benefit is going to be realized with arming staff past the cops and SROs that are already there for urban school reasons.
This, too, is a good point. Violent, urban schools which already have a significant police presence are probably at lower risk for random, mass shootings (other than gang/drug violence). But, I would like to know if that is so. Suburban schools with less endemic student violence are better candidates for an armed-teacher program.
I went to a rural school with two SROs, is that not common? I assumed that was standard
Happens at high schools but is rare in K-8. High schools are big and SROs are thinly spread. See Columbine.
HWFO, I don't frame this as "arming teachers." Rather, my stance on this is "Stop preventing responsible adults from protecting themselves and others; y'know, like at the grocery store?"
Furthermore, the foreknowledge that responsible adults at the school may or may not be armed would provide the same deterrent that (likely) prevents many mass shootings in public places in Texas. https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/texas-school-districts-no-nonsense-message
Until you've seen an urban high school from the inside, don't project your experiences into that environment. It's closer to an open-doored jail than it is a university.
I will defer to your experience here. I was not thinking about any specific subset of school, but the specific subset of responsible American adult who is competent to carry and use a firearm. Some of these folks choose the career of teacher. I'm not convinced that preventing these adults from protecting themselves and children (like I would do in my local grocery store if necessary), should lose that right to protection simply because they're inside a structure named "school."
And as a veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom myself, I totally agree that a bunch of us sitting outside schools with Hawiian shirts and slung rifles would be a very strong deterrant.
Yeah, this is my take. My ... ex-brother-in-law (how's that for an awkward construction?) is a current 4th grade teacher, and a former United States Marine.
It's flatly absurd that he can't have a CCW on him in case of emergency.
Proper construction brother-outlaw.
“Redneck problems “?
Typically these incidents are in suburban areas or small towns.
One of the teachers killed at Parkland had a CCW but couldn't carry at school. I have seen accounts that say he was a capable shooter. He died trying to protect students but wasn't allowed to have the right tools.
As for the dude in a plate carrier, an active shooter will simply wait until he is out of position as was the case with the SRO at Columbine or just kill him as was the case with the two officers at Beslan(since we are talking about terrorism). Waiting for police response is also a non-starter. Average response time after the 911 call is 6 minutes while a killer will shoot about 10 people per minute. The only solution is to arm teachers and staff. But screen and train them. Also harden school buildings to give the staff barriers and choke points to hold long enough for the cavalry to show up. Teachers, administrators, custodians and other staff have shown incredible heroism in these incidents but they didn't have the tools to be effective.
That should read “temperament”, not “temperance”.
4) Shut down government schools.
Nashville was at a private Christian school.
Eliminate schools. I imagine this would shift school shootings to some other form of mass shooting.
Also, about as likely to happen as solution one.
Yes and no. It is perfectly true that that was what passes for a 'private' school in the US (which is better than what they call private schools in a lot of countries). However:
1) I don't know her whole history of schooling.
2) Most 'private' schools live in a bubble of Government definition of school and school law. Was it legal for their teachers to be armed?
3) I believe that it is the entire society which produces these shootings, of which a huge portion is government schooling.
I happened to look it up when it happened. No, the teachers were not legally allowed to be armed.
Thanks. I would have ‘liked’ your note, but it seemed contradictory. I have no desire to like such a stupid policy.
In reference to option 2 - I don’t see how arming school administrators disincentivizes suicidal people. It’s obvious that dying is a big part of the point for many of them, which you go on to point out in option 3.
I think you make a reasonable point, but it's worth mentioning that most of them don't end up dying, they shoot until someone returns fire and then they give up. Returning fire quicker should obviously be a part of the overall package.
If their objective was just to die there's plenty of better ways to do that.
They want to go out with a High Score, so people remember their name and their anger at the world.
If the dipshit gets drilled before he can kill anyone, he doesn't get what he wants, and other dipshits will see this and change their minds.
It may very well not disincentivize suicidal school shooters. But it could very well end their attack sooner. It's a multilayered approach.
Great write-up. Great concepts. Would be a shame if these ideas never came to light….
The fact that these sensible and reasonable ideas are never discussed, should point to lack of integrity and political will on both sides.
“Severe action” to adjust the incentives of the spree shooting machine might look something like this, if I were President of the United States… 😂they need the yass emoji on substack
Fantastic article! It's a very rare problem, but one that the antis feel the need to inflate. On Twitter a few hours ago, Amy Swearer broke down the "school shootings" in Georgia listed by Everytown today. Predictably, most were accidental discharges, outside of school hours, in parking lots after sporting events, or involved justified force from SROs. One was a school bus being shot with a BB gun.
This isn't to lessen the horrific reality that real school shootings happen, but most people seem to think that they happen every day in America because of the broad definitions groups like that use. And because of that, I get why so many think that the problem is the hardware (guns). And to your average Sally Housecoat who has never seen a gun in real life that wasn't on a cop's hip, that might seem perfectly reasonable. This is why I try to take any of my wife's friends shooting who will go. I only bring 22s and no targets of humans, and try to make it fun. To a person, all of them have asked about getting a gun after having a good experience with them. Take a lib shooting if you ever get the opportunity.
This is the way, a long process, but definitely the way.
I have a friend who is an NRA instructor and trained a number of his school principal wife's colleagues.