As I mentioned in my column earlier this week, allowing school staff members to arm themselves is not an untrodden path. Many schools are already doing it.
The laws of many states already provide that school boards or administrators may authorize specific staff members to be armed. In Colorado, we work to ensure such personnel are very well trained.
After the murder of 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012, the Buckeye Firearms Foundation in Ohio founded “FASTER Saves Lives,” a training program specifically designed for armed school staff. (That stands for Faculty/Administrator Safety Training and Emergency Response.)
It has trained more than 1,300 Ohio school staffers in hundreds of schools in the past five years. In 2017, Coloradans for Civil Liberties brought FASTER training to their state. The Ohio and Colorado programs both raise private money to provide the school districts with training at no cost.
The key is meeting force with force as quickly as possible.
At least six school shootings have been halted by swift armed defenders: Pearl, Miss. (1997, assistant principal); Edinboro, Pa. (1998, restaurant owner hosting junior high school dance); Santee High School, Calif. (2001, off-duty officer dropping his child off at school); Appalachian School of Law, Va. (2002, law students with law enforcement background); Sullivan Central High School, Tenn. (2010, law enforcement officer), and Arapahoe High School, Colo. (2013, sheriff’s deputy on duty at the school).
Rural schools are typically the first to arm staff. That makes sense. They may be a half an hour or more from any possible law enforcement response to campus, and in any defensive situation, seconds count.
According to an analysis by Ron Borsch of the Southeast Area Law Enforcement Task Force in Ohio, for mass-casualty events using a firearm, one person is shot on average every 17 seconds.
Most, though not all, mass shooters kill themselves the moment they are confronted by an armed defender; that’s according to a study reported by the Force Science Research Center at Minnesota State University-Mankato . The difference between an armed response that takes 30 seconds and one that takes five minutes is a matter of life and death.
>At least six school shootings have been halted by swift armed defenders: Pearl, Miss. (1997, assistant principal); Edinboro, Pa. (1998, restaurant owner hosting junior high school dance); Santee High School, Calif. (2001, off-duty officer dropping his child off at school); Appalachian School of Law, Va. (2002, law students with law enforcement background); Sullivan Central High School, Tenn. (2010, law enforcement officer), and Arapahoe High School, Colo. (2013, sheriff’s deputy on duty at the school).
I’ll preempt the impending counter points from the unoriginal and braindead lefty trolls that visit here…
OMG, how many accidental discharges have there been in these events!
OMG, how much has the insurance gone up at the districts with these events!
OMG, how did these plain-jane citizens know whether (weather if you’re a self inflated troll from the North) to act defensively or offensively!
OMG, where the proof!
OMG, Trump tweeted!
For Pearl, the shooter killed two and injured seven, and the principal went out to his truck to get a weapon, then spotted the kid trying to flee, and detained him. Does that count as “halted”?
For Edinboro, after the shooter shot someone, the restaurant owner chased him into a field and shot him. Does that count as “halted”?
For Santee, the kid killed two and injured fifteen, then surrendered to an off-duty cop who happened to be around. Does that count as “halted”?
You picked some goodies. Is this like the way that anti-gun group was counting any discharge on school property (at any time, students or no, active school or no) was a “school shooting”?
I read the Arapahoe story. The deputy was unarmed and it’s not even clear he ever engaged the shooter, as the entire episode lasted perhaps only 80 seconds and the shooter took his own life.
For Sullivan, amazingly two LEOs arrived within two minutes after the first shots although the fellow had been threatening before that.
For Appalachian, there’s different stories from two witnesses. One says unarmed students tackled him, the other says two good guys fetched their guns and appeared about the same moment as the tackle.
Am I missing anything? Owen, did you bother to examine these stories yourself, or did you just cut and paste?