There are many wild and hungry tigers living near your home and preying on your children. What’s the best way to protect your cubs: declaw your tigers or equip your home with bulky defenses so they can’t enter and if they do, they’re trapped and dead?
This is the fundamental question that has been tragically raised again in the wake of the bloody massacre at a Christian elementary school in Tennessee. Anti-gun media discussants, Democratic legislators, government officials, teachers union leader Randi Weingarten, and Democratic gun advocates in general are as usual insisting that the only way to stop these horrific attacks is to declaw tigers – that is, pass more laws to restrict them. possession of a weapon. They stubbornly refuse to face the reality that a mad shooter will always find a way to get a gun – in the case of the Nashville killer, there are seven of them. When a tiger comes to the door, the only defense is to make sure the animal does not get inside and murder innocent people.
We know how to do it; the killers showed us. Mass murderers may be crazy, but they are not stupid. Much like the Nashville shooter chose not to hit a school because it had “too much security,” most killers will deliberately avoid a target where they could be killed by an armed defender before they can carry out their intended carnage.
Similarly, the Aurora, Colorado, movie theater shooter who killed 12 people and injured 70 in 2012 clearly stated that he was looking for a movie theater with a “Gun Free Zone” sign, while avoiding other movie theaters closer to where he lived that did not have that sign. . Almost all massacres – whether in schools, churches or shopping malls – have this fatal sign in common.
It is unclear whether Covenant School had such a sign. However, we know that the shooter is likely to avoid a protected target, such as an armed guard, such as a retired veteran volunteer, or a school employee working for the local police force. Or a school with armed staff who can put up immediate resistance.
Nashville police were praised for taking only 14 minutes to respond, yet even this quick action cost the lives of six people. During the 2018 massacre at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, the killers murdered 14 students (9 of them under the age of 15) and three staff members in less than 7 minutes: seventeen the souls disappeared completely in just a few moments.
The key to fewer child deaths is the faster response time of armed staff who are on standby at the school at all times.
To the dismay of gun phobics and gun grabbers, this means well-trained school personnel – teachers, janitors, administrators – carrying concealed weapons. But won’t the kids snatch their guns and spray the classroom with warm lead? Or maybe an irritated teacher calls out an irritating student for breaking a rubber band?
Well, no. Colorado is one of 32 states where teachers and staff can protect children with concealed firearms. Laura Carno is the executive director of FASTER Colorado, a nonprofit that trains school personnel on how to keep schools protected. FASTER is an acronym for Safety and Emergency Response Training for Faculty/Administrators, launched in Ohio after the 2012 attack in Sandy Hook, Connecticut, in which a shooter murdered 20 children and six teachers. Carno brought the training to Colorado about seven years ago, and the number of trained school employees has now grown to 300 in 41 of the state’s 178 school districts.
In these seven years, there has never been an incident of an accidental fire or an intruder intent on murder entering the school with a firearm. With approximately 10% of Colorado’s population being long-time concealed carry permit holders, there are plenty of volunteers in schools for the FASTER program, which employs dynamic-duty law enforcement trainers with SWAT experience. About 40% of FASTER program participants are teachers, and 60% are principals, superintendents, waitresses, school nurses or janitors.
Within days of the tragedy at the Covenant school, Carno heard from about 10 fresh school districts in Colorado interested in her program. People seem to be looking beyond gun control laws and focusing on common-sense concepts that can keep children protected. “The closer armed personnel are to the beginning of a violent event, the sooner it will be stopped and the fewer people will die. Since killers don’t know which staff members are armed, that in itself is a huge deterrent,” Carno says. “Every time this terrible shooting occurs, more and more school board members and superintendents decide that they need to do something to protect children.” Carno approves of the school resource specialist (SRO) concept, but notes, “Armed personnel are a free or low-cost supplement to SROs because one or two SROs cannot serve an entire school.” The FASTER program offers financial assistance.
Reports indicate that the concept of well-trained and armed volunteer school staff is gaining popularity. After Parkland, a special commission reviewing the carnage recommended that every middle and high school in Florida be equipped with an armed school resource officer and that a program allowing trained teachers to carry concealed weapons be greatly expanded. A similar recommendation was made in a report by the Federal School Safety Commission (2018).
In predictable contrast, the National Education Association, the American Federation of Teachers, and gun control organizations (e.g. Everytown for Gun Safety Support Fund) are strongly opposed to gun control teachers.
These organizations are not supporters of the Second Amendment. Political ideology often determines trust or distrust in firearms for school safety. A 2021 Pew Research survey found that 66% of Republicans support allowing teachers and school officials to carry guns in K-12 schools, while only 24% of Democrats support it. What a shock.
However, a 2022 Rasmussen survey found that Americans support armed teachers in stopping school shootings by a 49-37% margin; which is a significant escalate from a 2018 survey when Americans were opposed (43% in favor to 48%). Importantly, adults with children at home supported armed school staff by as much as 57%.
Yet the anti-gun madness syndrome has become firmly entrenched in radical union boss Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers. She insists her union members don’t even want the right to defend themselves, even though brave teachers from Columbine to Parkland and now Covenant have died trying to protect their children. “Teachers don’t want to be armed; we want to teach,” she complained. “We would never have had the knowledge to be sharpshooters…” The dead, like the headmaster of Covenant School, may disagree.
There has never been a more disgusting display of a union that places crude political alliances above human lives and, by extension, children’s lives. During the next election, parents must remember that teachers’ unions support leftist causes and Democratic candidates the most. Make sure you know where school board candidates stand when it comes to protecting children from predatory tigers.
Joy Overbeck is a Colorado-based journalist and author whose work has been published in Townhall, American Thinker, The Washington Times, The Federalist, Daily Caller, Complete Colorado and elsewhere. Follow her on Facebook and Twitter @joyoverbeck1
