OGM,
I've been around a lot of soldiers for a long time, and about the last people I'd want in a gunfight around a bunch of kids are typical service members. You see, contrary to popular opinion, they actually get very little firearms training - and even less with pistols. Some of the scariest people I know with firearms (as far as being careless is concerned) are soldiers - followed closely by many cops, I might add.
ANYONE carrying a firearm around a school needs to be a volunteer, first of all - paid or not. And they need some good training too IMHO. Soldiers are trained for no holds barred combat, which is not the kind of mindset I'd want let loose in a school hallway or classroom. Good defensive firearms training emphasizes target identification and target discrimination - collateral damage is not acceptable in this environment. Soldiers are not trained on a 'hot range' as a rule, and most don't carry loaded firearms all that often, unless they are part of the 10% or less of the "teeth" that make up actual fighting forces.
For just one example, take a look at this incident, as reported by one of the nation's leading defensive firearms trainers (and former active duty Marine), John Farnam:
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Just Pretending?
15 July 12
Are we training, or just pretending?
At a Defensive Handgun/Urban Rifle Program recently, one of my students was a strapping, young Marine E5 with a half-decade of active service. His learning attitude was excellent. He was there on his own dime, and anxious to learn everything he could. As a Marine Infantry Officer (Ret), I am so glad to see such fine, young men continue to be attracted to the Corps!
As I unapologetically explained to the Class that we boldly run a hot range, he nodded his head in agreement, but that is where our communication got muddled!
He conceded that he did not carry concealed as a regular practice. Nearly all of the rest of my students do. He was using a borrowed pistol (G21). He bragged about the way his recon unit used 1911 pistols to great effect, but curiously he was unable to produce a copy of his own.
In any event, when he arrived at the range the morning of the second day, he put on his holster and pistol. At a distance, I watched him insert a magazine into the pistol, but he failed to chamber a round, as he had been instructed to do.
I decided to let it go, as the learning-point would likely arrive shortly.
It did!
During our first drill, he drew his G21 and pressed the trigger. It was obvious to all that he fully expected it to fire. Instead, of course, it went "click!" Mystified, he paused and looked at it. He finally ran the slide and belatedly started the drill.
I grabbed his shoulder and stopped him. I pointed out to him that he had been carrying an unloaded pistol all morning, and, had our drill been a real fight, he probably would have been killed, and for a really stupid reason!
I continued:
"In what passes for 'training' you've become far too accustomed to carrying around unloaded guns, my friend. You claim to be an Operator, yet you don't even carry a gun as a regular practice, and you're obviously not traveling with one.
Well, the rest of us do, and we expect you to come to the party.
Around here, we don't holster empty guns. We don't 'pretend,' and we need you to stop pretending too!
Marine, you may be dynamite in a gunfight that is scheduled and part of a ' plan,' but what is going to happen to you when you get involved in an ' unscheduled' fight, on the way to the 'planned' one?"
To his credit, he graciously acknowledged the unhappy gap in his habit repertoire.
It has improved slightly over the past forty years, but today Soldiers and Marines, even from "elite" units, still receive no instruction in personal readiness. They run guns now and then, but don't carry loaded weapons, even blades, regularly. On those rare occasions when they do carry, all guns are routinely unloaded. This is currently true, even in areas of active fighting!
My student, at the price of a little personal embarrassment, learned this important lesson about personal readiness. The vast majority of his colleagues haven't, probably never will, nor will they even think about it... until it's too late!
The term "readiness" casually rolls of the lips of generals and politicians alike, yet it has never been practiced on a personal basis, at least during the past half-century. Instead, we unwittingly teach Soldiers and Marines how to get killed, as we see.
Anyone remember Ft Hood?
We desperately need courageous leaders, political and military (the kind we once had!), to boldly step forward and start taking "readiness" literally.
In my small corner of the Universe, I passionately, joyfully do what I can!
"Argue for your limitations, and they're yours"
Boehlen
/John (
http://www.defense-training.com/quips/2012/15July12.html)
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A blog post from Larry Correia has pretty well gone viral lately, and part of it describes what's necessary pretty well IMHO...
http://larrycorreia.wordpress.com/2012/12/20/an-opinion-on-gun-control/
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Armed Teachers
So now that there is a new tragedy the president wants to have a “national conversation on guns”. Here’s the thing. Until this national conversation is willing to entertain allowing teachers to carry concealed weapons, then it isn’t a conversation at all, it is a lecture.
Now when I say teachers carrying concealed weapons on Facebook I immediately get a bunch of emotional freak out responses. You can’t mandate teachers be armed! Guns in every classroom! Emotional response! Blood in the streets!
No. Hear me out. The single best way to respond to a mass shooter is with an immediate, violent response. The vast majority of the time, as soon as a mass shooter meets serious resistance, it bursts their fantasy world bubble. Then they kill themselves or surrender. This has happened over and over again.
Police are awesome. I love working with cops. However any honest cop will tell you that when seconds count they are only minutes away. After Colombine law enforcement changed their methods in dealing with active shooters. It used to be that you took up a perimeter and waited for overwhelming force before going in. Now usually as soon as you have two officers on scene you go in to confront the shooter (often one in rural areas or if help is going to take another minute, because there are a lot of very sound tactical reasons for using two, mostly because your success/survival rates jump dramatically when you put two guys through a door at once. The shooter’s brain takes a moment to decide between targets). The reason they go fast is because they know that every second counts. The longer the shooter has to operate, the more innocents die.
However, cops can’t be everywhere. There are at best only a couple hundred thousand on duty at any given time patrolling the entire country. Excellent response time is in the three-five minute range. We’ve seen what bad guys can do in three minutes, but sometimes it is far worse. They simply can’t teleport. So in some cases that means the bad guys can have ten, fifteen, even twenty minutes to do horrible things with nobody effectively fighting back.
So if we can’t have cops there, what can we do?
The average number of people shot in a mass shooting event when the shooter is stopped by law enforcement: 14. The average number of people shot in a mass shooting event when the shooter is stopped by civilians: 2.5. The reason is simple. The armed civilians are there when it started.
The teachers are there already. The school staff is there already. Their reaction time is measured in seconds, not minutes. They can serve as your immediate violent response. Best case scenario, they engage and stop the attacker, or it bursts his fantasy bubble and he commits suicide. Worst case scenario, the armed staff provides a distraction, and while he’s concentrating on killing them, he’s not killing more children.
But teachers aren’t as trained as police officers! True, yet totally irrelevant. The teacher doesn’t need to be a SWAT cop or Navy SEAL. They need to be speed bumps.
But this leads to the inevitable shrieking and straw man arguments about guns in the classroom, and then the pacifistic minded who simply can’t comprehend themselves being mandated to carry a gun, or those that believe teachers are all too incompetent and can’t be trusted. Let me address both at one time.
Don’t make it mandatory. In my experience, the only people who are worth a darn with a gun are the ones who wish to take responsibility and carry a gun. Make it voluntary. It is rather simple. Just make it so that your state’s concealed weapons laws trump the Federal Gun Free School Zones act. All that means is that teachers who voluntarily decide to get a concealed weapons permit are capable of carrying their guns at work. Easy. Simple. Cheap. Available now.
Then they’ll say that this is impossible, and give me all sorts of terrible worst case scenarios about all of the horrors that will happen with a gun in the classroom… No problem, because this has happened before. In fact, my state laws allow for somebody with a concealed weapons permit to carry a gun in a school right now. Yes. Utah has armed teachers. We have for several years now.
When I was a CCW instructor, I decided that I wanted more teachers with skin in the game, so I started a program where I would teach anybody who worked at a school for free. No charge. Zip. They still had to pay the state for their background check and fingerprints, but all the instruction was free. I wanted more armed teachers in my state.
I personally taught several hundred teachers. I quickly discovered that pretty much every single school in my state had at least one competent, capable, smart, willing individual. Some schools had more. I had one high school where the principal, three teachers, and a janitor showed up for class. They had just had an event where there had been a threat against the school and their resource officer had turned up AWOL. This had been a wake up call for this principal that they were on their own, and he had taken it upon himself to talk to his teachers to find the willing and capable. Good for them.
After Virginia Tech, I started teaching college students for free as well. They were 21 year old adults who could pass a background check. Why should they have to be defenseless? None of these students ever needed to stop a mass shooting, but I’m happy to say that a couple of rapists and muggers weren’t so lucky, so I consider my time well spent.
Over the course of a couple years I taught well over $20,000 worth of free CCW classes. I met hundreds and hundreds of teachers, students, and staff. All of them were responsible adults who understood that they were stuck in target rich environments filled with defenseless innocents. Whether they liked it or not, they were the first line of defense. It was the least I could do.
Permit holders are not cops. The mistake many people make is that they think permit holders are supposed to be cops or junior danger rangers. Not at all. Their only responsibility is simple. If someone is threatening to cause them or a third person serious bodily harm, and that someone has the ability, opportunity, and is acting in a manner which suggest they are a legitimate threat, then that permit holder is allowed to use lethal force against them.
As of today the state legislatures of Texas, Tennessee, and Oklahoma are looking at revamping their existing laws so that there can be legal guns in school. For those that are worried these teachers will be unprepared, I’m sure there would be no lack of instructors in those states who’d be willing to teach them for free.
For everyone, if you are sincere in your wish to protect our children, I would suggest you call your state representative today and demand that they allow concealed carry in schools.
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