As a teacher, we are spending the month training on active shooters. Here a link to an article that we have been asked to read as a part of that training. I want you to read the money quote:
“Never call an unarmed man ‘security’,” Grossman said, “Call him ‘run-like-hell-when-the-man-with-the-gun-shows-up’ but never call an unarmed man security.”
The article talks about having redundant, overlapping layers of security. It talks about how this approach to fires has resulted in a 50 year period in which not one school child has died in a fire. Not one.
One of the points mentioned in the article are:
Armed citizens can help. Think United 93. Whatever your personal take on gun control, it is all but certain that a killer set on killing is more likely to attack a target where the citizens are unarmed, rather than one where they are likely to encounter an armed citizen response.
Banks have armed guards to protect your money, why don’t we have armed guards to defend our children?
In Florida, if a school decides that they want to hire armed guards, they cannot. It is against the law. If a school wants to allow teachers to be armed, they cannot. It is against the law.
The only option that schools have is an armed police officer on campus. That is NOT defense in depth. It is not redundant.
Yet the schools, and parents, scream that arming teachers would be wrong. They claim that no one should be permitted to have guns around children. They never mention what happens when someone ignores that law, and begins shooting kids.
Now I am not suggesting that we arm ALL teachers, but if just a few teachers, volunteers, were to undergo the training, doesn’t it make sense to arm them?
I became a teacher after I retired from over 20 years as a firefighter and paramedic, where I spent part of my career working with the SWAT team. I spent years as an IDPA competitor, and I am a military veteran. I have carried a concealed weapon for more than 25 years. A permit that has allowed me to carry a weapon into McDonald’s, Disney, public parks, streets and sidewalks. Not once have I used that weapon in a threatening or illegal manner. I have not even had a traffic ticket in more than a decade.
I have spent more than 30 years wearing one uniform or another, defending the people who could not defend themselves, saving lives, and helping others. In that time, I have had dozens of background checks for security clearances, teaching, firefighting, and paramedic licenses, as well as for concealed weapons permits. Again and again over the past three decades, I have proven my character, my devotion, and my trustworthiness.
I would, if necessary, lay down my life in defense of the children that have been placed in my care. Even in Kindergarten. Possibly YOUR children, if you are reading this.
Except the politicians have declared that I am not permitted to do so, because they don’t trust me. So instead, I must sit in the dark, unarmed, unable to protect those children, hiding and waiting for help that may not come, wait with your children to die at the hands of a madman who didn’t obey your laws or your signs.
