Winds of change

Recently, the theme of  training at my school has been a review of how teachers should be reacting to an active shooter. Our school resource officer was the instructor for the training. He had some interesting facts to share. For example he told us that my county, which is fairly rural, has three people living in it who have pledged their support for Isis.

He also provided a link to the FBI report (pdf warning) on active shooter incidents. It makes for interesting reading.

After the training was over, the floor was opened up for questions. The first question was asked by a math teacher, who wanted to know what the deputy thought of the proposed law that would allow teachers to carry weapons on campus. The deputy replied that he used to be opposed to citizens carrying weapons, because he feared that responding police officers might mistake an honest armed citizen with the shooter, and shoot the citizen by mistake. (The obvious hypocrisy here is stunning: so I shouldn’t be allowed to carry because of your irresponsibility?) The deputy then went on to say that he has since changed his opinion, because the evidence is mounting that armed good guys are the key to defending against armed bad guys. He said that all of the active shooter incidents that he is aware of occurred in areas where the intended targets were unarmed.

The deputy also revealed that, should the law pass, they are looking at a system where selected teachers  would be trained and certified by the sheriff’s office to carry weapons on school property. The sheriff’s department will place locked, secure cabinets at strategic locations on campus. These lockers will be opened by fingerprint locks that are keyed to the authorized teachers’ fingerprints, and will contain a handgun, spare magazines, and pale blue body armor with the word “Teacher” on the front and back. Responding deputies will be trained to look for the body armor before mistakenly blazing away at any armed people who aren’t law enforcement officers. While I have several issues with this plan, this is much better than the “only one” attitudes that law enforcement has had in the past.

In the group discussion that followed, another teacher at my table spoke up and said that this idea made her nervous, because she didn’t think that a teacher having a gun around children was a good idea, because in a shooting confrontation, this children could be hit in the crossfire. I sarcastically told her that I agreed, because after all, it would be better to have the shooter lining the children up and shooting them 20 at a time without having to worry about people shooting at him. The other teachers at the table laughed. Ridiculing these stupid ideas is, in my opinion, the best way to shut the idiots up.

Winds of change, indeed.