Armed Teachers...Crazy Idea?

A surprising proposal could hold the answer to school shootings

By Ed Kardauskas, CPP, PSP, PCI, CHSII, CAS
Director, Risk Management Services,
American School Safety, LLC

Legislative and rule changes that would allow some licensed and qualified teachers to carry concealed firearms as a last resort defense against shootings in schools are being proposed throughout the country. Is this a form of mass insanity, or an example of the axiom that it is socially unacceptable to be ahead of one's time in the vanguard of a solution that has not yet been embraced as common wisdom?

The best way to examine the issue is to wait until the shouting from proponents on both sides has died down, and then to take a look at the historical facts.

The first and most obvious fact is that the "Gun Free Zone" signs in our schools have not made them gun free any more than the "Drug Free Zone" signs have ended that scourge. Pretending that they do is akin to whistling past the graveyard.

If signage alone were effective, we could eliminate the TSA screenings at airports and just leave the signs prohibiting guns, bombs, and knives in place to manage the risk. Not many folks would be comfortable with that, yet that's the tactic we use in most of our schools.

Law enforcement tacticians who understand the mind set of killers have noted that almost all active shooter cases occur in locations with signage prohibiting firearms, and they are now seriously questioning whether "Gun Free Zone" signs may actually increase danger and invite attack by announcing the absence of effective defenses.

The second issue is that school leaders don't always acknowledge that, while programs that rely on early identification of persons at risk for violence are an important component of an effective plan, they are highly porous and miss many serious risks. There have been some great success stories, and some spectacular failures, with Virginia Tech being one of the latter.

Both the FBI and the Secret Service have concluded that there is no profile of an active shooter, and behavior based screening methods depend on someone noting and reporting actions of concern. The reality is that sometimes people who observe violence precursor behaviors recognize and report it, and sometimes they don't. Another weakness is that these programs are completely ineffective against outsiders who are not in the scope of the screening efforts. It is noteworthy that the majority of the worst active shooter incidents in primary schools were committed by people who were not part of the school community.

Virginia Tech had both rules prohibiting firearms possession on campus, and a process for pre incident risk detection. In an August 2006 editorial for the Roanoke Times, a Virginia Tech Associate Vice President declared, "Guns don't belong in classrooms. They never will. Virginia Tech has a very sound policy preventing same." Tragically, we saw how the protective effect of that "very sound policy" played out in the real world.

The third issue is that nearly all schools have an active shooter response plan that consists of calling 911, ordering a "lockdown" of rooms not directly affected yet, and waiting for police to resolve the situation. Even without considering that many institutions with these plans also have classrooms that don't lock from the inside like those at Virginia Tech, very few have effective mitigation training or equipment for the people in the greatest danger — those in the immediate area of the incident who don't have an escape path available. Left to their own devices, many victims take ineffective action like crouching under desks, and behave submissively as the killer moves about shooting one after another. The accounts of the surviving Virginia Tech students who describe in detail what happened in their classrooms are both chilling and highly instructive and can be found on YouTube.

History shows that active shooters attack victims rapidly once an incident begins, shooting 3, 4, or more people per minute. The offender at Virginia Tech fired 170 rounds in about ten minutes, or roughly one shot every 4 seconds. The May 8, 2009 issue of the Force Science News reported that, in a study of nearly 100 active shooter incidents, Ohio police training academy manager Ron Borsch found that the killers deliberately race to complete their slaughters before police arrive, and do so in a post-Columbine average time of just 8 minutes. He also found that police intervention stopped the killing in just 6 cases out of that group — a 6% success rate.

These facts are sobering. In 8 minutes, over 20 people can easily be shot. The very low successful police intervention rate is due to the reality that very few police agencies can process the calls, travel to the scene, and take effective action within that time frame. It wasn't done successfully at Virginia Tech, even with a full SWAT team on alert, suited up, and standing by when the incident happened. Preparedness just doesn't get any better than that, except by accident when an officer happens to be in just the right place at exactly the right time.

This data also raises another serious issue. One could and should question whether an emergency action plan that fails to limit casualties over 90% of the time meets the legal requirement to provide a safe workplace environment for faculty and students alike.

Putting tools and methods aside for a moment, the issue here is essentially a time problem. The most frequently employed solution almost never has a positive effect on the number of casualties because it can't be brought to the scene and delivered within the offender's operational time frame. Overwhelming force delivered too late doesn't save lives.

When you think about it, we face a similar challenge with fires and medical emergencies, and we address them much differently. We know that a small fire can grow into a very large and dangerous one in the short time it takes for the fire department to respond, and we recognize the fact that immediate action can limit losses and save lives, So we provide fire extinguishers and trained personnel to suppress the flames until professional help can arrive.

In medical emergencies, we know that someone whose heart or respiration have stopped will almost certainly die if we just wait for professional responders, and we provide first aid kits, AED's, and trained personnel to stabilize and support injured and ill people until the ambulance gets there.

Yet when it comes to defending our school children from violence, we seem to have a collective blind spot. The fact is that we lose far more children each year to school shootings than we do to fires, yet very few institutions have an effective mitigation plan for the people most affected — those in immediate contact with the attacker. Not surprisingly, active shooters are successful in killing and injuring large numbers of victims in virtually every school they strike, and unless we start doing something differently, we can expect this shameful state of affairs to continue. This should be a matter for deep concern for administrators, faculty, parents, and students alike.

Mr. Borsch's research showed that about half the successful interventions were by unarmed persons at the scene when the incident began. They limited casualties because their counterattacks were applied right away by people who were already there. As you might expect, not all such courageous actions were successful since an unarmed defender must close to contact distance in order to affect the attacker, while the armed killer can deliver deadly force rapidly and at a distance.

This is a good time to return to the original question — what would happen if the defenders had the means to deliver incapacitating force at a distance, just like the attacker?

Once again, let's look at history. In the Pearl, Mississippi, school shooting, after a number of students were shot inside the school, the principal went outside and retrieved a personally owned handgun from his vehicle. He then held the attacker at gunpoint until police arrived. His actions prevented the attacker from driving to a second school where he had planned to continue his rampage, and did so without firing a shot.

At the Appalachian School of Law, when an active shooter began his attack, two students went outside to their vehicles, retrieved handguns, and confronted the offender, who dropped his weapon when faced with the immediate threat of deadly force. No shots were fired by the defenders.

At the New Life Church in Colorado Springs, an armed female church volunteer used a concealed handgun to engage an attacker who had shot multiple people outside the church and had stormed inside armed with a semiautomatic rifle and about 1000 rounds of ammunition. When he ignored her orders to drop his gun, her defensive fire disabled the attacker, who then committed suicide with no further injury to innocents. The pastor later stated that her action had unquestionably saved scores and possibly even hundreds of lives.

When emotion is put aside and we look at the cold hard facts, is allowing certain qualified and licensed teachers to carry the means to immediately end a classroom killing really so crazy? Maybe not so much. One could make a reasonable case that it's crazier to continue doing the same things that have consistently failed to protect lives in the past while expecting a different result in the future.

What do you think?

About the author:

A former Captain with the City of White Plains, NY, Police Department where he served as the commanding officer of the Uniformed Operations Division, the Burglary Squad, the Crime Prevention Unit, and the Training and Special Projects Division; Ed Kardauskas is a graduate of Manhattan College and the FBI National Academy, and the fifth person worldwide to earn all three American Society for Industrial Security board certifications -- Certified Protection Professional (CPP), Physical Security Professional (PSP) and Professional Certified Investigator (PCI).He currently serves as the Director of Risk Management Services for AmericanSchoolSafety.com, LLC.

Additional Information:

For additional information contact American School Safety: 866-531-6560 or click here to contact us today.

H1N1 Mitigation Update — Be Careful with Hand Sanitizers

Schools are cautioned to establish guidelines in the storage, distribution, and use of hand sanitizers

By William J. Smith
Managing Director, AmericanSchoolSafety.com, LLC

We recently received an email from the parent of a kindergarten student who reported that her child was hospitalized due to the effects of alcohol intoxication after ingesting a small quantity of liquid hand sanitizer distributed at her school.

While at first skeptical of the report, we verified the claim; determined that other similar incidents had occurred; and subsequently reviewed news articles from media as well as medical authorities in two mid-western states.

To heighten our concerns about this subject even further, reports have surfaced of some students in high schools intentionally squirting hand sanitizer gel from school supplied dispensers into soda cans or water bottles or by refilling their own empty hand sanitizer squeeze bottle containers with vodka in an effort to 'get high'.

Hand sanitizer dispensers have become a commonplace fixtures within hospitals, nursing homes and medical offices during the past 20 years; where usage of the product allows for quick and effective cleansing that kills many bacteria and virus germs on contact.

The Center for Disease Control has published guidelines for educators, parents and health providers (www.cdc.gov/h1n1flu) to prevent the spread of the H1N1 virus and other influenzas. The CDC recommends school-based instruction be implemented for hand hygiene that includes instruction on frequent hand washing with soap and water as well as the use of hand sanitizers as a preventive measure in our schools. These gel products generally contain a minimum of 60 percent Isopropyl or Ethyl alcohol although some non-alcohol based sanitizers are available, which reportedly are less effective in killing the H1N1 bacteria.

Given that the predominant active ingredient in most hand sanitizers is alcohol and therefore classified as a flammable material by OSHA; schools must be careful to observe and comply with these laws and regulations as well as State and Local Fire Safety standards for the safe handling, storage, and use of these products at their facilities. Material Safety Data Sheets (MSDS) are available from various manufacturer's of these products and generally available online. Importantly, a Spill Plan must also be considered to address accidental or incidental discharge of the gel, especially near and around automated dispensers in hallways or cafeterias to mitigate the potential for slips and falls.

We believe that educators need to be mindful that any product introduced to the school environment be carefully vetted for any potential adverse usage or consequential effects.

Since there are well documented and potential dangers associated with the unsupervised use and ineffective monitoring of hand sanitizers in schools, we suggest the following measures be implemented to address this issue:

Please contact us if you have other suggestions or practical applications that may be useful to our members and schools in reducing exposures to the H1N1 flu and other viruses by emailing us at: info@americanschoolsafety.com.

AmericanSchoolSafety.com will continue to provide useful recommendations that should diminish safety and security vulnerabilities as they are implemented, but this result cannot be assured; we cannot guarantee that a safety or security incident in your institution could not occur.

Additional Information:

For additional information contact American School Safety: 866-531-6560 or click here to contact us today.