We’ve Been Running a Successful, Years-Long Experiment On What Happens When You Arm School Teachers and Staff

What should we do to protect the children in our schools? We hear a flurry of sound bites from both sides of the never-ending debate. Each side focuses on the narrow point that makes their case in the fewest words. There are good arguments that say fewer good people get shot once a good guy or gal is shooting at the murderer. Another point of view says it’s better if the murderer never comes to your school in the first place. Unfortunately, that argument takes some serious twists and turns.

Both arguments are right, but they offer answers to different questions. What we should do depends entirely on who we want to help. Do we want to make students safer or do we want to feel better and turn away from an uncomfortable problem?

What they say isn’t what they do

The debate about mass public violence doesn’t take place in a vacuum. Our elites solved the problem on their own. Politicians and celebrities have personal security details. Some people might hate something the celebrity said. Some might be angry that a businessman is wealthy. Some people want to hurt a politician because of a vote he cast.

For those reasons and more, wealthy and “elite” people are targets. They live in walled compounds and guarded buildings. They have chauffeurs and private jets. They have armed security for themselves and their families. The elites may say that ordinary people shouldn’t have guns, while living behind the protection of…men with guns.

What works for the rest of us?

What works for celebrities doesn’t work for most of us. We travel to our jobs. We go shopping for what we need. We drive our own cars or take public transportation. We worry about getting our kids to school every day and to church every week. Most of us send our children to public schools or educate them at home. Much of that has changed in the last few decades.

We live in a new world

We can talk to friends around the world now. We can also feel left out and ignored by friends and family. We’ve seen people commit suicide to become posthumous celebrities. We’ve seen murderers kill innocent children so that the killer would get their name in the news. That desire for notoriety mushroomed with 24/7 news and social media. Yes, the world has changed.

We’ve had firearms for four centuries. We’ve had mass media for about four decades. We’ve had social media for a little more than two decades. We’re living in the middle of an unstable social experiment and we don’t know how to live with violent narcissists.

It is hard to protect everyone

School officials did what any responsible people would do. They asked the police to protect our kids from violent murderers. But that’s more complex and harder than it sounds. Students are at school early and they stay late. They’re vulnerable as they ride the bus and when they play after-school sports.

Many schools are so large that it would take many officers to protect them. Many of those officers have said they don’t have the manpower to do the job. There’s about one sworn law enforcement officer for every four hundred people in the US. We don’t enough cops to protect our schools even if they stop doing everything else they do.

What does a solution look like?

The good news is that mass murder at schools is actually very rare. That means most schools will never face an attack. That’s the good news.

Law enforcement officials, however, have put together a few simple facts, and some of those facts are bad news. Murderers can and will kill dozens of victims before the police arrive at the scene. That means an actual solution has to be inside the school before the shooting starts. Defenders need to be physically close to the victims and an attacker.

Law enforcement officers also noticed that about one out of every dozen adults are armed in public today. In most states today, school boards can choose to allow armed staff on campus. We’ve been conducting that experiment for years. We’ve accumulated about 7 million school days where trained and qualified school staff members have provided armed defense. So far, they’ve never had to fire a singe shot.

Can we do better that that?

We’ve learned a lot about the people who attack our schools. These murderers enjoy planning their attacks. They spend years thinking about killing innocent people. I know that sounds sick, but it’s extremely important. Mass murderers usually aren’t afraid to die, but they are deeply afraid of failing. They want to avoid a gunfight in which they might lose. These dedicated would-be killer deliberately look for gun-free zones so they know their victims will be unarmed. Unfortunately, we have been telling these murderers exactly where to go.

Politics is hard

Many school districts have put up signs declaring their schools to be “gun-free” zones. That probably makes some administrators and politicians feel better. It certainly makes mass murderers feel better. They advertise for mass-murderers and tell them exactly where to find the kind of victims they want most.

Could a solution be that easy?

We have never seen a mass murderer attack a school that has a public policy of allowing armed staff. Killers choose to go someplace else or do something else. But life isn’t that easy. I’ve talked with school principals who have armed staff in their schools, but who don’t have the political support to go public.

Let’s take what we can get

We don’t have proof, but what we know makes sense. We know that mass murderers could kill several dozen victims before the police arrive. We think that trained and armed school staff will radically reduce the number of victims at schools. That’s what we learned from simulations and from force-on-force drills. That’s what we learned from attempted mass murders outside of schools. We think that taking down “gun-free zone” signs will also make attacks less likely. So far, we think that putting up a different sign might prevent the attack in the first place.

Do plastic signs make a difference?

The murderer gets a vote. He chooses where he will attack. We have thousands of schools that have never been attacked. Most of them did nothing at all aside from arming teachers and staff. Some of them have advertised that they are defended people with guns. Some plastic signs seem to keep away the murderers. If the worst happens, armed staff will at least reduce the number of victims if a murderer ignores the sign.

Conclusion

The answer you get depends on the question you ask.

• Politicians tell us that gun control stops murderers. The facts don’t bear that out. Murderers get to choose when, where, and how they attack.
• Armed defenders stop a mass murder about once a month. They do that in public where ordinary citizens are allowed to go armed.
• A mass murderer has never attacked a school with a public policy of armed staff. That could be luck, but it is probably a choice by the murderer.

It’s hard to look at public violence and not be emotionally touched. Evil is real and it can be devastating. I admire dedicated defenders. They admit that evil exists and they love our children enough to defend them. We can tell the world what we think right there on the signpost.

 

This article originally appeared at the Slow Facts blog and is reprinted here with permission.