The royal palace guards debut their new bullet catcher.[/caption]I am a 6 year veteran of the Navy and a high school English teacher. The only people in my school who have more weapons training than I are a few subs who are retired police officers. I carried a firearm several times a week for years, frequently went to the shooting range, and taught others how to shoot. I also ran force protection for 1/4 of my ship. Basically that means I was responsible for improving the security of our ship and ensuring personnel were properly trained to implement our security protocols. One of my jobs was to analyze the ship's weaknesses and develop methods of securing those weaknesses, or limiting damage caused by a group exploiting those weaknesses.
One thing I quickly learned is that total safety is an impossibility. We had armed guards at every entrance. Multiple layers of security at every access point. We ran drills every four days. Even so, if someone really wanted to attack us, our reasonable goal would be to limit casualties and damage. Total prevention is impossible.
In response to the shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, the NRA is calling for armed guards at all schools. I'm not sure proponents of this idea have thought everything through. First of all, many school districts have been cutting teachers. I'm not sure where districts are going to find the money to hire armed security. I'm sure that you could just eliminate another teacher or two. You know, the ones who are fresh out of school, burning with a passion to help students. That's an excellent trade-off for the illusion of safety.
And an illusion of safety it would be, for one armed guard would not make any difference, especially if the attacker went to the school and knew the guard's location/movements. Do people not remember how many entrances schools have? If someone wants to get into a school, they're getting in. Whom do you think his first target would be? Now your guard is dead and the killer has an additional weapon and more ammunition, not to mention a way to monitor the response via the guard's radio.
You will never make schools completely safe, just like you will never make flying completely safe. Having an effective lockdown protocol seems to me to be the most efficient manner with which to limit student death and injury in the event of a school shooter. If a person wants to shoot up a school, people are going to die; there's no way around that. It's a disturbing truth, but the truth nonetheless.
Instead of proposing surface changes that will perhaps make people feel safer without actually being safer, perhaps we should address things like the deplorable state of mental health care. Let's spend more time and money reaching out to students who are isolated, whether by choice or by their peers. Let's spend more time and money helping students who have terrible home lives. Let's spend more time and money helping people with mental health issues rather than spending it fighting a "war on drugs" that is woefully ineffective, and often counterproductive.
Let's spend more time analyzing facts and applying logic to solve our societal issues and less time relying on knee-jerk emotional reactions.
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