The heinous attack on Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School demonstrates anew the necessity of arming teachers so they can defend students from determined criminals who come to campus to do harm.
School resource officers are appreciated and are part of security, but they are only a part.
For example, during a February 14 Fox News broadcast, Broward County School Superintendent Robert Runcie said there was a regular police presence–i.e., school resource officers–at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High. He said there are normally two such officers. Yet the events of February 14 proved that a determined criminal can find a way around those officers and when he does, what is the solution?
Are teachers to join their students and shelter in place while dialing 911?
Are they to press desks against their classroom doors and arm themselves with chalkboard erasers, books, or rulers?
All of these are terrifying options because they ultimately mask defenseless – the very defenselessness that results from being disarmed in one of our nation’s most obvious (and dangerous) soft targets.
Consider the horrendous December 14, 2012, attack on Sandy Hook Elementary School. The attacker stole firearms, killed his mother, then entered the school and had over nine minutes without armed resistance. That means teachers, staff, and students hid in fear for over nine minutes with no means of defense until police arrived.
What if just two teachers had been armed?
How many lives might they have saved, even if it took till the four minute mark to stop the attacker?
Even if they did not stop him until the six minute mark, how many lives might have been saved?
The lessons from Sandy Hook cross over to Marjory Stoneman Douglas as well. How many lives could two (or three) armed teachers have saved by greeting the attacker with armed resistance?
An often unsung hero of the Sandy Hook attack was school principal Dawn Hochsprung, who, although unarmed, selflessly charged that school’s armed attacker and was killed. Shame on every politician, city leader, and school administrator who was part of the decision-making process that guaranteed she could not be armed in the event of an attack.
Shame, too, on every politician, bureaucrat, and administrator at the federal level who continues to fight to ensure that other principals and teachers will not be armed in the event that they come under attack.
It is inhumane to demand that educators likewise be sitting ducks.
AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News, the host of the Breitbart podcast Bullets with AWR Hawkins, and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com. Sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange.
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