It’s fair criticism to say that some pro-gun advocates are sometimes too ideologically rigid, even about proposals that would not affect defense, hunting, or any other exercise of the right to arms.
It’s equally fair to say the same is true sometimes for some anti-gun advocates. Endangering school safety to score a culture war win is an example.
Fifty-seven percent of voters believe that preventing “properly trained” armed teachers and staff being allowed to defend schools makes schools more dangerous. About a third of the respondents, 30.8%, said that preventing properly trained teachers and staff from being armed makes schools less dangerous. And 11.6% were unsure.
Democrats felt the same way as the public, although by a smaller margin: 48.2% to 41.3%. Independents broke almost the same as the general public: 57.1% in favor of properly trained armed teachers, and 31.6% against. Republicans split 67.5% to 19.4%. People aged 18-24 were the most supportive of properly trained armed teachers, with 61.8% for and 21.0% against.
School Resource Officers
Having armed law enforcement on site at schools for protection is a good idea. Sometimes brave school resource officers save lives. For example, at Arapahoe High School in 2013, when a criminal began shooting in the school library, a sheriff’s deputy hurried down the hallway, and arrived at the cafeteria in 80 seconds. The criminal killed himself when he heard the deputy coming. One student had already been fatally shot by the criminal, who intended to kill many more.[1]
Similarly, in 2010 at Sullivan Central High School in Blountville, Tennessee, the school resource officer held an armed intruder at bay. The criminal was shot after two more officers arrived on the scene.[2] In 2001 in Santee, California, at Santana High School, an off-duty officer was present while dropping off his daughter at school. When the criminal started shooting, he called for backup, and with an arriving officer, cornered the killer in a bathroom, where the killer was reloading.[3]
However, not all law enforcement officers are so effective. During the February 14, 2018, murders at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Broward County, Florida, the infamous “Broward Coward” SRO cowered in the parking lot rather than engaging against the criminal in a classroom building. He even ordered arriving officers not to enter the school building.[4]
At Columbine High School in Colorado, the sheriff’s deputy, who was off campus at lunch when the attack began, fired long-distance shots at the two criminals on the school patio, but when the criminals ran inside, he chose not to pursue. Even after SWAT teams later arrived, and while, via an open 911 line, the authorities knew that students were being methodically executed in the library, the police stood idle just a few yards outside the library, near the library exit door.[5]
At the time, the Columbine responders were following standard doctrine. As a result of Columbine, law enforcement doctrine changed, in favor of immediate counterattack against mass shooters.
Nevertheless, the cowardly commanders of the police response to the mass shooter inside the elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, refused to enter the building, and allowed the criminal to continue murdering students and teachers.[6]
In short, SROs, while beneficial in general, have several key problems. First, because attackers choose to begin their attacks at a place where the SRO is not, there is inevitably a delay in SRO counterforce.
As the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Commission explained:
“… SROs cannot be relied upon as the only protection for schools. Even if there is a rapid response by an SRO, it is insufficient in and of itself to safeguard students and teachers.”[7] “One SRO per campus is inadequate to ensure a timely and effective response to an active assailant situation.”[8]
Second, some SROs, who are obviously in the wrong line of work, prioritize their own safety, while allowing students and teachers to be murdered.
Third, some districts, especially rural ones, cannot afford SROs. Even those districts that can afford several SROs scattered among high schools rarely can afford SROs for every elementary and middle school.
HB24-1310, which is under consideration in Colorado, recklessly restricts school defense only to schools that can afford to hire full-time security guards or pay a law enforcement agency for an officer. Even then, paid security guards or law enforcement officers sometimes go off campus—for vacation, for lunch, or for other duties. The criminal who attacked The Covenant School, in Nashville, Tennessee, in March 2023 picked a day when the school’s security guard was on vacation.
FASTER
Colorado’s FASTER program is taught by the same instructors who train the police, and it trains teachers and staff to the same or higher standards as law enforcement officers in subjects involving school defense.
In the last decade, FASTER has trained thousands of teachers and other school staff in emergency medicine and emergency armed defense.
FASTER training is voluntary. No teacher or staffer should be forced to carry a firearm. For teachers and staff who want training, FASTER offers 26 hours over three days.
Almost all FASTER participants already have been issued a concealed handgun carry permit. Carry permits authorize concealed carry almost everywhere in the licensee’s home state; they also authorize concealed handgun carry in many other states — because of interstate reciprocity, like with drivers’ licenses.
FASTER teaches specific skills for school protection. Legally, schools are said to act in loco parentis — in place of parents. Parents defend their children. Therefore, teachers defend their students. That’s what FASTER participants think, and FASTER prepares them to do so.
FASTER graduates learn the medical and defensive skills relevant to stopping a school shooter from taking lives. FASTER instructors are law enforcement trainers. They teach FASTER classes two of the skills they teach to law enforcement officers: treating gunshot wounds and defeating active shooters.
Part of FASTER training is a very specific subset of emergency medicine: how to keep a gunshot wound victim alive while waiting for an ambulance to arrive.
The other major component of FASTER is close quarters combat against active shooters. FASTER teaches the same skills and techniques that law enforcement officers are taught.
To graduate from FASTER, one must exceed the marksmanship criteria required in one’s state for certified law enforcement officers — such as Colorado’s Peace Officer Standards and Training (POST). The three days of FASTER training make graduates well-prepared against school shooters. The classes do not prepare graduates to perform unrelated medical or law enforcement functions, such as dealing with heart attacks or conducting traffic stops.
FASTER has a perfect record of prevention and a zero record of negative side-effects.
Objections to properly trained armed school personnel
Some critics state that schools are, statistically, still relatively safe, mass murders notwithstanding. This is true, but it would still be beneficial to reduce the number of children and teachers who are murdered.
Other people worry that a student might steal a teacher’s gun. Putting aside the fact that it’s not difficult for a determined person to get a gun somewhere else (e.g., stealing from someone’s home), the risk could be addressed through policies requiring that the gun always be carried on the teacher’s body, or through similar policies.
FASTER trains teachers and staff always to carry their handguns on their bodies, and not to store them in a desk.
Some persons are fearful that an angry teacher might shoot a student. If you think that your children’s teachers might kill your child, if they had a weapon, then why are you entrusting your child to such a person at all? What kind of school district would retain a teacher who was believed to be so volatile that he or she might murder a child, if the opportunity arose?
In any case, FASTER trainees must already have passed a background check that screens for mental health. Further, only staff members authorized by the school administration may carry. The safety record of FASTER trainees is impeccable.
Finally, some against FASTER are merely generalized objections to armed self-defense, as well as to armed police. E.g., “What if the teacher aimed at the killer, but missed and hit a student?” This is always a risk — but it’s a far smaller risk than allowing a killer to aim at his victims methodically. Police officers sometimes miss too, but that is not a reason to disarm the police.
“The police are highly trained.” As described above, FASTER implements the full police training curriculum for the subjects it teaches. FASTER graduates must exceed the standard of the firearms proficiency POST test required for Colorado law enforcement officers.
The head of the Gifford’s lobby has stated her objective: “No More Guns. Gone.”[9] If the lobby ever achieved that objective, and managed to confiscate every firearm in the United States and to prevent illegal imports or manufacture, then school shootings would be impossible.
However, until a way can be found to prevent every incipient school shooter from possessing or acquiring firearms, then laws such as HB24-1310 harm school safety. They reduce the risk that school shooters will be killed and increase the risk that innocent students and teachers will be.
[1] Sadie Gurman, Kirk Mitchell. & Jeremy P. Meyer, Arapahoe High School shooting: Gunman intended to harm many at school, Denver Post, Dec. 14, 2013 (updated June 3, 2016), https://www.denverpost.com/2013/12/14/arapahoe-high-school-shooting-gunman-intended-to-harm-many-at-school/.
[2] Rain Smith, Police Officers Kill Gunman at Sullivan Central, TimesNews.net, Aug. 30, 2010, http://www.timesnews.net/article.php?id=9025899.
[3] Former Deputy Speaks on 2001 Santana High School Shooting, 10News.com, March 2, 2011, https://web.archive.org/web/20160921052503/https://www.10news.com/news/former-deputy-speaks-on-2001-santana-high-school-shooting.
[4] “Former Deputy Scot Peterson was derelict in his duty on February 14, 2018, failed to act consistently with his training and fled to a position of personal safety while Cruz shot and killed MSDHS students and staff. Peterson was in a position to engage Cruz and mitigate further harm to others, and he willfully decided not to do so.” Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Commission, Initial Report (Jan. 2, 2019), p. 96, http://www.fdle.state.fl.us/MSDHS/CommissionReport.pdf.
[5] David Kopel, What If We Had Taken Columbine Seriously? The political discourse since the killings last year has been foolish, escapist, and cowardly, The Weekly Standard, Apr. 24, 2000, https://davekopel.org/2A/Mags/WhatIfWeHadTakenColumbineSeriously.htm.
[6] U.S. Dep’t of Justice, Office of Community Oriented Policing Services, Critical Incident Review: Active Shooter at Robb Elementary School, https://cops.usdoj.gov/uvalde.
[7] Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Commission, p. 97
[8] Id., p. 100.
[9] Philip Elliott, “No More Guns. Gone”: Why Gabby Giffords Isn’t Giving Up, Time, Apr. 26, 2023, https://time.com/6274979/gabby-giffords-gun-control/.