Eugene Volokh
The Volokh Conspiracy
12/14/2012
Imagine that you ran a school district, and some rich foundation, worried about school shootings, gave you the following offer: We’ll hire armed security guards for you, who could try to do something about the school shooter. These aren’t going to be highly trained police officers, just typical security guards, given some modest training and subjected to basic background checks. It’s not like they’re highly skilled; security guards rarely are. But they have a basic understanding of how to shoot, and when to shoot.
They wouldn’t deal with ordinary trespassing, vandalism, and the like, nor would they be at all guaranteed to be effective in the event of a school shooting (who can offer such a guarantee?). But they’d provide someone on the ground who could try to interrupt a killing spree. And the foundation is paying, so it’s virtually no cost to the district. Would you say yes?
I imagine that you probably would. You probably wouldn’t much worry, for instance, that the guard would go crazy and himself start shooting — theoretically possible, to be sure, but unlikely. You’d figure that someone who can defend the school with a gun during an attack (as opposed to the police, who will come in many precious minutes after the attack begins) is better than no-one.
Nor would you object in principle about there being a gun in school, since it’s in the right hands. Just like people who have money often pay for armed neighborhood-wide security patrols, and don’t insist on the unarmed kind or no patrol at all, you’d probably think that this free security guard would probably be helpful.
But wait! The foundation has just learned that its investment portfolio has done very badly, and the grant doesn’t go through. But someone else suggests: Instead of hiring special-purpose security guards, why not take some of your existing employees — teachers, administrators, and the like — and offer them a deal: They’d go through some modest training and subjected to basic background checks, and in exchange they’d be given the right to carry the same guns that the security guards would have had.
Indeed, this way you could have not just one security guard but several (if several staff members sign up). And you might get people to do this even without paying them, since they might value the ability to defend themselves and to not be sitting ducks should the worst happen. (If there’s some union contract or labor law that precludes that, that can of course be changed, if people think this is a good idea.) Maybe Assistant Principal Joel Myrick, who confronted the Pearl, Mississippi high school shooter with a gun, after Myrick went to the car to get it, might have participated in such a program if it had existed, and had let him keep the gun in school.
And no need to call the licenses given to those who participate in the program “concealed carry” licenses, just in case some parents and others don’t like the concept. Just call them “volunteer security guard” licenses, though you might expect that most people who sign up for this will also have licenses to concealed carry on the street. Of course, if a killer does show up, maybe some of these volunteer security guards will just cower in the corner rather than trying to defend the students, or attack the killer. But it seems more likely that someone will confront and try to stop the killer if that someone is armed then if that person is disarmed.
What’s your answer to that? Is there some reason why the armed security guard is safe and helpful, but the armed teacher, administrator, or staffer — er, the teacher with a volunteer security guard license — would be useless and a menace?
Related: “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.”
Update: Media Underplays Successful Defensive Gun Use Burying the lede when a law-abiding gun owner is the hero.
Tolling Remembrance (and Resentment) in Sandy Hook
Today at 9:30 AM the church bells tolled 26 times: once for each of the victims in last week’s horrific tragedy in Sandy Hook Elementary. It was a fitting remembrance of the victims of Sandy Hook Elementary School, and the Governor did well to request it. However, there was one victim intentionally not remembered, for whom no bell tolled, and that was Adam Lanza’s mother. She was shot in the head four times as she lay sleeping, and was all but unrecognizable afterward.
By all accounts she was a mother who doted on her son, who sought the best for him given his Asperger’s disorder. Why did we not remember a loving mother shot to death by her mentally ill son?…
Gun-Control Laws Failed Connecticut Children
Gun Control: A Discussion, Not A Lecture.
Larry Correia, over at Monster Hunter Nation has written an excellent framework of the current gun control debate. Correia, a true firearms expert, takes a systematic, point by point approach in exploring all of the arguments being made by gun control advocates…
Update 2: NRA to Face Opposition from Teachers Unions over Armed Security at Schools
CAJ note: Facebook friend JJ wrote: …Your union would rather see you dead than to give an inch of ground to gun rights advocates. It should also make parents really think…. Nothing says”I care about your child.” like refusing to take a minimal precaution to protect their safety.
Also, This Post is Going to be Very Confusing to Some People
The NRA came out with a proposal to post armed police officers at schools to prevent or at least minimize the next school shooting. The left promptly called the idea nuts.
Turns out, it wasn’t a new idea. President Bill Clinton proposed the same idea in April 2000. He implemented it, too, only to see Barack Obama cut the funding for it.
So, if you’re keeping score, the NRA agrees with a 12-year old Bill Clinton position on school security…
