Wall Street Journal - May 21, 1999
Arm Teachers To Stop Shootings
By Massad Ayoob, director of the Lethal Force Institute in Concord, N.H., which trains police officers and military personnel in self-defense techniques.
The echoes had barely faded from the gunfire at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., before the gun-control lobby began shouting for more restrictive laws, a chorus that is sure to grow in the wake of yesterday's shooting in Conyers, Ga., in which six students were wounded.
This week the Senate responded, approving a measure that would require handguns to be sold with child-safety devices as well as mandatory background checks for gun sales at gun shows and pawn shops. What will these bills do to prevent a mass murder like the one in Colorado? Not much. But one of the few immediate steps that could stop killers in the school yard is deemed beyond the pale. I'm referring to arming schoolteachers.
To many people, that suggestion sounds absurd; gentle molders of young minds should not carry lethal weapons. Yet there is good precedent for the idea. In Israel armed teachers are common, and terrorist attacks at schools nonexistent. Indeed, it was only during a 1997 visit by Israeli schoolgirls to the "Island of Peace" along the Jordanian border, in which the teachers had been asked to leave their weapons behind, that an Arab gunman took advantage of an easy opportunity to open fire, killing seven children and wounding another six.
Similar precedents exist in the U.S. In 1997, 16-year-old Luke Woodham entered Pearl High School in Pearl, Miss., armed with his estranged father's hunting rifle and dozens of cartridges. When Woodham opened fire, vice principal Joel Myrick sprinted to the parking lot, grabbed a Colt .45 automatic pistol from his truck and forced the gunman to surrender by pointing the gun at his head. This limited the casualties to two students killed and seven wounded. In 1998, Andrew Wurst, 14, opened fire on an eighth-grade graduation dance in Edinboro, Pa. The owner of the banquet hall where the dance was being held grabbed a shotgun from his office and quickly confronted Wurst, who dropped his gun. The toll was thus limited to one slain teacher and two wounded students.
The Columbine massacre brought to eight the number of highly publicized "school shootings" in recent years. Of these, two were brought to an end by responsible adults who had access to weapons of their own. Another two--in Jonesboro, Ark., and Bethel, Alaska--ended with no further bloodshed after armed police arrived and confronted the killers at gunpoint. Three more incidents concluded when the perpetrators were forcibly confronted by brave individuals acting without the benefit of a gun. Finally, it should be noted that the Columbine killers turned their guns on themselves almost as soon as they realized a SWAT team was in the building and closing in on them.
Those who are aghast at the thought of arming school personnel say that the presence of an armed school officer made no difference in the Littleton tragedy. They are wrong. The officer, a Jefferson County deputy sheriff, engaged the gunmen very early in the shooting. Firing at a distance of some 70 yards (almost three times the range at which police qualify with their pistols), and armed only with a 9mm handgun, the officer was nonetheless able to keep the better-armed killers at bay long enough to reduce the death toll significantly.
It is true, however, that if the school officer had not been initially alone the assailants may well have been more effectively confronted. If, for example, Dave Sanders, the brave teacher who was killed trying to save his students, had been armed and trained. he might have been able to put an end to the violence and save his own life in the bargain.
To be sure, arming school personnel does not by itself guarantee an end to school violence; any long-term solutions must embrace a variety of measures, and not just pat answers such as banning violent movies, videogames or guns. But in the near term, trained and responsible adults armed with concealed weapons and likely to be in a position to interdict potential gunmen are in fact a viable solution.
This is not as drastic a measure as it may seem. No school has its own fire-fighting battalion on the grounds, but all adult employees of the school know how to operate fire extinguishers and supervise an orderly fire drill. A school nurse is generally on hand, but virtually all teachers and school administrators have learned basic first aid and CPR. It is but a small step from here to train school personnel in the use of firearms, and to arm at least some of them.
For the concept to work, armed teachers would have to be volunteers who pass strict psychological testing, and go through at least as much training in firearms and the judicious use of deadly force as current laws demand of armed security guards. The weapons would have to be discreetly concealed, and which personnel are armed should be revealed only on a need-to-know basis. Yes, professional educators carrying lethal weapons is probably unthinkable to some. But previously unthinkable dangers can sometimes only be neutralized by previously unthinkable defenses.