I’m coming back to the armed teacher thing because I was recently flooded with articles by combat veterans on why arming teachers is a bad idea.
I said it before, I hate the phrase “arming teachers.” I do not want to put a gun in the hands of someone who doesn’t want it. I am not drafting people into an army. This may be a semantic argument but my feeling is that any teacher or principal who wants to be armed in school should be allowed to.
I think the semantics are important because the “arming teachers” language has led to a series of articles with a common thesis “I served in combat and Iraq/Afghanistan and teachers shouldn’t have guns because they are not soldiers.”
From Buzzfeed:
Some of the loudest voices opposing President Donald Trump’s proposal to arm “highly trained” teachers to protect students belong to the group that knows best what it’s like to confront someone with a gun: military combat veterans.
“There is a gulf between being taught how to handle a weapon, and learning to fight. Those are two distinct things,” Brandon Friedman, a former Army captain who was deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan and later served in the Obama administration, told BuzzFeed News. “And learning how to fight, how to stand your ground when an aggressor is trying to kill you, that’s not something that comes naturally to people.”
Learning how to fight takes training — military training.
“So in order to teach, now you have to be a soldier? That’s insane,” he said.
“They have this Hollywood view of what a gunfight is like,” Friedman said. “Veterans know first hand (that) until you’ve been shot at, and seen how people react in these situations, you can’t wrap your mind around it.”
This was the same guy who posted this on Twitter.
Americans,
If you feel that you absolutely cannot live without firing one of these weapons, get your fat asses in shape and join the military like I did. #VetsForGunReform #MomsDemand #Everytown pic.twitter.com/2inPJL8nbX— John T. O’Connell (@JohnTOCradio) February 18, 2018
So my ability to own an AR is forfeit because I have degenerate disc disease? What other civil rights should people with physical limitations give up?
From Esquire:
“While soldiers/security are trained to run to the sound of the guns…not all do for a variety of psychological reasons. It happens more often than most would think, and it’s part of human nature,” he said.
As veterans who’ve experienced combat will tell you, no one ever really knows how he or she will perform in a situation like this until they get there. Acting like a swaggering action hero is not something many people can do, no matter how much they fantasize about it.
A school is not a combat zone. Somebody who is a sheriff’s deputy at a high school, a security officer, are they running ranges every day? Is he proficient with a firearm? There is a difference between being proficient with a firearm and someone who is in the mindset in which they are ready to engage at all times. Which takes us right to the heart of this idiocy of this proposal to arm teachers.
Beyond the training one is doing physically, I think it’s always important to remember the training and the great lengths the military goes to to get someone in a mental position to engage someone. We talk all the time about how teachers are dealing with things on a day-to-day basis that require extra levels of empathy. You know what requires no empathy? Shooting another human being. We’d be forcing teachers to go to great lengths to dehumanize their own students.
From Charlotte Five:
Defending children is a must, but putting a firearm in the hands of even the most trained teacher isn’t the answer. Anyone suggesting this solution has clearly never experienced a situation like the one seen in Parkland because it oversimplifies the complexity of an active shooter situation, especially in close-quarters. It is not as easy as a “good guy with a gun stopping a bad guy with a gun.”
I ask that you take a few minutes to understand my perspective and why I feel strongly about this matter. Before recently moving to Charlotte, I served for three and half years as an Army infantryman, stationed at Fort Wainwright in Fairbanks, Alaska, and I deployed to Afghanistan’s Kandahar Province in 2011. By the time my tour was over, I left a place that claimed two members from my company, cost six others at least one limb, wounded over 25 percent of our total force, and left me with shrapnel in my face and a bullet hole in my left thigh. When I saw the news flash of another school shooting I couldn’t help but think of the firefights I had been involved in and how these students and teachers just encountered their own version of Afghanistan.
Regardless of training, you don’t know how people will respond in life and death situations until the moment comes. You don’t know how people will react when they hear gunshots. You don’t know how people will react when the person next to them is shot. You don’t know how a person will respond when their task is shooting someone they know or taught. You just don’t know.
And now we are expecting teachers, even with training, to perfectly handle this situation. I say perfectly because anything less could mean even more tragedy and death. This isn’t a movie where bullets always miss the hero. These teachers aren’t action stars. These are average people, who more likely than not, have never come close to experiencing anything like this.
From Business Insider:
“Shooting under stress is extremely difficult. Even for the most well-trained shooters,” Jay Kirell, an Afghanistan veteran who has written about difficulties veterans face in civilian life, tweeted. “A teacher is not going to be able to do this. Cops & soldiers literally get paid to do this & most of them can’t shoot accurately under stress.”
“Not because they suck, but because it’s nearly impossible to hit a target in one shot when pumped full of adrenaline,” Kirell added. “And if you’re in a school with a shooter and dozens of children, if you’re not shooting accurately you’re just creating crossfire.”
Data compiled by the New York City Police Department underscores the difficulty of firing accurately in challenging situations.
In 2005, NYPD officers intentionally fired their guns at someone 472 times, hitting their mark 82 times. In 2006, New York police fired under the same circumstances 364 times, hitting their target 103 times. That same year, Los Angeles police fired 67 times, recording 27 hits.
Honestly, I think that says more about how shitty the NYPD is than anything else. I wouldn’t hold them up as the paragon of urban defensive tactics when they are encouraged not to practice shooting with guns modified to be more difficult to shoot to prevent accidental discharges because teaching trigger discipline is hard.
From Task and Purpose:
(Forgive me, but Task and Purpose seems like a really Lefty magazine for the military. It may be just a semantic thing, but I have a problem with a military magazine that has a column titled “The Long March” knowing what the significance of that phrase has in Marxist Communism.)
Instead of would-be Rambos, Trump’s logic goes, perhaps it’s those Americans who fully understand and respect the power of firearms who are worthy of safeguarding our schoolchildren. To which a lot of veterans on Twitter responded: Fuck that noise.
https://twitter.com/TheGospelOfTom/status/966664061197934592
By all means, let's recreate the shootout at the OK Corral in our schools, nothing could go wrong with that other than maybe the good guys shooting some kids too. It wouldn't be on purpose though, so they don't count. #VetsForGunReform https://t.co/7EHj8vw3Xe
— Jeffery Anderson (@Jeffery1954) February 21, 2018
No.. no it won’t. I never thought that a prerequisite to teaching would be to know how to shoot and use a gun, and “you must be willing to kill someone.” I am a teacher…. I am an Army veteran as well… and this isn’t the solution sir. Arming teachers with guns.. nope!
— Murry 🌊 (@seagullsquirrel) February 22, 2018
So there you go, multiple veterans from multiple sources telling us why arming teachers would be a disaster.
I am not a combat veteran. I mean no disrespect to the majority of people who have served, but fuck that and fuck these veterans.
This falls in the same family of arguments that I’ve seen made by police against concealed carry and by police and members of the military against owning AR-15’s.
It all boils down to an appeal to authority: “you’re just a shitty civilian, you don’t know how to use that gun under stress, you’ll only make things worse, leave the guns to us.”
It’s an obnoxious as hell argument.
Especially because what I am advocating for isn’t to turn teachers into SWAT teams or infantry units. I don’t expect teachers to engage in combined arms squad tactics.
What I do want is for people who want to be able to defend themselves to be able to to that.
At Virginia Tech, Seung-Hui Cho killed students when he was able to get through an insufficiently barricaded door. Police call a breach like the the fatal funnel. It doesn’t take combined arms training to know to take a defensive position and aim at the door in case the shooter comes in.
Hell, there is little evidence that a teacher has to hit the shooter to be effective. As per the last news I read on the recent Maryland school shooting, it is unclear if the cop or the shooter fired the fatal shot (it may have been a suicide once engaged).
It’s not about bounding overwatch or slicing the pie. Those are great to learn. At the end of the day it’s about self defense.
One of my favorite books, and movies is We Were Soldiers… (Once, and Young). Joseph L. Galloway was a reporter and conscientious objector. When his position was overrun he put down his camera, picked up an M-16 and defended himself.
I will at this point deffer to one of the greatest soldiers of 20th century American History, Command Sargent Major, Basil L. Plumley, giving one of the simplest orders ever given in combat.
(Note that it was Joe Galloway, played by Barry Pepper that the camera cuts to next – just to prove my point.)
That’s the point, this is about the simplicity of self defense. That is a right that shouldn’t be stripped from people.
It’s hard to find a video worthy of following the great Sam Elliot playing CSM Plumley, but if there is any, it’s got to be Clint Smith.
I’ll let him have the final word on this.
The semantics is indeed important — NO ONE is suggesting teachers/staff be forced to be armed. NO ONE.
The crap about joining the military if you want to use scary guns is asinine. What next? You can’t own a high-performance car unless you’re a professional race car driver? Or, if you’re in the UK, you can’t own sharp knives unless you’re a professional chef?
I have some bad news on that last one…
Well said.
I honor veterans. Go out of my way to do so.
Fuck those elitist veterans.
The citizen hero of the Sutherland Springs Texas church shooting had an AR, will, determination, resolve and grit. Steven Willeford is his name.
He is a plumber
Again, FUCK YOU elitist veteran.
Unfortunately the few veterans who spout these anti-freedom statements are getting excessive press. Another example is Ralph Peters, who apparently wrote an op-ed favoring “assault weapon” bans, on the usual nonsensical grounds. I think the op-ed was in some NYC paper; a WSJ piece quoted from it. Just today I see Peters quit Fox because he hates Trump (which should give you a good idea of the broken state of his brain).
I think J is right to recommend being careful with terminology. While it is true that no one has advocated mandatory weapons (unlike the policy in Israel), the terminology is ambiguous and the opposition is sure to take advantage of that.
Peters is selling his opinions to the highest bidder.
And remember, Israel has a mandatory military service (except for the Ultra Orthodox). When you see pictures of teachers carrying guns, those are not private weapons – Israel has some pretty strong gun laws which is one reason I don’t want to live there. Israelis serve two years active, then another few years as reservists with regular training. The woman carrying a gun around school kids is on reserve carrying a duty weapon. An equivalent in the US would be a teacher who is National Guard carrying his/her issued M9 in the classroom.
Bradley Manning is also a veteran. Lee Harvey Oswald? Veteran. Benedict Arnold? Veteran.
Once you start advocating against the rights of your fellow citizens, I don’t care if you served or not.
“Brandon Friedman, a former Army captain who was deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan and later served in the Obama administration” That explains a lot, a liberal.
When did the military get filled with so many liberal idiot pisswits? Back when I served, the military was one of the most conservative places in the world. I saw Marines tear up when Richard Nixon resigned.
“When did the military get filled with so many liberal idiot pisswits?”
Perhaps when the previous admin was allowed, and lauded by libtards everywhere, to use the military as their personal social-experimentation petri dish?
I get a little tired of the insinuations that teachers aren’t smart enough to defend themselves and their students. If you don’t trust me with the tools to protect your children, why do you trust me with them at all?
As for being a veteran, it’s not something I brag about. It’s not like we have actually won any wars in my lifetime.
I LOVE Clint. Even if I don’t always agree with him 100% of the time (and I’ll be the first to admit that when I do disagree with him, I should double check my assumptions, because he is full of clue.)
The reason this keeps coming up is simple: if the argument can turn into “gun = police” or “gun = soldier” then it’s easier to refute. Because of course we’re not trying to turn our teachers into police or soldiers.
The way I’ve been dealing with this one is a simple reminder that violence is not the only potential emergency. For other emergency situations we seem to acknowledge that there are tools that can help non-professionals improve the outcome until the professionals arrive.
We put AEDs around not because we’re expecting people to replace EMS, but because we acknowledge that this is an effective tool that can help save lives until the professionals arrive. Same thing if a fire breaks out. We have both fire extinguishers close at hand for immediate use as well professional firefighters once they can get there.
You don’t need to be a trained paramedic to effectively operate an AED. You don’t need to be a trained firefighter to effectively use a fire extinguisher. So why should you need to be a police officer to effectively operate a firearm in a dire emergency (ie the only time we’re allowed to use one)?
Excellent analogies on AEDs and fire extinguishers!
You’re right, of course. But the narrative is that using a gun effectively is so hard that only “highly trained specialists” can do it. And in addition, that police are among those highly trained specialists. We know that neither is true, but that knowledge has been effectively kept out of the brains of the non-gun-owning public.
Wrote this about training requirements, but fits here. And I spent 12 years in a classroom, and have 3 sons who are marines, so I have some insight on both sides.
You’re exactly right, Miguel.
—
These requirements aren’t there to ensure that the teachers are properly trained. They’re not cops, they’re not SROs – the gun would be used in only one circumstance – an active shooter. In most cases, the training should be fairly simple, but thorough: be competent with how your firearm works, and know how to operate it completely. Know how to use the sights and hit a target and practice it until it’s automatic. Develop a carry method that works for your circumstances. And get on with your life.
Should a shooter arrive, should the unthinkable happen, look for a funnel. Schools are full of doors, hallways, and “fatal funnels.” Use them.
If I’m a teacher, my first responsibility is my classroom. If the shooter is close, put the kids behind any barricade you’ve got, set up on the door, and wait for it to open. You don’t have to be particularly tactical – you don’t have to guard your “six,” or worry about your flank. You only have to guard that door. That is where the threat is going to come. At that point, you actually have a bit of a tactical advantage – take it.
If the shooter is in another part of the school, and you wish to go and engage, then further tactics might be important. But that’s not most teachers. I’m not asking teachers to go out and engage the shooter. I’m asking schools to give the teachers the ability to defend themselves and their students, in their own classroom, should it be necessary.
As I said, these requirements aren’t there to make sure the teachers are properly trained. They are there for the same reasons the left floats out stuff like confusing gun laws, “insurance” proposals, etc.: The goal is to make arming teachers so difficult and costly that no one will want to do it – and then they’ll point to the lack of participation as evidence it doesn’t work.
Clint is the best…this one made me laugh so hard I almost wet myself..
His delivery on a serious topic is great.
As a combat veteran, and one who was fortunate enough to meet CSM Plumley…..I couldn’t agree with you more, and for all the reasons that you’ve laid out; the faux narrative that ANYONE is proposing forcibly arming educators….and holding the scant law enforcement range time, as some sort of Delta Force training equivalent.
Just to quote myself once more
Again on instructors
There was one of these letters to the editor in the Chicago Tribune recently from a Vietnam era vet (wow, is there a trend here?).
I reviewed it with my 14 year old son (who did not walk out for the “rally” on 3/14). We came to the following conclusions:
1) Yeah, I don’t know what it’s like to train for and then walk into a combat situation and I’m not looking for it either.
2) However, if the COMBAT COMES TO ME, I don’t see why I can’t do what I can to prepare for it and defend myself as best I can using the best tools at my disposal.
No one sought out the Parkland shooter to get shot at, he brought his evil directly to his victims. Denying them some sort of ability to counter that is evil in itself.
The point in SELF defense is you don’t know when you’ll need it because someone else likely already made the decision to bring it to you so not preparing is absurd.
They’re purposefully blurring the distinction between defense and policing.
In Chicago this year there have been about 22 cases where a person with a ccw was able to defend him or her self without being in the military or the police. I am not a cop or a veteran but I still have weapons for self defense. I think teachers who want to be armed should be, however the best solution for school attacks is armed security, locked doors, door control by the armed security, metal detectors, outside cameras being monitored. Not cheap, but you protect that which you value most. In this country that appears to be politicians since they allways have armed security while schools get nothing but a sign.
When I hear veterans say join up if you want to learn how to use this is what I hear.
Germans who wish to use firearms should join the SS or the SA – ordinary citizens don’t need guns, as their having guns doesn’t serve the State. Heinrich Himmler
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/heinrich_himmler_201255
And Joe Galloway was not a conscientious objector. He had already done a hitch in the Marine Corps. I remember reading this in the We Were Soldiers book
I was not combat arms nor in the Army. I wore Blue uniform and was part of the 96% of officers in my Service who were in Combat Support.
Our base defense plan depended on the “SP Augmentees” as the outer ring of defense. I was one of its leadrrs. In an emergency situation the PLANNED defensive rings worked like this.
The Security Police (Infantry-lite) guarded the aircraft, runways, flight line shops, and the aircrews. The Air Police (normally small town cops) covered the Bomb Dump and POL Farm. The rest of the base out to the fences was left to the Augmented Squadron commanded by “less” essential officers and staffed by “less” essential troops. It was supposed to be voluntary.
We had M113s with a Ma Duce, M16s, 1911s (dates me), and TRICKERY.
We had prepared defensive positions (which we could’t fully staff) and we practiced force enhancement by playing a version of the street corner Shell Game. Our mission was DELAY and then ORDERLY withdrawal. But we all expected the roll-up to be a fiighting game. And we were ready to shoot and kill if necessary. And die.
Our hope was that our fighting withdrawal would create time for real Army or Marine INFANTRY to save us all. But if not, we fight.
In many ways we were the military equivalent of armed teachers. Used because there were lots of us and we would be THERE to buy time.