What happens when a brave, dedicated, armed citizen fights back against an untrained, unskilled, pathetic coward bent on murdering helpless innocents? The coward surrenders or winds up dead, and the killing is either stopped quickly or never has a chance to start.
Last week at the Arapahoe High School in Colorado a student named Karl Pierson walked into school and opened fire with a shotgun. He fired five rounds, badly wounding a beautiful young girl, before he saw a campus police officer advancing toward him. Pierson killed himself with his sixth round. The incident was captured on video, and lasted approximately 80 seconds from first shot to last.
80 seconds. And the mere presence of an armed “good guy” forced Pierson to stop targeting victims, and shoot himself instead.
This Arapahoe incident, among others, reinforced a belief I already had. My belief didn’t come from watching TV or reading articles. I’m a 19 year police officer and former active shooter instructor. I’ve attended advanced active shooter training, helped train many officers, and played the role of an active shooter in numerous high stress, extremely realistic simulation exercises. I’m also a 24-year Marine and Soldier, a combat veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan. I ain’t no expert on nuthin’, but I have a much better understanding of the active shooter threat than the average person. My years of training and experience helped me form this belief. This belief is so amazing, so earth-shattering, that I expect millions of people to read this, gasp, and tumble over in shock.
Prepare yourselves. Here it comes.
“When a coward is trying to shoot up a school, at least one person already at the school should have a gun and shoot back.”
I know, I know. Pure heresy. I have to be wrong on this. Those who don’t want armed teachers or even armed police in schools must be right. Some of them, like American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten, insist that having armed police on school grounds doesn’t make schools safer (http://wvmetronews.com/2012/12/27/no-guns-in-schools/). After the NRA’s Wayne LaPierre made his infamous “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun” claim, a veritable human wave of legislators and celebrities mounted ceaseless attacks against him and his simplistic belief that armed good guys actually protect the innocent.
Ms. Weingarten and many of those legislators and celebrities must understand this problem better than me. They must understand better than Wayne LaPierre. Weingarten and her allies apparently have vast knowledge of and experience with gun violence.
They have vast knowledge and experience because they went to college. Then when they were done, they went to college. Then after that, they went to college. Some of them were so dedicated that between college semesters, they went to college. In college, they talked a lot. They talked to other people in college, and to college professors. They undoubtedly had many interesting conversations with other insulated idealists, who repeated the same uninformed opinions everyone else had. Then, when these people graduated from college, they went into the academic world, or politics, or acting.
And by golly, their opinions about armed good guys in schools count more than mine. Because they’re educated. And they’re academics. Or politicians. Or actors.
I, on the other hand, foolishly wasted my entire adult life serving my community as a cop and my country as a Marine and Soldier. I spent countless hours on ranges and in training exercises. I wandered deserted streets late at night looking for crimes in progress, and found a LOT. And I spent almost two years at war.
None of this taught me anything, of course.
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