Ok, so I didn’t teach for very long, about six months serving almost daily as a substitute in the Fairfax County (Virginia) School System. I must have done ok because after a while teacher’s I subbed for asked for me by name if they knew they would be out for a day. And one who was going to be gone for a month got her principlal to get me assigned to take over her (Jr. High) classes for the entire time. Her husband btw was a Lt. Col. in the Marines.
Now, to be fair to Putin’s Puppet I hadn’t served a 20 year career. However, unlike former General Kelly (who Lawrence O’Donnell once again eviscerated last night over his silence during his bosses touting of a new “armed teacher reaction force) I had to maintain pistol qualification during my four years on active duty due to my M.O.S. I qualified Expert (the highest rating) btw. It’s also worth maybe noting that although I grew up hunting I never fired a handgun in my life until at age 26 I went off and became a jarhead. I should also note that while my M.O.S. (job) was infantry I had a weapons platoon specialty for anti-tank work. That meant learning to use explosives to blow things up to create tank obstacles to help slow down/funnel them into kill zones but mainly kill tanks with big ole anti-tank rockets. But even if my actual M.O.S. hadn’t required me to maintain pistol qualification less than a year into my four years on active duty I found myself attached to the Provost Marshal’s Office at Henderson Hall in Arlington, VA. Next to Arlington National Cemetery & across the street from the Navy Annex where HQMC was then located. Ostensibly I was one of the grunts to provide security for the Naval Command Center and the office spaces for SecNav and the CNO but I also stood regular Military Police watch shifts on Post. Over time I’d be only on Post performing and eventually supervising others including actual trained MPs. So like them that meant not just annual pistol qualification but also regular trips to the range at Quantico and the same ongoing training MPs get in general.
While there were some duties/assignments I can’t talk about, most of them are what you’d expect being stationed where I was and serving in a Military Police unit. In addition to regular goings on this was during a time frame when commands in the DC area were on high alert sometimes (for terrorist attacks) because of goings on between us and Libya — this was the 1980s. IOW, both in routine stuff and due to weird conditions/circumstances duties did sometimes include dangerous situations that included dealing with intruders and searching & clearing areas. We trained for such things of course, and even hostage situations. We had a guy born in Bulgaria who made one helluva convincing terrorist during one exercise! Also, while such simulators were in their infancy back then I got a bit of experience in a trailer the FBI had developed that could project images on walls around you and you’d have to deal with sudden threats and “shoot or don’t shoot” situations. So let’s just say that when I went on terminal leave and started subbing in the schools I had some training and real life experience pretty relevant to the current discussion. I’d should also note that I didn’t just shoot a pistol well enough to earn an Expert badge, but really well. Not long before I went on terminal leave I’d actually been recommended for hire by the FAA’s DC SAC as a Civil Aviation Security Specialist, the duties of which included spending stints as an Air Marshal. They are really serious about someone’s skills with a handgun given the particular dangers of an armed confrontation on an airliner in mid-flight and my qualification scores were actually checked out! His boss who worked out of NYC had to meet me before signing off on my hire and as happened in another case years later a federal hiring freeze came up at just the wrong time.
Hence my doing the substitute teaching thing as long as I could (till the end of the school year in June, 1988) in the hopes the hiring freeze would be lifted. The money subbing wasn’t great but the reason I left active duty was because I’d gotten married and she made a boatload more money than I did & her job (at least making anywhere close to what she was making) wasn’t easily transferable to most places where there are Marine bases.
Anyway, to recap I had, at least in the combination fantasy/bullshit world tRump and the NRA and these other idiots live in not only first rate skills with a handgun that were well maintained (btw like many of the guys I went to local ranges on my own regularly in addition to on-duty stuff) but also fresh experience and training in searching for and confronting intruders both on my own and as part of a team. I’ve experienced the real life adrenaline rush of not knowing who/what’s waiting beyond a door or around the next corner. I even while at the Pentagon got some experience in dealing with an alarm during the day when people were in the hallways. However, if there was an alarm from the CNO or SecNav spaces (in which case anyone not standing post at the Naval Command Center locked and loaded and took off running) at least the squids (and civilians too) knew to instantly “make a hole” and flatten themselves against the walls to give us a clear path and shooting lane if things came to that. I don’t care how many drills the conduct in schools, most kids would even if they’d not been instructed to run to the nearest room with a door wouldn’t in the heat of the moment drop and/or flatten themselves against a wall.
Having said all that I am convinced this whole business of arming teachers and/or staff to have an “on-site” reaction force to deal with an active shooter is action movie fantasy bullshit. Even if the teachers/staff get special training. It takes not only training at least of the level regular police officers get but ongoing training and practice. And regular experience, if not with actual armed opponents at least the kind of simulations SWAT people go through. These are specialized skills we are talking about here and they are perishable. Even a few months without special training to maintain them is enough for them to wither to not much better than any schmoo off the street. But even regular LE at least has the regular experience of dealing with the adrenaline rush of walking up to a car not knowing if the occupant you just pulled over was armed and dangerous, or dealing with domestic disturbances and all the stuff regular police officers deal with frequently. Your body and mind works differently when the adrenaline ramps up and it takes experience to recognize it and control your thought practices and actions. As we see all the time with so many police shootings LE screws up all the time. And as Lawrence O’Donnell noted the other night when they shoot most of the time they miss, even when sometimes only ten or fifteen feet away from their target!
Now add in the factor of a bunch of terrified students and fellow teachers and staff, perhaps running around in the halls bumping into each other with arms flying — arms which have cell-phones in them which can be and often are mistaken by LE as guns! Now add in the factor (in the tRump/NRA fantasy world) of several or more other teachers/staff who are also armed. One thing that’s common is for people in high stress situations including LE and even SWAT folks is tunnel vision. Literally. It takes tons of training to overcome it and see the “big picture” — as in not focus on the threat (say a handgun) but the whole person so you can recognize it’s a colleague and not the bad guy! Even combat troops and SWAT trained (and experienced) people get tunnel vision and shoot and wound or kill people that weren’t threats. And sometimes people actually working in concert with them! “Friendly Fire” is one fucked up way to describe an injury or death cause by one of your own people.
Finally, each of these people who in the tRump/NRA fantasy world would be “heroes” and “stop the bad guy(s) will have a certain fact in the back of their minds — LE is coming and how do I keep an eye out for them and drop my gun and convinced them I’M not a “bad guy/gal” before they shoot me? That means they don’t have all their focus on identifying the bad guy themselves and distinguishing said bad guy from students and staff! That brings me to another factor — the awful odds for someone dressed not in tactical gear but in regular, everyday clothes using a handgun (and in terms of practicality probably just a handgun with only the one magazine loaded into it) to take on a shooter(s) with an assault weapon and quite possibly wearing protective gear. Maybe even full tactical gear. Now, if you’re in such a situation even if you have really good training and experience you will be lucky to be able to stand toe-to-toe and win a gun duel. Odds are overwhelming that if you try an action movie hero style face off that you’ll be able to “drill em between the eyes with one shot” or “double tap them in the head”, and even if you do what you’ve been taught in training and aim for “center mass” the odds are still against you, and worse if they are wearing a Kevlar vest. So what does someone with good training who follows it in real life do? They try to shoot from cover, and before THAT they try to find cover and/or a position that gives them tactical advantage instead of rushing full steam to start shooting off rounds. In real life you know what that means? Taking extra time to try and get some level of tactical advantage, or to be even more practical cut down odds that are still against you. Which gives the shooter more time to shoot the people you want to protect!
Think about that. If you have to go up against someone with either a superior tactical weapon to your own, and/or is done up in protective gear and you are not you have to make an impossible choice: Do you, with your heart pounding and adrenaline coursing through your body in a way you’ve never experienced in any training run headlong into a shootout — or do you, as people are screaming and dying set that horror aside for the moment and make the choice to probably sacrifice a few more (or possibly quite a few) to ensure at least a realistic chance of killing or at least stopping/driving away the shooter? Both are lousy choices. People in the military, SWAT Officers and even regular LE have to make such choices every day.
There’s a reason such people develop mental health problems including PTSD.
Having said all that, I haven’t even delved into a whole different set of problems with having a “force” of concealed carry teachers/staff. Unless we go back to the old days when what male teachers there were wore suits while teaching exactly where do they conceal their handgun? And since most teachers are women, would we require them to start wearing women’s business outfits that include a blazer type top over their blouse? Proponents might say well, the teachers can lock up their handgun in a drawer in their desk or in a small gun safe in the classroom closet (if it has one). Like the kids (even grade school kids) won’t know where the gun is locked up — and be able to break in and get their hands on it. They will say, we can provide a really strong, steel gun safe. What about the key? Even assuming they can keep it safe & handy, that’s still a problem. I’ll guarantee anyone reading this has fumbled with a key in a lock when in a hurry. Not even a life threatening one. And anyone (male or female) in a situation where they have felt in danger while walking to their car, or to their home knows what it’s like to use their car or home key in such situations. So, what about a combination lock they say? Well, the kids have their ways of learning the combination for one. And then there’s dialing the freaking combination. It’s common without any stress at all to have to make multiple tries. Imagine having to get it right with the adrenaline pumping because someone is shooting up the school! That puts us back to the teachers/staff having to carry their handgun on their person. Even a large male, even someone like me back in the day (when I was much younger, fitter, stronger, tougher and had much quicker reflexes) could be blindsided and overpowered — especially in the halls between classes when dealing with the regular keeping order stuff teachers routinely do. I could keep going, and others reading this can come up with their own nightmare scenarios about how even with little advance planning an angry student with the help of one or two pals could take away a gun from a teacher doing the concealed carry thing.
So, in my not so humble and in fact fairly informed opinion, as I’ve said and will continue to say, the entire concept is not only DUMBASS but DANGEROUS!
Real life isn’t Dirty Harry calmly walking along into gunfire and blowing someone away with his .44 Magnum. It isn’t Rambo getting his hands on an automatic weapon and spraying lethal gunfire for 30 seconds at a time. Or any other such movie bullshit. Real life is something very, very different. And while I’m sure there are exceptions (who are in need of some serious mental health treatment) that legion of former warriors the President and the NRA seem to believe exists in large numbers (it doesn’t) in the ranks of teachers will tell them that real war is very different than what they see on their movie screens too.
Lots of stuff we see on TV and in movies that purports to be reality is nothing at all like real life. Lot’s of things might sound good and make for one helluva movie script — like arming numerous teachers in every single school. But real life is a very different matter.
The fantasy of some cadre of armed teachers that can “drop the bad guy” is illogical and unrealistic and has no basis in reality. The whole concept is DUMBASS! The whole concept is DANGEROUS.
And anyone that advocates it should be embarrassed at having done so publicly.