Would armed administrators stop school shooters who begin their rampages expecting to die?
Snow-covered stuffed animals with photos attached sit at a memorial in Newtown, Conn. Tuesday, Dec. 25, 2012. People continue to visit memorials after gunman Adam Lanza walked into Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Friday, Dec. 14, and opened fire, killing 26, including 20 children, before killing himself. (AP Photo/Craig Ruttle)
School systems across the country are beefing up security in the wake of the Newtown massacre that took the lives of 20 young children and six educators, including the principal and school psychologist who confronted the gunman.
(Here is a story on the White House’s plan to meet this week with gun violence victims’ groups, gun safety organizations, gun ownership groups and representatives from the entertainment and video-game industries to discuss ways to stop the next Newtown.)
One response is to increase the number of guns in schools, either through armed police officers in every school rather than only in middle and high schools or by allowing trained adults in the buildings to carry firearms.
Those advocates argue that it was not by chance that Adam Lanza chose an elementary school to stage his deadly attack. He had attended the local schools and probably knew he would face a greater possibility of armed resistance in the middle school and high school.
However, other assailants have targeted schools with armed school resource officers, including the Columbine High killers. In talking to experts on school shootings, they describe the shooters as disturbed young men who expect to die so the presence of an armed police officer on the campus may not matter to them. Their goal is to kill as many other people as possible before being stopped by an officer’s bullet or by a self-inflicted one.
A police officer in every school is costly so state Rep. Paul Battles, R-Cartersville, is proposing to allow school administrators to carry concealed weapons in buildings, school events and on school buses. Battles says House Bill 35 bill is not a mandate.
As posters here have noted, an effective deterrent in Newtown was a locked classroom door. There is a call to fortify classroom doors and to get rid of doors with breakable glass windows.
Rep. Paul Battles, R-Cartersville, has prepared legislation lawmakers could consider when they return to session beginning next week. The bill would empower school boards to allow one or more administrators to carry a weapon at school, at a school function or on a bus. Anyone chosen to carry a weapon would have to complete a state peace officer training course and qualify each year.
Battles said he’d rather have a trained police officer in every school but local boards and the state don’t have the money.
“We went through the discussion process of even possibly deputizing some of the administrators,” Battles said. “We had long discussions about different approaches. We came up with what I feel is the cleanest, most appropriate way for school systems to deal with their inability to provide security.”
The bill does not require an administrator in each school to be armed but provides the option.
–From Maureen Downey, for the AJC Get Schooled blog
Tell us what you think about the site
Customer Care »
Vacation stops, manage subscriptions and more
AJC Services
Sections
Other Editions
Visitor Agreement | Privacy Statement
© 2013 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
109 comments Add your comment
Digger
January 9th, 2013
7:40 am
Bringing pedophilia into this conversation? Freud would love it.
gamom
January 9th, 2013
9:57 am
ABSOLUTELY HORRIBLE IDEA. So in Georgia educators are allowed to beat kids through corporal punishment, are exempt from prosecution for the most part when they do, and now they wanna arm administrators. Will they be exempt from criminal and civil liability when someone gets harmed by the armed administrator? Since they already are exempt from liability in practically everything already.
Freedom Education
January 9th, 2013
10:04 am
We already have laws in GA for administrators and teachers to carry guns in school.
16-11-127.1(c)(6)
(6) A person who has been authorized in writing by a duly authorized official of the school to have in such person’s possession or use as part of any activity being conducted at a school building, school property, or school function a weapon which would otherwise be prohibited by this Code section. Such authorization shall specify the weapon or weapons which have been authorized and the time period during which the authorization is valid;
The Deal
January 9th, 2013
12:10 pm
Opinion piece from Nashville paper on this very topic:
http://www.tennessean.com/article/20130109/COLUMNIST0101/301090114/Gail-Kerr-Arming-teachers-won-t-keep-kids-safer
frankie
January 9th, 2013
2:34 pm
We do not need to arm our teachers, some of them are just as crazy as the 20 year old boy who shot up SH ES… I am in favor of adding more resource officers and even “trained” national guards at all th schools.
The boy got into the school because he shout out the window to teh door..
So replace all the entry doors wit bullet proof steel and glass. Replace all the class room doors with bullet proof steel and glass.
frankie
January 9th, 2013
2:48 pm
I think we need gun control, with aan indepth mental background check, of not only the applicant but cross refereence with recent health insurance claims of uimmediate family members. and the applicant should pay for it each time they go buy a gun and add the bullet purchase to the same regulations you use with gun control.
and then reinforce our schools with bullet proof steel and glass….
and add additional armed resource officers to each school zone..
Rational Person
January 13th, 2013
12:15 pm
Teacher Reader and Spartacus:
Sidwell is a school full of the kids of high level diplomats and government officials (including the President). Of course they have armed guards. Even though it is a Quaker school, those kids would be sitting ducks in terms of being taken hostage. Not only has this country abandoned reason when it comes to the gun violence debate, there are some people that totally lack common sense.
Alfred Mikalow
January 16th, 2013
10:50 am
An Additional and More Affective School Protection Program
The big question is with the procedures we have been using in our schools can we protect our kids from a crazy shooter like Sandy Hook school. The answer is probably not! In 2005 there were two cases where a people had guns when a shooter came into a school. There was also a case where there were two armed guards in one school. In all three cases the people trying to defend the schools were killed and others were killed in the schools afterward.
So what can be done?
There is another approach that most people have not thought of, and that is to take command of the situation with some well thought out preparations that don’t put the children, teachers, teachers aids, secretaries and other school officials at risk but occupy the shooter so he can not do his intended dirty work.
Locked exterior doors with key in and buzz in access front door, would help give the school staff an early warning method. Starting the alert and deterrent system as quickly as possible is very important in making this system or any system work.
With this approach we want to make it so he/they can’t use their guns, then take their glory away, isolate him or her, occupy their time so the can’t shoot anyone, disable, and demoralize them in the process. Occupy them by providing them with task they have to resolve, so they will not be killed and not be able to complete their task, so they will think
It would depend on the layout of the school and other details of the school to see which things would be effective and how much effort and expense would need to be put into each system. But with this approach, a plan could be put together for any school that could be made to work.
There are hundred of other things that can be done at little or no cost. Local parents will have a lot of other ideas and some may replace ones here.
Once it is realized that there is a shooter, a lock would be opened to a control panel. A red mushroom emergency switch would be pushed. (There should be more then one of these locked panels.) All teachers should have a key to the panels and know what to do. Once the button has been pushed ten very bright strobes and very blinding will start going off in the hall system. The strobes in the main halls would have red filters on them. These strobes should be between 200 to 600 watt second strobes (the bigger the better) set up so when they get power, they all flash at different time delays and continuously, one after the other. The ones in any side halls would not have red filters for the kids safety. A red strobe can induce epilepsy in some people. The red filter would be a cheep and very inexpensive long shot. At the same time 7 ea, 125 db warbling high pitch sirens will start going off continuously (count depending on the school layout). 125 db is deafening and you are forced to cover your ears to lower the pain that level will cause. All efforts should be made at this time to lock down the school. All hall ways would be filled with dense smoke or fog. The goal is to buy as much time as possible and detract from the shooters efforts to stop them from doing any more shooting. There is a long list of other ideas that can injure the shooter, or stop him or her from causing any harm. It will take about 5 minutes plus for the police to get there and engage the shooter. Anything that can be done to disarm, disable or disillusion the shooter will be to every ones advantage and make it easer for the police. There is a lot more that can be done for little or no money to further delay this type of person and make them harmless.
If it is winter turn the air conditioning all the way up and if it is warm out turn the heat all the way up in the school. Any thing that can make the shooter uncomfortable should be done.
This would not cost a great deal of money and there are a lot of inexpensive things that can be done to save the staff and kids from a shooter. This appears to be a more aggressive approach, but also would have a lot better chance of saving our kids lives.
This would be the first salvo.
One of the major things that could partly dis-arm a shooter and really surprise them as well as disabling them is to automatically spray an area in front of any exits from the hall system with a mixture of synthetic oil and soap. Most schools have tile or well finished concrete floors. With this mixture on the floors, the shooter or anyone else would not be able to stand. Falling hard as a result of an ice skating slick floor could make the shooter lose his gun/s as well. I feel the soap and oil would be the best approach and easiest to dispense but bearings and or marbles could be used as well. If there are any stairs exiting the area they should be oiled as well.
It would be best to do these things after the smoke/fog with some delay between each added task for the shooter, to use up as much of his time as possible. Then when he thinks he has mastered/overcome the previous task, then hit them with another problem to further confuse and dis-hearten them and slow them down further.
Each door that is an exit from the hall should have a ten key pad and speaker bolted to it to look like a digital lock.. Below or above the ten key pads should have written in black sharpie, by hand ( combination A = 48645, B = 28651 (or any 5 digit number) When someone enters 4 digits there will be a slight delay then a voice will say enter combination B. Then any time numbers are punched in it will respond the same way forever. More time wasted by the shooter trying to get out. These could be made and installed by anyone that can build an electronics kit the circuit is very simple.
One thing that could be done once the oil is down is to electrify the oil if it is made to be conductive. A neon transformer could be used for this. This would also disable him the same as a Tazer.
By this time, if done right, the children and staff should be out of the school and hopefully safe.
Now would be the time to turn the sirens down and the Public address system (PA) up with a recording (made up) of a police radio saying that they had arrived at the school and were entering through the back of the school. Then back with the sirens. But on the PA maybe play some gun sounds.
At this point a cannister of air (not flamable) with the smell of natural gas would start to be released into the halls of the school. After you know the smell is all over the school the PA sirens should go off and a warning of a natural gas leak into the school and everyone should evacuate the school and do not turn on anything that could cause a spark..
If the sprinklers can be turned on without to much damage, turn the fire alarms and trip the sprinklers in the main halls. Setting this up is not very expensive to isolate the hall sprinklers from the rest of the school.
Another thing that may not be to difficult to install would be a large heavy fishing net for decoration if the school could accommodate that in the area where the shooter would be and with a solenoid system in place so the net could be dropped at all points at once, it might be possible to capture the shooter under the dropped net.
There are some more aggressive things that could be done involving a weapon that can pierce most body armor and is silent and can be very effective when the shooter is up to his elbows in other tasks, and that would be a cross bow. This weapon makes little noise so the shooter would have no idea where the bolts/arrows where coming from. The tips of the bolts would have to be special ones that are extremely sharp by polishing them sharp like a leather workers knifes. These will easily go through Kevlar body armor. Ceramic armor is not easily acquired and most likely would not be used.
There are a lot of other things that can be done to occupy a shooter that are not expensive or hard to do.
A lot of planning as to how to get the staff and kids out assuming a shooter makes it in would need to be done. But things like body shields (similar to what the police use for riots) could also be used to help protect the egress operation. Extensive planning is the most important part of this program.
Get ideas from your local area. Once the plan is purposed, many may come up with inexpensive and effective ideas to do or replace ideas used here. The approach is what is important here.
If there are any questions contact me Alfred (Sandy) A. Mikalow III, At smikalow@hushmail.com
antithug2345
January 16th, 2013
11:51 am
I think that administraters should not carry armed wepons because if a little kid gets ahold of it and pulls the trigger and kills him/her self then the parents will sue the schools and then they will say that its not there fault that it happened.