{"id":93408,"date":"2023-06-05T17:05:54","date_gmt":"2023-06-05T22:05:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=93408"},"modified":"2023-06-05T17:05:54","modified_gmt":"2023-06-05T22:05:54","slug":"93408","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=93408","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

Frightened Politicians Leave Students at Risk<\/a><\/p>\n

How good is good enough when it comes to protecting our children in school? One extreme view says that Superman who stops bullets with his bare hands is barely qualified to protect our children. The opposite extreme says that anyone who isn\u2019t in jail should be qualified to act as an armed guard for our kids. One argument asks for quality while the other asks for quantity. While we are busy debating, mass-murderers are still stalking our children at school. We can stop mass-murderers if we\u2019re willing to face a few truths.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

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Security for them<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Do armed defenders belong in schools?<\/strong>\u00a0Celebrities and politicians protect their children with armed security. Our children are as valuable as the children of those rich elites. Unfortunately, the typical American child goes to school in a publicly-declared, \u201cgun-free zone.\u201d Since the attack at Sandy Hook Elementary School a decade ago, some school districts have taken a different approach. They authorized thousands of school staff to become trained volunteer first responders to protect our students. Each of those armed defenders have taken days of training in the safe and effective use of firearms. They learned trauma care and emergency response. We\u2019ve trained volunteers in 20 states and in over 300 school districts.\u00a0Those armed defenders<\/a>\u00a0have been protecting students for millions of hours.<\/p>\n

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first responders in school<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

That sounds good, but it isn\u2019t nearly enough. In the last year, we saw 30 people shot and killed by\u00a0mass-murderers attacking schools.<\/a>\u00a0In contrast, we\u2019ve never had an attack at a school with a publicized program of armed school staff. In the decade since these programs began, not a single student has died because a trained volunteer defender was negligent with a firearm at school. (I\u2019m not aware of a single injury of any kind, but we\u2019re comparing deaths rather than wounds.) No mass-murders. No accidental firearms-related deaths.<\/p>\n

That 30-to-zero ratio tells us lot. Our armed defenders were wonderfully effective at stopping attacks at school, usually without touching their firearm! By a ratio of 30-to-zero, our students were murdered because there wasn\u2019t a volunteer armed defender to protect them when they needed it. We should not abandon our children to mass-murderers.<\/p>\n

Do we need better defenders or do we need more defenders?<\/strong>\u00a0The higher the testing standards, the stricter the requirements, the fewer volunteer first responders we have in our schools. Until there is a volunteer defender in every school, our standards are too high. We should relax the qualifications until there is a defender in every hallway. When seconds count, quantity has a quality of its own.<\/p>\n

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First responder training in Colorado<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

An ordinary volunteer in the classroom is a better defender<\/strong>
\n<\/strong>than a certified professional who arrives too late.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Some states don\u2019t allow armed staff at school. Several states like Florida and Texas require that armed defenders in school take classes typically taught in the police academies. The volunteer defenders then have to renew their academy training every year. That sounds good, but it hasn\u2019t worked as planned. Those requirements have too few volunteers and leave too many schools unprotected. Witness the mass murders of undefended school children in Florida and Texas.<\/p>\n

Those stringent requirements for armed school staff <\/strong>were chosen in legislative committees because they were easy for politicians to explain to the public in a soundbite.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve taken training classes with these school defenders. Believe me that every single one of them fears making a mistake and injuring an innocent person. Politicians and the media may not give us credit, but our neighbors have weighed that concern as well. Of\u00a0parents with children in school<\/a>, nearly half (49%) wanted their children protected by armed staff rather than leaving them undefended.<\/p>\n

That still leaves roughly 40% of parents who feared having a few armed defenders at school. Some teachers fear having different opinions in the teacher\u2019s lounge. Some school boards fear hard questions from the public. If volunteer defenders can face a murderer\u2019s bullet, then we can face those fears and save our kids.<\/p>\n

I think this decision is easy. I\u2019d much rather face a hard question at a board meeting than have to explain why I left an unprotected child to die. If you feel that way, I urge you to run for office. Or at least share this article with a friend.<\/p>\n

Notes- I used the older FBI definition of mass-murder which is four murder victims not counting the murderer. In the spirit of complete disclosure, I\u2019ve taken four FASTER classes in three states. I\u2019ve written dozens of articles about FASTER, and made financial contributions to them as well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Frightened Politicians Leave Students at Risk How good is good enough when it comes to protecting our children in school? One extreme view says that Superman who stops bullets with his bare hands is barely qualified to protect our children. The opposite extreme says that anyone who isn\u2019t in jail should be qualified to act … Continue reading “”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-93408","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rkba","category-safety"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93408","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=93408"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93408\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":93409,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93408\/revisions\/93409"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=93408"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=93408"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=93408"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}