Tag Archives: school resource officer

Someone Who Was There

Posted on by

On Friday, The Daily Caller posted an article by Patrick Neville, who was a student at Columbine High School who survived the shooting there in 1999.

Please follow the link to read the entire article, but I will post a few highlights here:

I consider myself one of the lucky ones as I had walked by the propane tank bombs that never exploded at Columbine High School. My friends weren’t as lucky. As parents gathered at my old elementary school to pick up their children, I will never forget the look of worry and desperation as my friend’s dad asked me, “Pat, have you seen him?” This father coached my soccer team growing up. He was always calm, direct and confident. He wasn’t that day, and he would never see his son alive again.

This was more than 23 years ago. At Columbine, the perpetrators used pipe bombs and firearms, (some obtained illegally) and tried to kill many more with propane tanks. This happened in the middle of the assault weapons ban, mind you.

…While some have learned lessons from the tragedy, many politicians have not. The assault weapons ban, and other “gun control” measures didn’t save my friends, nor did a flashy sign declaring my school a “gun free zone.” A brave and heroic teacher did save many lives at my school. Yet, after every tragedy like this, Democrats immediately start beating the gun control drum. Sadly, many Republicans start looking for gun control policies to say they “did something.” They need to start looking through a different lens. Instead of restrictions and control, they need to empower citizens, teachers and parents to solve this problem.

An overwhelming amount of mass shootings occur in places where citizens are banned from carrying firearms. As more and more people realize this is a problem, states have started to adopt policies to allow people to equip themselves to protect our children.

The article concludes:

When I shop for a car, I look for lots of things, but one of the most important to me is making sure it has features that will protect my most precious cargo, my children. The car market has responded to parents like me by providing all sorts of safety features. If we had more school choice the education environment would be different. Schools could have SROs or not based on market signals. Each school could feature different safety measures, whether site security or trained staff, and they could incentivize staff to go through the training.

Instead of seeing parents with the look of worry and desperation, I want to see parents with the look of being empowered. Empowered about restoring our God-given, constitutional rights and duties to protect ourselves, our families and our communities. We all need to work together to reverse the alarming trend of mass shootings, and take meaningful measures that will secure our schools, places of worship, and other vulnerable spaces that are often exploited by the worst of humanity. I, for one, will never stop working on finding solutions to this problem.

Common sense from someone who was there.

Insanity In Our Schools

Posted on by

Hot Air posted an article today about a 12-year-old girl who is facing felony charges because she allegedly made a gun shape with her hand and pointed her finger at four students before pointing her finger at herself. Yes, you read that right.

The article reports:

Police hauled her out of school in handcuffs, arrested her and charged the child with a felony for threatening.

Shawnee Mission school officials said they could not discuss the case, citing privacy laws, but did say it wasn’t the district that arrested the child.

According to the Kansas City Star, the incident unfolded in a classroom at Westridge Middle School.

The person said that during a class discussion, another student asked the girl, if she could kill five people in the class, who would they be? In response, the girl allegedly pointed her finger pistol — like the ones many children use playing cops and robbers.

Because of that gesture, The Star was told, the girl was sent to Principal Jeremy McDonnell’s office, and the other students involved were also talked to. The school resource officer recommended that she be arrested, the source said. She was detained by police and later released to her mother.

It gets even worse. According to Star columnist Toriano Porter, there were two kids in the same school district who recently brought real guns to school that aren’t facing felony charges for their actions. Toriano Porter also states that pointing a finger gun at classmates and then yourself is a cry for help — not a criminal act of violence.

The article concludes:

I’m not even going to go so far as to say that this 12-year old was exhibiting a “cry for help.” She could have just been a 12-year old who wasn’t thinking that responding to a dumb question by a classmate was going to end up with her in handcuffs. What’s next? Arresting kids playing “Kiss, Marry, Kill” at lunch for making threats?

The 12-year old girl is now living in California with her grandfather, and will hopefully be able to put this incident behind her, but if the laws in Kansas need to be changed to prevent idiotic situations like this from taking place in the future, I hope legislators in the state will see to it that there are no more felony charges for finger guns in the future.

Did whoever decided to call the police on the child consider the emotional trauma to the child? If this was viewed as a cry for help, why did the authorities choose to make the child’s emotional situation worse? I know a lot of adults who played with toy guns and toy soldiers as children who grew up to be respectable non-violent citizens. The way this child was treated is totally unacceptable–and she didn’t even have a gun!

Security Means Having Force Available

Posted on by

Unfortunately school shootings seem to be happening more frequently than they used to (or at least we are hearing about them more often). Former Vice-President Joe Biden introduced a bill in Congress in 1990 that ““prohibits any person from knowingly possessing a firearm … at a place the individual knows, or has reasonable cause to believe, is a school zone.” That was the bill that made schools gun-free zones. A gun-free zone is a place where a shooter will have no opposition for at least five minutes until the police arrive. That is not a reliable plan to protect the students. That point was illustrated this morning in a school in Maryland.

The Daily Caller is reporting today:

The Great Mills High School student who injured two others Tuesday morning was reportedly stopped by the school’s “armed” resource officer.

According to WUSA9’s Peggy Fox, St. Mary’s County Sheriff Tim Cameron updated reporters after the incident had been contained.

Cameron stated that three students were injured in the incident, including the shooter himself, who was taken down by an armed school resource officer.

The SRO reportedly responded without hesitation and exchanged gunshots with the suspect before disarming him. He was not injured in the exchange.

This was a case where an armed, trained, person on the site ended the incident. Every school needs someone on site who is armed, trained, and willing to engage a person shooting at students. If teachers want to fill that role, that is fine, but if not, an extra security person is needed. The fact that there are armed people in the school may deter some shooters from attempting to shoot students. At least, putting an armed person on the site will increase the students’ safety.