Properly Identifying a Threat

In recent weeks, since the mass shooting occurred at MSD High School in Parkland, Florida, and then more recently, the school shooting that occurred at Great Mills High School in Maryland, that there has been an awful lot of debate about gun control, the 2^nd Amendment, privacy rights and more. It’s interesting that while some people are screaming for a repeal of the 2^nd Amendment (and I’m not sure they’re even fully aware of what that would take to do), others are screaming to arm teachers and currently unarmed security personnel in our schools. At least one county school board that I’m familiar with has voted down a recommendation to arm Safety Advocates in their schools.

Those Safety Advocates are, almost all of them, retired police officers whose purpose is to maintain a safe and peaceful setting in the school and on school property. The school board that voted NOT to arm them is in Maryland, not far from Great Mills, where a School Resource Officer, himself armed, interceded in a school shooting just the week before, engaging the school shooter until the shooter took his own life. While the student’s suicide is tragic, that “school shooting” only claimed the life of one victim and injured one other. The benefit of having had an armed good guy in the school was immediate and clear… even to folks who don’t like guns or their presence in a school.

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The remainder of this article is part of the book "Active Killers and the Crimes They Perpetrated," available in print or ebook via Amazon.