This August, I was invited to attend the third Faculty/Administrator Safety Training and Emergency Response (FASTER) class of the summer as a blogger/journalist to write about the experience, which I did in my three-part series covering each day of the three day training course. Day One Day Two Day Three
The purpose of this post is to share some reflections on FASTER, gun violence, school safety, and politics.
FASTER was born in Columbus, OH in the immediate aftermath of the Sandy Hook school shooting in December 2012 which so horrified the nation. The leaders of the Buckeye Firearms Association had a conference call to talk about what they could do to make schools safer. This is significant for two reasons: one, this is what America is all about: a group of citizens getting together and working to solve a problem instead of demanding the government fix it. Second, it mirrors the reality of what NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre said at the time: “The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is with a good guy with a gun”.
Starting from that beginning, FASTER Saves Lives in Ohio has trained over a thousand school staff members in dozens of school districts on advanced combat techniques, mindset, medical triage and combat first aid. Now, in Ohio, there is a very good chance that would-be mass shooters are deterred by the fact that an unknown school staffer may be able to shoot back.
The school staffers – teachers, principals, coaches, custodians and bus drivers – who go through the training are ALREADY willing to put their bodies between your child and a bullet. They are ALREADY willing to stand up in defense of those most vulnerable. FASTER training gives them a better chance of survival and the tools they need to effectively treat wounds and stop the bleeding in order to stop the bad guy and save lives.
The sad fact is, gun violence is here to stay. This is because guns are merely the tool while our culture is the problem. In their book On Combat: The Psychology and Physiology of Deadly Conflict in War and in Peace, authors David Grossman and Loren Christensen review how violent video games are providing state-of-the-art simulation combat training to young people – mostly males – without the corresponding discipline that makes a soldier.
Young children are not even able to distinguish between fantasy and reality, and we allow them to watch TV and movie violence and play these violent video games where headshots are rewarded and gore is commonplace, desensitizing them to violence and rewarding them for it. As children grow up playing these games, they can learn that violence is an acceptable way of gaining attention or righting perceived wrongs.
In fact, the shooting in August 2018 at the Madden Gaming Tournament is a perfect example of this. A young man, skilled and schooled in video games, loses in a tournament and comes back with a gun and kills two people, wounds several others and then kills himself. Despite the very strict gun control laws in Maryland where he obtained his guns, and the fact that the tournament venue was a Gun Free Zone, this horrific shooting still took place. This atrocity is but one more data point that gun control laws do not, in fact, prevent gun violence.
Parents who own guns should take proper care to secure them and guard them against unauthorized access by their children, especially if those children are troubled in any way.
Placing faith in a naïve and unrealistic belief that “one more” gun control law will solve the problem, or that an “assault weapons” ban or magazine capacity limits or universal background checks or indeed civilian disarmament will reduce gun violence is a recipe for disaster. For one thing, gun control laws demonstrably do not work. For another, they are undesirable. The Second Amendment exists for a reason, and that is so the American people will always be able to defend themselves against common criminals, terrorists, tyrants and oppressive governments.
The most realistic defense against gun violence is warriors armed with guns. Some of those warriors may carry shields and call themselves “police officers” or dog-tags and call themselves “soldiers”. Others may be the teacher who has a concealed carry permit and answers the call to be an armed defender of the young lives in her care.
And it’s not just guns. The Columbine killers had prepared propane bombs that, had they worked properly, would have vastly increased the body count. Again, quoting Grossman and Christensen: “The future is bombs, and the kids are going to get the information to make them from the Internet. Once an angry, sick kid downloads the simplistic instructions, he will got to Radio Shack to buy the electronic means, and to another store to buy a propane tank and a candle.” They discuss how “The investigating fire chief at Columbine told [us] that within a week of the shooting there were Web sites around the world identifying errors the Columbine killers made in building their bombs – and correcting them.” No gun control law in the world and no restriction on downloading 3-D printing designs for guns will stop a deranged kid from making a bomb. Timothy McVeigh used fertilizer and ammonia to kill 168 people. It’s not the gun. It’s the sick or evil mind intent on doing harm to others.
Bullying is another factor in our culture that contributes to the making of a school shooter. Kids who grow up with violent media and video games learn that violence is how one responds to violence. Guns are a force multiplier and enable a smaller, weaker kid to take on the bigger kids who bully them. Schools should monitor for bullying and children who engage in bullying behaviors should be counseled, suspended or expelled from school.
This brings us to school safety. Critics of the FASTER program allege that proponents want “to arm all teachers”. That “…cranky Mr. Jones who threw a stapler at a student shouldn’t be armed with a gun…”, and other frivolous objections. Indeed, most of their objections consist of fantastic “what-if” scenarios, none of which have materialized in the hundreds of school districts across America that have armed staff over several years of real-world experience.
Schools should be safe, and parents should have every expectation that the child they drop off at school in the morning will be returned safely to them after the school day is over. The fact is nobody wants to “arm all teachers”, and cranky Mr. Jones would most likely not be approved to be a concealed carrier by his school board, which would have full knowledge of his anger management issues.
There are many ways to make schools safer, and it’s up to parents to demand that their school boards take steps that are appropriate for their schools. Some means of improving school safety include: limiting access for students and visitors, ensuring doors remained locked from the outside yet still allow egress, installing locks on classroom doors, uniformed school resource officers, possibly metal detectors (though some oppose these because of a “school to prison” concern), armed staff (which is where FASTER comes in), ID cards for students and staff, training students on security related topics, anonymous tip lines and vigilance. Too often, with these horrible tragedies there were warning signals that were ignored by school staff, law enforcement and parents. In fact, the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, FL demonstrates that government at all levels – from the FBI down to the school resource officer on scene – failed to protect those kids and the school staff.
Finally, a discussion of politics is in order. I’m writing for a Colorado audience, but my points are applicable to other states and the nation at large.
The “gun safety” crowd led by the likes of Michael Bloomberg, Moms Demand Action, Everytown and other gun control groups all want one thing: ever increasing restrictions on access to guns and ammunition, culminating in a ban on virtually all firearms in America. This approach is not realistic, practical, achievable or desirable.
In the Colorado Democratic Party platform for 2018 the Democrats are calling to double down on the failed “Gun Free Zone” concept. From the platform: “Except for security personnel, ban firearms on K-12 schools, college campuses and allow cultural institutions to ban firearms on their premises”. Unless armed school staff could be deemed “security personnel”, this would serve to effectively disallow teachers from carrying concealed guns and put the lives of students at greater risk. The best way to evaluate whether or not this is good policy is to look at actual results.
In 1990, the Gun-Free School Zones Act was enacted. Since then, there have been over two hundred incidents of gun-related crimes on school and university grounds, with about 175 incidents involving K-12 schools. Of these, 13 were mass-shooting incidents with the worst 3 involving K-12 schools being Columbine, Sandy Hook and Parkland. Several of the 175 incidents were gang-related, many involved adults attacking other adults over personal issues and in several incidents the shooters were restrained by teachers.
From a non-political, non-partisan, completely objective viewpoint, it is clear that this policy has failed, and arguably makes schools even more dangerous for our children.
And this is where politics comes in. If your only concern is school safety and keeping kids out of harm’s way, you must demand that school boards adopt appropriate measures to keep kids safe, and you MUST vote for candidates for elected office who support the right to keep and bear arms for self-defense and who support school boards empowering volunteers to be concealed carry defenders.
Yes, training programs like FASTER are important. Yes, law enforcement certainly has a place in a comprehensive suite of solutions. But the most important thing is to elect representatives who will place your children’s safety above their “progressive” agenda.
Your children and grandchildren deserve no less.
By Richard D. Turnquist
September 3, 2018
To donate to help put a teacher through FASTER training, click this link.
More stories and links:
School Safety Panel Discussion at the 10th Annual Steamboat Institute Freedom Conference
Keeping Kids Safe in a Broken World by Laura Carno
Armed Heroes in Teacher’s Clothing by Rob Morse
How to become a concealed carry licensee:
Concealed Carry 101 by Richard Turnquist
Armed Teachers: Their Time Has Come by Laura Carno
