Vince Vaughn is wrong, but not for the reason you think

Before the other day I didn’t have an opinion about guns in school. The day actor Vince Vaughn came out in support of guns, but I haven’t cared or modeled my opinions based on what celebrities think since high school. However, that same day I was in a school lock down. It wasn’t a drill, the threat was valid and I got to see it all happen.

Guns are a controversial topic. Every time there is a shooting people on the left and right will glibly or morbidly point out aspects that support what they believe. Mention guns to folks that live in Europe, Canada or elsewhere and the conversation takes on a different dynamic because there are relatively no guns there.

In my case it started with a phone call. The caller said some specific thing followed by the fact that they were there to kill students. Within :30 the school was locked down and the front office personnel went to an inside room. The police arrived within 5 minutes. It was a virtual wave of blue, all of them with guns drawn, running to surround the school.

It’s probably just a nut making a phone call I thought. However, during that 5 minute period I wondered what if it’s not? What if they are in the building, looking at my child’s classroom through a scope or about to shoot through one of the locked doors?

At that moment I didn’t care about the back story of the person that made the threat. I didn’t care about their race, education, socioeconomic status, mental health condition or any other factors. I simply wanted them stopped by whatever means or force necessary.

I also wanted somebody at the school with a gun.

Before the police arrived there wasn’t a gun in the building.  All of staff were hunkered down in locked rooms, the students got in their rooms and we watched the video screens. Even when the police arrived we stayed in the room with the video monitors. There was nothing happening except for flanks of police going room to room.

Someone commented what it must have been like to watch those same monitors at schools where the lockdown actually had an active shooter in the building.

The next day I was speaking with a police officer about the school and gun policies. I was told that every high and middle school has an armed safety officer there during school hours. That rule is not the same for every state, but Georgia has it as do the states that border us.

I assumed that this was due to Columbine, but this has been the operating protocol since the late 1980’s.

Having guns in schools will not prevent mass shootings, but having a gun in schools will almost certainly intimidate offensive acts or limit the scope of them when they occur. Columbine had a school safety officer who was patrolling the campus when he first noticed and fired at the gunmen. Sandy Hook Elementary did not have a school safety officer.

There is no way to know for sure if an armed security person would’ve changed the outcome in the later. But it stands to reason, that if the insane shooter knew that there was an armed person there he would not have chosen that target. Predators will avoid conflict if they are aware that there is a deterrent, a friend of mine wrote.

I don’t mean a neighbor with a gun or teachers packing heat, I mean a police officer assigned to the school to build bridges, talk with the students and defend it if necessary.

What about the optics of having a gun in the school? How can adding more deadly weapons into the equation possibly make things better? What if a student overpowers the cop and takes their gun? What if the on duty cop is corrupt or insane? Police state? These were just a couple of situations that were brought forth when I talked about it on my personal Facebook page.

Well, guns have been in most middle and high schools for years, but they’ve been controlled by police officers. Side note, in speaking with the cop today they told me stories of how they’ve comforted various students, coached teams and unfortunately confiscated hundreds and hundreds of weapons through the years. Most of the time it is students showing off for their friends, but that act landed them in deep, deep trouble.

What about students that may take the cop’s gun? Again, police officers have been in schools (in this area) since the late 80’s. If this were a factor, as it was in the Brian Nichols escape, then we would see a case of this in the school system and we haven’t.

What if the police officer goes crazy? What if the airline pilot is suicidal and wants to kill themselves? There are what if’s to any situation, but my experience in being locked down in a school during an active threat leads me to the most logical solution.

An armed neighborhood police officer has no down side. It will not eliminate mass shootings, but it will deter them.

Some people will cringe at the thought of having police at your school, if they aren’t already.  To those people that think it’s a bad idea I ask you, what alternative do you have and what is the downside? The upside is that if they ever are needed they could prevent tragedy.