The idea that teachers are always armed in Israel is false. It’s the guards that are armed. More importantly, they credit their lack of gun violence to their strict gun laws in the country.
“We told him that there's a perception in the U.S. that everyone in Israel has a gun.
"Very false," he replied. "Gun laws in America are much more loose than gun laws in Israel."
“In Israel it can take up to three months to get a gun. For starters, you have to be over 27, unless you've served in the military. Then you must prove that your job requires a gun, and get a doctor to sign off. Doctors like Omri Ben Ezra also check for mental illness. The final step is at the gun range.
But about 40 percent of school security guards fail and need to reapply. That's fine with principals like Stern.”
School shootings are virtually unheard of in Israel, so CBS News went to see what they're doing differently
www.cbsnews.com
It's almost as if there's a concerted effort to let those persons and schools who fail to do their duty, who fail to follow proper protocol, who fail to do that which is known to work, off the hook. A teacher had left a door propped open in Uvalde, for example, and then failed to make sure that it closed and locked properly. That's how the shooter got in. Actually doing everything below and installing a centrality monitored camera-parameter-system with armed personnel ready to man points of entry would stop these kinds of shootings in schools.
The school district in Uvalde, Texas, had an extensive safety plan in place when nineteen children were killed. The killer accessed an open door and killed children and teachers for about 74 minutes while police officers allegedly refused to enter the barricaded room where the slaughter was taking place. . . .
. . . The district adopted an array of security measures that included its own police force, threat assessment teams at each school, a threat reporting system, social media monitoring software, fences around schools and a requirement that teachers lock their classroom doors, according to the
security plan posted on the district’s
website.
Texas police are now saying that the armed school officer who was first reported to have engaged the gunman in a firefight was not on campus when the shooting started.
The difference with School Marshals is that they are embedded as regular employees working as specially trained school staff, faculty, administrative and support personnel such as maintenance and kitchen workers. Uvalde probably did not have armed personnel working as regular non-uniformed employees, trained to protect with deadly force. Regular employees such as faculty & staff can be trained to carry concealed and protect everyone in a school or church while working in non-security roles.
Think of the outcry when the Air Marshal program was first proposed after the attacks on the World Trade Center. How many commercial jetliner hijackings have occurred since that program was inaugurated many years ago? Cabins would depressurize from accidental discharges and all kinds of other catastrophes could occur from arming plain clothes federal agents to be embedded on random flights disguised as regular passengers.
With proposals to arm pilots who chose to be armed, more cries ensued that jetliners would fall out of the sky. The fact that such Chicken-Little mentality has now been proven to be totally without any basis in reality raises the issue of whether the naysayers were just afraid that successful programs like the Air Marshal program might demonstrate that armed citizens can be trained to handle firearms; i.e., to be part of the solution and therefore undermine their message that guns are the real problem.
Texas has two such programs. One is called the School Marshal program. The other is the Guardian program. Both involve training that meets specific criteria and certification. It looks like Uvalde chose uniformed officers instead. It takes about 56 hours to certify pilots to carry in the cockpit. They train with live-fire and simunitions in a mock-up of a commercial jetliner. The Texas School Marshals get similar specialized training designed for classrooms and other school facilities. Most the scenarios in both the Texas School Marshal program and the federal Air Marshal training is that both anticipate the potential for large numbers of students or passengers to obstruct lines of sight and get caught in the crossfire.
The State of Texas provided the Uvalde School District with a huge budget. Most the money probably went to salaries for a large contingent of SROs. The two programs, Texas Guardian program and School Marshal program, cost only a fraction of what school resource officers cost! That is because “embedded” personnel already receive a salary for performing other necessary duties, like teaching or maintaining the school.
School districts that can afford to deploy SROs or pay for additional full-time campus police protection should still consider arming other school personnel. Killers will identify and target uniformed personnel. There is also now a history of SROs and other law enforcement failing to act. Parkland was another debacle where uniformed officers serving as full-time guardians of a school failed to act. When LEOs and/or SROs do intervene, they risk being killed because they are easy to identify and can be taken by surprise.
An armed janitor or teacher can surprise the killer by simply remaining with the students and waiting for the right opportunity. The Texas Guardians are not trained, nor are they encouraged, to apprehend or seek out the active killer. Training to take cover, shoot proficiently and to be safely armed and hide or lead students to safety is the best way to prepare the average person who is not called to be a commissioned police officer. Limited law enforcement commissions might be appropriate. What is most needed, however, is a recognized training program, with certification, and laws that limit personal liability and
provide immunity to school districts that choose to empower school personnel to take on a School Marshal role.
One advantage of uniform legislation is that insurance premiums for Districts deploying School Marshals will become more affordable. Additionally, provider firms offering School Marshal training to school personnel from all fifty states will create economies of scale, national competition and professional standards that will improve rapidly with state and federal oversight.
Despite the detailed planning, there were no School Marshals or Guardians in place as authorized pursuant to Texas state statutes. There were school resource officers, presumably armed. SROs are a …
firearmslawyer.net
www.dallasobserver.com
townhall.com
www.usatoday.com
www.timesofisrael.com
