I’m in agreement with 99% of what Dr. Ana Sancho Sama wrote in her two-part treatise on active shooter drills in schools, and commend her for an excellent presentation.
I would like to add the following addenda:
First, I’m assuming the photos accompanying the columns were accurate depictions of the training. I can speak from my experience in the military that when you are participating in that sort of training, it is intense. To subject children to that experience is wrong. Springing it on them unannounced is unconscionable. As Dr. Sancho Sama expertly illuminates any questionable benefit theoretically derived from the “training” will be substantially offset by the psychic trauma of the event.
Second, other than the use of frags before entering rooms the training is essentially indistinguishable from that received by infantrymen to clear buildings of enemy combatants. I’m a strong supporter of law enforcement, particularly in regard to officer safety, but recognize that the militarization of civilian police is a problem well beyond school shootings, with wide ranging implications for a free society. There is a reason military forces are prohibited from participating in domestic law enforcement, and those reasons are diminished when civil police are trained like combat soldiers.
I have been involved in legal training of police ‘SWAT’ officers. Some, who are not military vets, join SWAT to wear the tactical gear and live out military fantasies. Others who are vets risk forgetting they are no longer in a combat zone.
Third, the entire concept of this sort of training is a way to avoid the elephant in the room. Armed response on site!
Before I retired our office developed a simple active shooter protocol. All of us who were qualified were permitted to carry our concealed sidearms in the office. Any shooter entering would have been immediately confronted from multiple directions with armed resistance. Those not wishing to be armed were directed to ‘shelter in place’ and let those of us who were armed neutralize the threat. (Aside from being a veteran, during the course of my prosecutorial career, I voluntarily undertook the same firearms training our local deputies received. So spare me any nonsense about civilians being unqualified to respond in such situations. Recent events in which trained armed civilians have stopped shooters utterly dispels that gun-grabber myth.)
Following Parkland, the Florida legislature authorized teachers who volunteered to be trained to carry sidearms, concealed, while at school. Tactical analysis of the Parkland shooting showed that had teachers been armed the death toll would probably have been considerably less, and the shooter himself would likely have been an early casualty.
All that having been said, I have some questions for Dr. Sancho Sama that she is infinitely more qualified that I am to address. In Part Two of her column she lists seven ‘factors’ in school shootings.
Four of those factors have always existed.
In my school days (’50s and ’60s) there was bullying, and perceived unfair treatment by teachers; socially awkward loners; dysfunctional families with lack of parental oversight; and readily available firearms — that last one is the one percent with which I disagree with Dr. Sancho Sama. (Guns were more available then. It was not unusual to see a shotgun in a pick-up truck gun rack, even in a school parking lot back in the day.)
Yet there were no mass school shootings.
What wasn’t there were the other three. Social media; hyper-media coverage of shootings; and the statistic reflecting 90% of shooters were male (there were no school shootings from which to draw stats)!
So my question for Dr. Sancho Sama is this: Is contemporary media that is the catalyst for these events — be it social media, or the notoriety which comes from mass media coverage of shootings?
Most significant, however, is the “90% of shooters were male” statistic. That needs to be explored in depth. I heard a so-called “expert on school violence” state that school shootings by boys is reflective of “toxic masculinity”.
In public school systems increasingly dominated by women teachers and administrators, boys have become second class citizens. They are treated as “defective girls”, and systematically discriminated against.
Like gravity, the Law of Unintended Consequences is immutable. Feminist demands for special educational treatment for girls to make up for alleged past deficiencies, combined with their inherent dislike of instinctive male behavior, has created a hostile educational environment for boys in public schools.
Male school shooters are an unintended consequence of that hostile environment. It doesn’t excuse or justify these horrific crimes, but certainly raises questions that need to be explored if we want to prevent future instances.
I can hear the caterwauling about the previous paragraph coming through my computer, but consider the following. The first mass school shooting was Columbine in 1999, which coincides with implementation of the feminist agenda of preferential treatment of girls in public schools begun in the early ‘90s under the Clinton administration Department of Education. At the very least, that is a potential ‘cause and effect’ that should be studied.
I leave that to experts like Dr. Sancho Sama who is far more qualified than I to explore the mental effects of a compulsory, discriminatory, hostile educational environment on the behavior of adolescent male homo sapiens. But to ignore it is to invite repetition.
Gary Beatty
Sharpes, FL
Aspen Springs, CO
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