Simulations being run to test armed teacher/staff effectiveness

The 12 participants, many former police and military officers, used modified guns loaded with non-lethal paint pellets for the simulation at King 33 on Aircraft Road.

The purpose was to study whether an armed teachers or guards could make a difference in a school shooting like the one that happened on Dec. 14 at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown.

After the first scenario, Farago was only able to give a snapshot of the data. He said an armed teacher can have a positive effect in a shooting, but said data had to go through scientific rigor before anything could be determined.

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Im sure some will recall ABC "News" crackerjack report on armed teachers or students where they took people off the street with no experience whatsoever and ran them through a similar simulation. To no ones surprise their simulation showed that some guy off the street who had never even seen a real gun before most likely will not be able to deploy that gun effectively. Shocking. Really. Write up on that craptastic bit of "journalism" for anyone interested.

Well, finally some qualified people are running realistic simulations.

In the next week or so all the data should be available.

You know, in many respects...this is valuable in being as close as they likely get to reality for their purposes. Thats fair to say and it's great to see them doing this. Viability testing is a perfectly reasonable thing. Particularly when only 3 or so states have armed teachers in classrooms with children right now ...and have for a good long time now. The other 47 states (I believe it's 3.. Utah, Oregon and Texas) seem a wee bit nervous that ..I dunno? Teachers are going to shoot the kids or something? I can't say I'm really clear on what they fear a downside is when kids are being killed in a real event but this helps either way!

What it can't possible show in a simulator though is what happened in Virginia Tech. Dr. Liviu Librescu is the instructor who held the classroom door closed with his own body and was shot to death in the process so his students could escape out the windows while the gunman was trying to forrce his way into the room. He'd survived the holocaust only do die that way. I have little doubt, if armed, he would have risked his life protecting more than JUST his room.

Regardless....Teachers like him are willing to die for their children/students. They can't show how effective a man with nothing to lose, everything to protect and the strength of knowing the price of failure can be if given the tool in the situation. Perhaps the gunman and not the instructor would have died, being shot to death through the door. We can't know...but we know he never got the chance.

that scenario is b.s.

the "teacher" knew an armed intruder was coming.

a teacher with her back turned writing on a chalkboard stands no chance.

prevention is key. a simple policy of reinforced classroom doors that must be buzzed opened from the inside to let people in, but for fire safety, be able to be opened manually from the inside to get out would have probably stopped that pyscho in conn. long enough for police to arrive, security to be sent or the teacher to prepare him/her self.

reply to post by randomname

Hmmm.... Well, I suppose we can turn every individual classroom in this nation into a locked down, controlled access entry in and out. There is a bit of a problem though (Aside from where schools get the 10's of billions such retrofitting would require nationwide).... When school shooters understand that killing the kids inside the classrooms isn't easy enough ....simply changing to before/after while kids are massed outside for buses or simply recess like the Stockton School Yard shootings in 1989 is the logical next move.

In January 1989, Patrick Purdy, 26, stepped onto the grounds of Cleveland Elementary School and raked the school yard with at least 106 bullets from an AK-47 rifle. He killed five children, ages 6 to 9, and one teacher and injured 29 other students, before fatally shooting himself.

Source

It seems to me it's easier, more logical and far less traumatic and life changing to the students to simply allow those teachers who choose to, to carry their permitted weapons concealed as they would anywhere outside school anyway. Otherwise, we're left chasing our tails and literally trying to outsmart the bogeyman who has all the advantages in going around security which cannot know who, when or how an attack will come.