Marysville Mt Pilchuck shooting

[glockgirl]

Schools that arm their staff en masse don't have mass shootings, the stats prove that.

That's a pretty bold statement. What "stats"? Where? I've not seen or heard of a single incident reported where an active shooter event at a school was stopped or prevented entirely by an armed civilian.

The only report I've seen, from a district in Texas that permitted teachers to carry in class, was of a ND by a teacher in a full classroom, resulting (fortunately) in injury only to herself and not to any students.

I am very close friends with two BSD SRO's, one retired and one active, both fully commissioned BPD officers. Neither wants teachers to carry, because if a teacher was forced to draw on a student, he or she might hesitate (especially given that he or she likely has some emotional attachment to the student) and that moment of hesitation could well result not only in the death of the teacher and more students but in the shooter himself acquiring another firearm.

Unlike teachers, Bellevue SRO's have as their primary duty the protection of students and staff. Thanks to technology, the currently active one is able to see almost every room and area of the school, as well as the entire grounds of the school, from her mobile phone or tablet. Given that active shooters not infrequently go for the SRO or non-commissioned security officer and/or principal if their primary target is not immediately available, and sometimes even if that primary target is available, J. not being in her office a solid 95% of the time is a huge part of the protection of the school to which she is assigned.

Her mobility means that she can move towards the active threat--and while I'm sure the SOP for responding to an active shooter in a BSD school is public record, I will not discuss it here except to say that SRO's are not trained to rely primarily on their duty weapon when confronted with an active shooter situation--while secondary support mobilizes towards the school and while she uses her own skill set and technology to locate and "neutralize" (her words) the shooter, if possible, before other officers are put in harm's way.

She knows that I shoot, has gone shooting with me, but honestly? Even if I was armed (concealed is concealed is concealed) and on campus, the "run, hide, fight" strategy wouldn't change--I'm not going to go out trying to do an officer's job, or worse, have a secondary responding officer mistake me for the active shooter (as someone else mentioned, do we really want a hail of lead from the trained, not-so-trained, and wildly unqualified in the event of an active shooter on campus?). I'm going to move as many people as possible to safety and try to get and stay the H-ll out of the LEO's way.

So yah, show me those stats...might change my mind. Right now, though, I don't trust anyone not a sworn officer, including myself, to make a shoot/no shoot decision against a student or other individual with whom I've had prior contact and know even tangentially; I do trust LEO's to make that decision.

[Alpine]

Schools that arm their staff en masse don't have mass shootings, the stats prove that.

That's a pretty bold statement. What "stats"? Where? I've not seen or heard of a single incident reported where an active shooter event at a school was stopped or prevented entirely by an armed civilian.

The only report I've seen, from a district in Texas that permitted teachers to carry in class, was of a ND by a teacher in a full classroom, resulting (fortunately) in injury only to herself and not to any students.

I am very close friends with two BSD SRO's, one retired and one active, both fully commissioned BPD officers. Neither wants teachers to carry, because if a teacher was forced to draw on a student, he or she might hesitate (especially given that he or she likely has some emotional attachment to the student) and that moment of hesitation could well result not only in the death of the teacher and more students but in the shooter himself acquiring another firearm.

Unlike teachers, Bellevue SRO's have as their primary duty the protection of students and staff. Thanks to technology, the currently active one is able to see almost every room and area of the school, as well as the entire grounds of the school, from her mobile phone or tablet. Given that active shooters not infrequently go for the SRO or non-commissioned security officer and/or principal if their primary target is not immediately available, and sometimes even if that primary target is available, J. not being in her office a solid 95% of the time is a huge part of the protection of the school to which she is assigned.

Her mobility means that she can move towards the active threat--and while I'm sure the SOP for responding to an active shooter in a BSD school is public record, I will not discuss it here except to say that SRO's are not trained to rely primarily on their duty weapon when confronted with an active shooter situation--while secondary support mobilizes towards the school and while she uses her own skill set and technology to locate and "neutralize" (her words) the shooter, if possible, before other officers are put in harm's way.

She knows that I shoot, has gone shooting with me, but honestly? Even if I was armed (concealed is concealed is concealed) and on campus, the "run, hide, fight" strategy wouldn't change--I'm not going to go out trying to do an officer's job, or worse, have a secondary responding officer mistake me for the active shooter (as someone else mentioned, do we really want a hail of lead from the trained, not-so-trained, and wildly unqualified in the event of an active shooter on campus?). I'm going to move as many people as possible to safety and try to get and stay the H-ll out of the LEO's way.

So yah, show me those stats...might change my mind. Right now, though, I don't trust anyone not a sworn officer, including myself, to make a shoot/no shoot decision against a student or other individual with whom I've had prior contact and know even tangentially; I do trust LEO's to make that decision.

No. It doesn't work that way.

I contend that mas shootings do not occur at schools in school districts that arm their teachers and admin staff en masse or allow for their teachers and admin staff to be armed en masse. The stats don't exist. I cannot prove a negative. The burden of proof is on you to show that schools that either arm or allow their staff to be armed en masse suffer mass shootings. Otherwise, there are no stats to show if the events never occurred at those places. Here in WA, the Toppenish School district has let it be known that admins are now armed at their schools in significant numbers, and so far there are no reports of any mass shootings there since that happened. Many more school districts across America allow their teachers and staff to be armed en masse, yet we cannot see mass shootings occurring at these schools? Why not? Given random distribution and statistical probability surely there should have been SOME right?

As to the logic, it makes no sense to have one or two armed RSOs guarding schools. We've seen numerous instances of that failing because the RSOs cannot cover an entire spread out campus and it's also easy for would-be shooters to track their movements and see where they are or even ambush them first.

[glockgirl]

No. It doesn't work that way.

Actually? It does. You said that you had "stats" to back your assertion that districts which permitted staff to carry on school grounds don't experience active shooter/threat events directly because of their decision to arm staff. So show me the stats.

The truth is, out of the thousands of school districts nationwide, only a handful have ever experienced or will ever experience an event on the scale of Sandy Hook or Columbine. The odds of any given school, in any given district, experiencing such an event is so minute as to be almost insignificant. Not that the events themselves are insignificant when they happen--but thankfully, they don't happen often.

Yes, you prepare for how to respond to such an event, yes, you drill, you drill, and you drill again, but no, I don't think you'll find any "stats" because there aren't any.

As for SRO's being "ambushed" or "not prepared"--that is where the false sense of security brought on by allowing armed staff in the school comes in. Why spend the money to keep a fully commissioned officer equipped with the very latest in technology on staff when you can just say "bring your own guns, everyone will be okay"?

We really won't know how that mentality works out until another active shooter in a school event takes place, but I suspect that it wouldn't work out well.

As I said before, the two SRO's whom I count among my friends, and especially the active one whom I count as a close friend, doesn't stay in her office sitting at her desk. She isn't very tall, so she blends in well with the students--and while she makes an effort to know at least the first name of every incoming freshman by the third week of the school year, she doesn't have the same emotional attachment to any given student that a teacher who has had a student in his or her class all year might have, the emotional attachment that would cause that moment of hesitation.

These two things--her ability to move through the school relatively unnoticed and her clear focus on her singular duty to put the lives and welfare of students, staff and visitors ahead of her own life and well being--are what she mentions most often on the rare occasion I express worry about her possibly being a bullet sponge someday.

She is confident that that particular scenario will never happen because of several things, not in the least the literal array of weaponry and SWAT-style gear Bellevue SRO's are equipped with, but mostly because she "will find and eliminate the threat before he even knows I exist". Her words. Not mine.

I am not going to continue this discussion, beyond saying if you want to believe that a teacher or parent who has known a student, worked with a student, been close to a student for at least a few months and probably at least one full school year, if not more, is going to make the exact same shoot/no shoot decision in the exact same time frame, under duress and with who knows what kind of chaos going on around them, as a trained, commissioned police officer--you go ahead and stick with with that belief.

Me, well, as I said before, one, concealed is concealed is concealed, so there's that, and two, I would much prefer, G-d forbid I ever find myself in this situation, to get as many people out of the building and away from the shooter and to safety rather than try to play at being the hero.

[deadshot2]

I wonder what would happen if schools placed signs on all doors saying "Warning, armed personnel on the premises"?

Even if nobody was armed it might well have the same effect as those Alarm Company Signs people put in their flower beds. It could create enough doubt that a potential shooter might just move on ----- to a mall or somewhere else that keeps their "No Firearms" policies posted on their doors.

In my mind one thing that could put a screeching halt to School Shootings would be an event where the potential shooter was dropped by an armed individual when they came through the door with their firearm "at the ready". Publicize THAT event and potential shooters know that they may not make it past the entryway. No fame and glory for them from a large body count. Ideally only one body, theirs.

[glockgirl]

In my mind one thing that could put a screeching halt to School Shootings would be an event where the potential shooter was dropped by an armed individual when they came through the door with their firearm "at the ready". Publicize THAT event and potential shooters know that they may not make it past the entryway. No fame and glory for them from a large body count. Ideally only one body, theirs.

Maybe.

Problem is, the singular truth about the truly devastating school shootings in the past 20 years is that in each case, the shooter(s) demonstrated no real care for their own safety or well-being, nor any expectation of leaving the school grounds alive (Columbine might have been an exception, Klebold and Harris left behind documents indicating that they expected to survive the event, but we'll never really know).

Certainly the shooter at Marysville-Mt. Pilchuck wasn't thinking about consequences beyond exacting revenge on a girl by whom he perceived himself to have been slighted, and I doubt seriously that, given his FB and other places where he made statements referencing suicide, that he really thought that he'd end that day breathing, if he thought that far at all.

The only mass shooting I can think of offhand where the suspect may have expected to leave the scene alive and not in police custody is the Aurora, CO theatre shootings--in that case, the suspect (James Holmes) was actively attempting to flee the scene when an alert officer noticed that his SWAT-style gear didn't look quite right for an LEO, and that was what led to his being taken into custody.

Just from the personal perspective of being the mother of three pre-adolescent boys (9, 11, 14), I can tell you--boys don't do a lot of thinking about consequences. Period. And this is in reference to normal, healthy kids engaged in normal, healthy kid activities--toss in teenage obsession, depression and/or anxiety and/or substance use or abuse, and you are going to have a child who gives even less thought or care to the ultimate outcome of his plan(s).

Also, in every mass school shooting I can think off offhand with the exception of Sandy Hook, the shooter(s) were either current or very recently former students. This means that stickers on the door aren't going to give them a moment's pause--they'll have spent enough time in the building or on campus already to know whether or not anyone actually is armed, and if so, who is armed, possibly making that individual a specific target.

I also suspect that putting "armed staff on premises" or some other such warning stickers/signs on school grounds would only generate unnecessary worry and parental uproar--PTSA mums (and parents in general) already think they have the right to know literally every d*mn thing about every d*mn decision made at the administrative level, whether or not it involves their child. I can only imagine the emails and calls that would flood in demanding to know who is carrying and what they are carrying and why they are carrying it and what training they have...it would be a literal sh*tstorm of an administrative and logistical nightmare, and at the end of the day, would probably accomplish very little in terms of deterrence of actual, real threats.

[deadshot2]

glockgirl--- There may be a "Mt Pilchuck high school somewhere but the one in Marysville is just "Marysville Pilchuck High School.

After 5 grand kids attending there the name is kind of burned in my memory

[glockgirl]

glockgirl--- There may be a "Mt Pilchuck high school somewhere but the one in Marysville is just "Marysville Pilchuck High School.

After 5 grand kids attending there the name is kind of burned in my memory

My sincere apologies. I'm really only intimately familiar with the workings of two school districts, Bellevue #405 and Seattle #1.

You mentioned that your daughter worked in the Marysville School District in some other posting...Bellevue starts to list their certified openings in larger quantity right about now, she might want to take a look.

[Alpine]

No. It doesn't work that way.

Actually? It does. You said that you had "stats" to back your assertion that districts which permitted staff to carry on school grounds don't experience active shooter/threat events directly because of their decision to arm staff. So show me the stats.

The truth is, out of the thousands of school districts nationwide, only a handful have ever experienced or will ever experience an event on the scale of Sandy Hook or Columbine. The odds of any given school, in any given district, experiencing such an event is so minute as to be almost insignificant. Not that the events themselves are insignificant when they happen--but thankfully, they don't happen often.

Yes, you prepare for how to respond to such an event, yes, you drill, you drill, and you drill again, but no, I don't think you'll find any "stats" because there aren't any.

As for SRO's being "ambushed" or "not prepared"--that is where the false sense of security brought on by allowing armed staff in the school comes in. Why spend the money to keep a fully commissioned officer equipped with the very latest in technology on staff when you can just say "bring your own guns, everyone will be okay"?

We really won't know how that mentality works out until another active shooter in a school event takes place, but I suspect that it wouldn't work out well.

As I said before, the two SRO's whom I count among my friends, and especially the active one whom I count as a close friend, doesn't stay in her office sitting at her desk. She isn't very tall, so she blends in well with the students--and while she makes an effort to know at least the first name of every incoming freshman by the third week of the school year, she doesn't have the same emotional attachment to any given student that a teacher who has had a student in his or her class all year might have, the emotional attachment that would cause that moment of hesitation.

These two things--her ability to move through the school relatively unnoticed and her clear focus on her singular duty to put the lives and welfare of students, staff and visitors ahead of her own life and well being--are what she mentions most often on the rare occasion I express worry about her possibly being a bullet sponge someday.

She is confident that that particular scenario will never happen because of several things, not in the least the literal array of weaponry and SWAT-style gear Bellevue SRO's are equipped with, but mostly because she "will find and eliminate the threat before he even knows I exist". Her words. Not mine.

I am not going to continue this discussion, beyond saying if you want to believe that a teacher or parent who has known a student, worked with a student, been close to a student for at least a few months and probably at least one full school year, if not more, is going to make the exact same shoot/no shoot decision in the exact same time frame, under duress and with who knows what kind of chaos going on around them, as a trained, commissioned police officer--you go ahead and stick with with that belief.

Me, well, as I said before, one, concealed is concealed is concealed, so there's that, and two, I would much prefer, G-d forbid I ever find myself in this situation, to get as many people out of the building and away from the shooter and to safety rather than try to play at being the hero.

No, it doesn't work that way. The LACK of stats in my case is proof until you prove the positive first.

Logic 101: you cannot prove a negative. I contend that schools that arm their staff en masse do not have mass shootings. There is no way for me to prove this since my statement is about something not existing. If you think something exists then you have to prove it. Show me cases of mass shootingat schools that arm their staff en masse, I cannot find any. I contend those stats don't exist.

As for known failures of lone RSOs? Seriously?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/2 ... 47096.html
Columbine.

Also, Taft High School.
http://www.politicususa.com/2013/01/10/ ... ampus.html

[deadshot2]

You mentioned that your daughter worked in the Marysville School District in some other posting...Bellevue starts to list their certified openings in larger quantity right about now, she might want to take a look.

She already has to drive 40 miles a day to go to work. That would make it 70. I know she wouldn't be interested but thanks for pointing it out

[MasterOfNone]

From a different perspective, I don't think I would want all teachers to be armed, because there are many many instances of teachers abusing children. I would have to say no to giving them guns, or drastically raise the bar on who gets to teach. Far too many teachers are child abusers, and I wouldn't want to give them another weapon to use against a child.

[Alpine]

From a different perspective, I don't think I would want all teachers to be armed, because there are many many instances of teachers abusing children. I would have to say no to giving them guns, or drastically raise the bar on who gets to teach. Far too many teachers are child abusers, and I wouldn't want to give them another weapon to use against a child.

Couldn't tell if this was sarcastic or not.

Guilty until proven innocent and no constitutional rights for teachers?

If it was sarcastic then excuse my failure to catch that.