Immediate Response Capacity Will Save Lives

“A.L.I.C.E” and “Active Response” should be school building priorities!
Schools will probably be accelerating their adoption of “Alert, Lockdown, Inform, Counter and Evacuate training after the tragedy at the Sandy Hook Elementary school killings. A simple “wiki” search of school shootings suggest that should have happened a long time ago. The Wiki page dates school shootings back to the 1700′s! A.L.I.C.E. is not nearly enough. Neither is another endless debate on gun control laws which seems to have overtaken the actually shooting incident which isn’t even a week old.

A lot of school killings go unreported because most are not massacres. Take the case of the student who killed his principal and then himself at Omaha High School in January 2011. Nothing that Washington D.C. might do would prevent that kind of school shooting. With 90 guns per 100 US Citizens, I can’t see how any legislation is going to address making schools safe. The Sandy Hook shooting is the reason for all the recent noise about gun control, but not one person can articulate how schools will be safer the day after.

A few school districts have mentioned arming teachers. One school district in Texas has had armed teachers since 2008. The mention of armed teachers seems to generate more alarm than an armed student or psychopath that sees a school as a target of opportunity. To this Purple American, arming certain teachers and administrators makes complete sense, especially since it is unlikely any legislation can respond as effectively to a threat in a school building. Read more »