(H/T: Instapundit)
Here’s a report that will set most people on edge as it calls all of what we normally would do into questions. I’m quite sure the most people will start to shudder at this, but think about it:
BURLESON, Texas (AP) — Youngsters in a suburban Fort Worth school district are being taught not to sit there like good boys and girls with their hands folded if a gunman invades the classroom, but to rush him and hit him with everything they got – books, pencils, legs and arms.
"Getting under desks and praying for rescue from professionals is not a recipe for success," said Robin Browne, a major in the British Army reserve and an instructor for Response Options, the company providing the training to the Burleson schools.
That kind of fight-back advice is all but unheard of among schools, and some fear it will get children killed.
It may well get them killed….but as we saw in the Amish killings, doing nothing gets you killed too. This is a hard situation, as in rushing the gun man, someone may indeed get killed. This is , for sure, workable only if you can stomach losses. The idea is sound – quantity will rule over a single person if that person is swarmed all at once. But it HAS to be all at once. And there may well be casualties.
But school officials in Burleson said they are drawing on the lessons learned from a string of disasters such as Columbine in 1999 and the Amish schoolhouse attack in Pennsylvania last week.
Students are also instructed not to comply with a gunman’s orders, and to take him down.
Browne recommends students and teachers "react immediately to the sight of a gun by picking up anything and everything and throwing it at the head and body of the attacker and making as much noise as possible. Go toward him as fast as we can and bring them down."
This really does bring the idea of childhood innocence to a close. But face it, a single teacher will not be able to protect a classroom of children unarmed – which is a totally different subject (but one that is also starting to get traction).
"We show them they can win," he said. "The fact that someone walks into a classroom with a gun does not make them a god. Five or six seventh-grade kids and a 95-pound art teacher can basically challenge, bring down and immobilize a 200-pound man with a gun."
The fight-back training parallels the change in thinking that has occurred since Sept. 11, when United Flight 93 made it clear that the usual advice during a hijacking – Don’t try to be a hero, and no one will get hurt – no longer holds. Flight attendants and passengers are now encouraged to rush the cockpit.
Similarly, women and youngsters are often told by safety experts to kick, scream and claw they way out during a rape attempt or a child-snatching.
In other words, being passive is no longer the first strategy for safety. I’ve never been a fan of advice that says to "do nothing, the police will handle it". That basically says that we are not much better than sheep, that our lives aren’t worth defending.
I’ve told my wife that if I ended up on a "United 93" situation, I would do the same thing…..I have no intentions of doing nothing, even if the most I could do is grab their ankles and implore someone to then tackle them.
"It’s harder to hit a moving target than a target that is standing still," said 14-year-old Jessica Justice, who received the training over the summer during freshman orientation at Burleson High.
William Lassiter, manager of the North Carolina-based Center for Prevention of School Violence, said past attacks indicate that fighting back, at least by teachers and staff, has its merits.
"At Columbine, teachers told students to get down and get on the floors, and gunmen went around and shot people on the floors," Lassiter said. "I know this sounds chaotic and I know it doesn’t sound like a great solution, but it’s better than leaving them there to get shot."
Lassiter questioned, however, whether students should be included in the fight-back training: "That’s going to scare the you-know-what out of them."
Most of the freshman class at Burleson’s high school underwent instruction during orientation, and eventually all Burleson students will receive some training, even the elementary school children.
When I read this at Instapundit, the following was included at the end:
At Columbine, the armed “school resource officer” refused to pursue the killers into the building, and kept himself safe outside while the murders were going on inside. Even after SWAT teams arrived, and while, via an open 911 line, the authorities knew that students were being methodically executed in the library, the police stood idle just a few yards outside the library.
Suddenly, doing nothing doesn’t seem like a good strategy….
