Looking Dead Children in the Eye;
the truth about school security
By Rob Morse, December 13th, 2014
Article Source
This isn’t pretty, and I can’t be nice about it. Students and staff were murdered in a public school. That is what happened in Sandy Hook Elementary School two years ago. It is time we were clear about what happened and why. An evil man was intent on killing innocent children. Let’s look at who is to blame and what we can do to protect our children. All this came up because of some bad propaganda in the press, but more about that later.
What happened at Sandy Hook? An evil man killed his mother in order to get weapons and kill others. We need to accept that some people are evil. These murderers ignore the law. For us to ignore evil simply invites more disasters.
Legislators, school boards, school administrators and teachers pretended that evil didn’t exist. They failed to physically protect the children in their school. They ignored the threat until it was too late. Even the police are responsible for the children’s deaths. The police forced children to attend public schools without doing the obvious things to keep the students safe and alive. We know better. Some experts study violence. You can ask them. Here is how they explain it.
We know about fire in schools. We demanded that our school building include many features to protect our children from fire. We also have fire drills at schools. Those drills train everyone from students to firemen and EMTs how to respond. Children don’t die from fires in public schools any longer. Only now have we started to treat public violence with the same concern we’ve show about fire. We don’t have to ignore physical safety any longer. The police have already incorporated many of the lessons learned.
State legislators failed us also. Legislators could have required that schools be designed to protect students from violence. The local school board had the choice to demand the buildings be updated with safety features. They could have allowed armed school staff. A responsible school board would have gone further and demanded that school staff were trained and armed. The local school board failed us. So did the staff and teachers.
Yes, even the heroic teachers who threw their bodies in front of bullets failed us. I never want to see dead heroes. I always want to keep children alive. So do you. So should they.
This idea about school safety came to mind after a piece of propaganda was aired in the press. A group of Sandy Hook teachers and staff said the gun was to blame for mass murder. That attitude is called transference and learned helplessness. The fact is they failed their students. Now they pretend that the outcome was inevitable and there was nothing they could have done then, and could do now to stop a murderer. Every policeman on the street knows better. Most responsible parents know better too. Today we know the truth even if we didn’t know the truth about mass murders back then. A good guy with a gun stops a bad guy with a gun. That is why the teachers and staff at Sandy Hook called the police to come and save them.
We’ve learned so much. We’ve learned that seconds count, and we’ve seen that the police are minutes away. That does not mean we are helpless in the face of evil. We can and should make our children safer. Fortunately, many schools and churches are taking the steps to do so by arming their staff. Thank goodness.
At the same time, some politicians and celebrities say we should disarm. I don’t believe them. Notice that the president’s children and the children of celebrities go to school in a physically secure building where they are protected by armed staff. If you have any doubts about what is true, believe what the celebrities and politicians do, not what they say.
~_~_
Rob
