Opposing view: Arm qualified, willing teachers and staff

Even in the best of circumstances, police responding to a school shooting need time to deploy, arrive on the scene and engage.

In the 1980s, I consulted with the State Department on hostage survival training in terrorist events. A key lesson of that experience was that victims who waited for police or military to save them reduced dramatically their chances for survival.

Those on the inside — the about-tobe victims at risk of losing their lives — are typically the best informed in the first, most critical moments of any attack, including a school shooting.

Arming all teachers and school staff is no solution in situations where teachers and staff feel fully committed to dealing with educational issues.

But in cases where teachers and school staff are predisposed to be comfortable with concealed carry, as could well be the case with military veterans or retired law enforcement who make education their second career, allowing them the right to carry weapons provides the possibility of a near instant response. A would-be school shooter can be neutralized before schoolchildren are senselessly murdered.

Psychologically disturbed adolescents who may be contemplating copycat school shootings could be deterred only by hardening the target — a goal that can be accomplished, in part, by allowing those teachers and staff who are qualified and disposed to carry concealed weapons to undergo the training required to do so responsibly.

Hardening school targets by securing entrances and providing visible police presence could go far to protect the children inside. But adding concealed carry among qualified and willing teachers and staff could lend an element of uncertainty that would deter a would-be school shooter.

Our children are our most precious treasures. In this uncertain world where copycat shooters are an unfortunate likelihood, concealed carry adds an element of security we must take as responsible parents and guardians.

Investigative journalist Jerome R. Corsi is author of Killing the Deep State: The Fight to Save President Trump.