Arming School Volunteers

With every school shooting comes increased criticism, microscopic analysis of each response action, and posting of timelines from the beginning of the active shooting attack until the attacker was subdued. We look back and say, “There must be a better way?” With that question a solution that has gained some attention is arming retired military or law enforcement officers at every school in the United States. Before comments are received in this blog, consider the following:

The horrific attack on defenseless students and teachers in the Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas by an eighteen year with an AR-15 has not been the only school shooting in the United States. Unfortunately, we have seen far too many school shootings over the last fifty years. The following three areas will provide a foundation in the discussion on providing armed retired military or law enforcement officers in every US school.

1. On May 27, 2022, Ground Report published an article, “How many school shootings

have here been in the US?”, which reported 2,052 school shootings since 1970. Further, the article indicated there were 250 incidents recorded in 2021, a 120% increase since 2020, when there were 114 attacks. Finally, the article indicated 42 of the 50 states have recorded a mass shooting since 1966. 1

1. The National Association of School Resource Officers (NASRO) estimates that approximately 20 percent of all U.S. K-12 schools (public and private) are served by at least one school resource officers.2

2. On May 29, 2022, Admissionsly.com indicated as of 2020, there are 130,930 recorded number of K-12 schools in the United States according to the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES)3

The above statistics provide a very dismal overview of school security and armed protection from an active shooter. If only 20% of schools have an armed School Resource Officer (SRO) out of 130,930 schools in the United States, that means 104,774 schools have no armed presence on campus and will be on a rotating security basis by local law enforcement patrol units. During a typical rotating security patrol, the patrol unit will be assigned to several schools in an area of coverage. The number of schools in an area are based on population. The greater the population the greater number of schools, and when there are more schools, the distance between schools is less. That said, the response time in an area of coverage will vary, depending on the distance between the patrol unit’s location and the school under attack. On June 22, 2022, the New York Times reported the average response time to an active shooting is three minutes. However, some response times are fifteen minutes. For an individual living in a real life or death attack, three minutes is a long time, let alone fifteen minutes of sheer terror.

Would posting armed retired military and law enforcement officers at every school in the United States really help? With any point of discussion there are pros and cons that must be considered. In order to agree in posting armed retired military and law enforcement officers the positive points must outweigh the negative points. Would you post armed retired military or law enforcement officers and why?

[Sources]

1. How many school shootings have there been in the US? (groundreport.in)

2. www.nasro.org.

3. https://admissionsly.com/how-many-schools-are-there/