Perhaps the latest shooting at Umpqua Community College is hitting me harder this time, due to being an Oregon resident who just visited the Umpqua river for the first time a few weeks ago. Perhaps just the cumulative weight and the tragedies breaking the camels back. President Obama's response connected with me deeply- both his words, and the very visible anger behind them. I truly felt for the first time how inevitable it is that another school shooting is just around the corner. There is nothing he or I can do to replace our representatives in Congress in time to prevent this outcome. It is a given, and that is a shocking condemnation of our society. It is with that frame of mind that I write the following.
It is now necessary to take our student self defense training to a new and more honest level. Our schools have done an excellent job of training staff on lock down procedures and emergency response. None of this helps the unfortunate souls who are in the next classroom when a shooter opens the door. Reading the accounts of the UCC shooting make it very clear that in an ambush, the only possible response with a glimmer of hope is to rush the shooter immediately, en masse. Some will be casualties, but acting together the shooter can likely be overcome. We saw this in the Gabby Giffords shooting. In the UCC shooting, without an immediate charge, the shooter was able to gain control of the room and force everyone into the center, then kill at his leisure. There is no hope of mercy or negotiation in this situation.
Rushing an armed shooter violates every instinct a person has, which highlights the heroism of Chris Mintz. He alone rushed the shooter, and likely saved several lives in the process. He had training and experience in combat, which helped him to act, and it is now time to start training our youth to react as well. What does that training look like to me? It means having our children actually practice mob-rushing a shooter who enters their classroom. It means practicing, repeatedly, how everyone together can jump up, grab any tools at hand be they pens, books, and attack the ambush. There will not be time to figure this out in the moment- it will need to be an response that has been practiced, and practiced repeatedly.
My next thought is that beyond practicing how to overcome an ambush, we probably need to consider providing some minimal self defense tools. In my mind that could take the form of desk tops which lift off, and are made of kevlar that can deflect a bullet. Something large enough to cover the head, or some of the torso. Maybe we can start selling bulletproof 3 ring binders, or bulletproof jackets that slip over textbooks. Enough to make it much harder for a shooter to kill each of the kids who is rushing him in their desperate charge. Perhaps students in the front row need to wear bulletproof vests? Perhaps we need to ask for volunteers, or the physically strongest kids, to be those kids in the front row closest to the door.
Does all of this sound horrific to you? It certainly does to me. I'm seething with anger that this kind of training feels necessary, but we must face the truth that the next shooting is right around the corner and our children are sitting ducks.
The gun nut answer to the problem is to provide the adults with guns. The left's response thus far has been to run away and hide, and try to lock the doors. That's a start but it's not good enough for us. We learned on 9/11 that if terrorists hijack a plane, it is no longer possible to wait to hear their demands. We learned on Thursday that not fighting back in the classroom leads to cold blooded executions over and over again, and absolutely heart breaking stories of a killer telling his victims they'd see God shortly. 8 minutes of absolute terror in that classroom. 8 minutes where the classroom next door could have armored themselves, and then rushed in to save their fellow students.
Our children are the targets in a one-sided war, and we need to start giving them the training and the tools to fight back. We can hope and pray for electoral progress, but honestly I think our politics are broken and will not provide relief many years, and possibly never. It's all well and good to argue that more guns are not the answer, but there must be a better plan than grieving and helplessness.
-With sadness, anger, and desperation.
