If armed school security won't work, where are all the mass shootings at armed schools?

by Jeff Riley

Buried in a recent article in The New York Times dismissing armed security at schools is a bit of pro-gun truth, proving if you go looking hard enough, you can eventually find the truth in the most unlikely places.

From the article:

Nationwide, at least 23,000 schools — about one-third of all public schools — already had armed security on staff as of the most recent data, for the 2009-10 school year, and a number of states and districts that do not use them have begun discussing the idea in recent days.

To my knowledge (other than Columbine, where the SRO was not in the building at the time the attack began, and before active shooter protocols were put in place), none of these mass shootings have occurred at the one-third of schools where armed security is in place. You have to go all the way back to Columbine (1999) to find a mass shooting occurring where assigned armed security was present. I could be wrong, but I think if that was the case they would be jumping up and down and pointing it out.

Here is a list of some violent incidents at U.S. schools over the last 20 years.

In the Santana High School the attacker shot an unarmed security officer and was only stopped when two off-duty police officers (who were there on separate business) confronted the shooter and cornered him in a bathroom until backup arrived. Two students were killed, thirteen wounded, but the total number killed was a far cry from the Sandy Hook Elementary school shooting.

It is apparent to anyone who can do simple math that the number of casualties/killed in mass shootings is directly proportional to the time it takes someone who is armed to arrive, confront the shooter, and either kill or force them to commit suicide. Wouldn't it make more sense to place those armed personnel directly in the schools?

We know that armed security works. If it didn't, we wouldn't have armed security for our money, our politicians, our airports, and our Federal courthouses. At this point we are just arguing about who is going to pay for it.

The New York Times claims it's impractical to pay for armed security for all the schools. Perhaps it's time for them to question the president and Congress about funding cuts that "eliminated the Readiness and Emergency Management for Schools (REMS) funding, which for years provided between $20 million and $30 million in annual grants to help schools create emergency and crisis preparation and prevention plans for tragedies just like the one" in Connecticut.

Even better, perhaps it's time for them to support arming people who are already employed in the schools - something that would be 100% revenue neutral.

Jeff Riley is a Southwest Ohio volunteer for Buckeye Firearms Association.