At some point, the manifesto from the trans-Nashville shooter is going to be released. While people will be analyzing it and trying to pick it apart from every direction, one thing that is likely to emerge from it is how the shooter chose her target. We now have concrete evidence, from researcher John R. Lott Jr., which shows that shooters always choose schools where there are no armed teachers present. Based on all available current evidence, it appears that armed teachers are an even better deterrent than having armed police officers on campus.
Back in March, tensions boiled in Congress over the issue of the Second Amendment versus stopping school shootings. Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) was haranguing Republicans in the halls of Congress and yelling the usual Squad catchphrases about the GOP having blood on their hands and not caring about kids.
Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) calmly pointed out to Bowman that there has never been a recorded instance of a school shooting happening at a school where the teachers were armed. That is true, and because it is true, Jamaal Bowman blew his stop and began screaming at Massie. He even put his hands on Massie at one point, because Democrats are such raving lunatics when it comes to opposing firearms that they could just kill us all.
Lott Jr. reported in an April 24 column that there are now 20 states where some or all teachers are allowed to concealed carry while on school grounds. Utah and New Hampshire allow any teacher with a concealed carry license to bring a gun to school. In the other 18 states, it is up to the discretion of local school boards as to which teachers are allowed to pack heat.
Guess what? Lott reports, “In the thousands of schools where teachers are permitted to carry, no one has been wounded or killed in an attack during school hours.”
You might think, “Now wait a second. Haven’t there been school shootings in places where armed school resource officers are on duty?”
Yes, there have been. For example, there was the Parkland school shooting in Florida. A school resource officer famously hid behind the corner of the building while the shooter blasted away inside the school at teachers and students. There were also school resource officers on duty in Uvalde, TX at the school shooting earlier this year. The cops stood around outside for an hour and held back parents as they let the shooter kill children and teachers inside.
What can we conclude from this? School resource officers are less likely to be a deterrent to mass shooters, while armed teachers are more likely to be a deterrent.
The events that unfolded at a Christian school in Nashville, where the cops charged in and immediately put the trans shooter down for a dirt nap, are unfortunately the exception rather than the rule. Police department policy usually means the cops encircle the building and try to work from there, because they’re more worried that the shooter may have planted bombs in the school (this is a policy based on something that has never happened, by the way).
Shooters know that school resource operators are more likely to back off and call for backup because that is the protocol they are trained to follow. A teacher with a concealed firearm, on the other hand, is an unknown that cannot be controlled. Plus, an armed teacher can’t retreat the same as an armed police officer can and will. This is likely why school shooters choose targets where they know there won’t be concealed firearms being carried by teachers. Our policies of deterring school shootings should be based on what observably works, rather than on the fantasy of disarming all Americans in hopes that criminals and crazy people will turn in their guns.
