Gun School For Teachers
Las Vegas, Nevada: In the wake of the Virginia Tech
shootings, Front Sight Firearms Training Institute, which
arguably is the world leader in providing intensified
courses in the defensive use of firearms for private
citizens, feels they have the answer to stopping further
attacks on school children. Front Sight is offering free
firearms training to any school administrator, teacher, or
full time staff member designated as school Safety
Monitors. Front Sight will accept for training up to three
staff members from each school, college or university.
Applicants must submit a letter requesting training on
school letterhead signed by the top school district
official and designating the applicant as the school's
Safety Monitor.
Guns and Teachers
Front Sight's Founder and Director, Dr. Ignatius Piazza
understands that his offer may offend some school
administrators and parents who do not see arming and
training selected school staff members as a positive
solution to violent attacks. However, he is quick to point
out that historically, his approach has worked while gun
control has actually increased violent crime by shifting
the balance of power to favor the criminals and lunatics.
"My offer is not a new idea," says Piazza. "In the early
70's, Israel was faced with much greater problems of armed
terrorist attacks on schools. The cry for more gun control
was heard then too, but Israel very carefully analyzed all
possible options before adopting the proactive position of
arming and training their teachers. School shootings
stopped and terrorists looked for easier targets." He
maintains that gun control never has and never will stop
criminals and madmen from carrying out acts of gun
violence.
"In our country, every time a misguided individual on
psychiatric drugs goes on a killing spree, anti-self
defense legislators, watch the polls and exploit the
dead victims in order to fool the public into accepting
more gun control. It is time our country finds some
resolve and the will to tackle the real problem- which is
rooting out the actual influences in the lives of our youth
that predispose them to commit atrocities such as those we
saw at Virginia Tech. The problem is not guns. Guns don't
cause these incidents to occur anymore than cameras cause
child pornography or automobiles cause traffic fatalities.
Israel had the right answer. Society is safer when we train
and arm our law abiding citizens. As the defensive training
leader in the USA, Front Sight is willing and able to set
the example for the rest of the country to follow."
Armed Teachers
Dave Clark, who recently retired after teaching for the
last 25 years at Junction Junior High School in Livermore,
California agrees with Front Sight's philosophy. In fact,
Mr. Clark has previously attended a Four Day Defensive
Handgun course at Front Sight at his own expense and found
the course to be exactly what is needed to train fellow
teachers to stop an attack similar to Columbine school and
Virginia Tech. "Front Sight provides safe and responsible
training to a level that exceeds law enforcement
standards." Says Mr. Clark. "Among the many lessons
taught, I learned universally accepted rules in justifiable
use of deadly force. More importantly, I learned when not
to shoot and how to be more mentally prepared to see a
lethal confrontation coming before it happens in order to
avoid it. The firearms training is second to none and
clearly gives the graduates the skill needed to save the
lives of those in their charge if ever attacked. If my
school district chose to adopt a policy of sending selected
teachers to Front Sight for concealed handgun training, I
would wholeheartedly support it and volunteer as a Safety
Monitor. There is no reason for our children to continue to
be victimized when free, professional training is available
to stop school attacks."
Guns in Schools
There is evidence that a gun in the hand of a teacher will
stop an armed attacker. The vice-principal of a school in
Pearl, Mississippi used his handgun to stop and detain an
armed killer until the police arrived. Dr. Piazza adds, "It
seems obvious that armed and trained staff members inside
the school are in a better position to identify the
attackers and do something immediately to resolve the
situation. It is much harder for police, who arrive on the
scene too late to stop the killing."
Not so convinced is Sharon Piazza, Dr. Piazza's aunt who
recently retired after 30 years as an elementary teacher
and school administrator for Oak Grove School District in
San Jose, California. "The thought of teachers carrying
guns saddens me greatly. I would feel that we had failed
as a society and missed the core reason why violence is
occurring in our youth. It is not guns, but something much
deeper that is the common thread in all these tragedies. If
we must arm individuals in the school setting to protect
our children, I definitely believe they need to be trained
in when and how to use the weapon. However, I am definitely
not one who would want to be armed and would not want to
teach in that setting."
Lawmakers With Blood on Their Hands
Another obstacle to Front Sight's offer to train and arm
teachers is the current law in many states prohibiting the
possession of firearms on school grounds even when the
possessor is qualified and has a concealed weapons license.
Dr. Piazza quickly points out that those laws did not
prevent or stop the gun violence at numerous schools over
the last tens years. He states, "The brazen attacks in
school after school during the last decade indicate
criminals have concluded that 'Gun-Free-School-Zone'
actually means 'Government Certified, Helpless and Unarmed
Victim Zone.'
Case in Point: House Bill 1572 would have given college
students and employees the right to carry a concealed
handgun on campus but this legislation was killed
in subcommittee by the General Assembly. Virginia Tech
spokesman Larry Hincker was happy at the time to hear the
bill had died. Hincker stated, "I'm sure the university
community is appreciative of the General Assembly's actions
because this helps parents, students, faculty and visitors
to feel safe on our campus." Mr. Hincker now has rotten egg
on his face and the General Assembly has blood on their
hands.
School administrators, law enforcement agencies,
and legislators can change laws and policies if they truly
want to stop these attacks.
Senator Bob Beers of Nevada had the right answer by
introducing Senate Bill 286 which authorized teachers
who hold permits to carry concealed firearms and who
have completed a specific program of firearms training
to carry concealed on schools grounds. Nevada lawmakers shot
down Senator Beers' prophetic legislation just one week before the Virginia Tech Massacre.
The voices of Dr. Ignatius Piazza and Senator Bob Beers
can now be heard through the halls of every school in
America as they scream, "How many more of our children must
be gunned down before this country will wake up and pass
sensible laws that protect our children by placing
concealed guns in the hands of the good guys? No more
free-fire-zones for deranged criminals!"
Schools Can't Afford to Pass on No Cost Security
Most school districts cannot afford to have even one full
time police officer in every school, but they can easily
afford to train three or more of their selected staff
members to a higher level of firearms training than offered
in police academies because Front Sight will provide the
training at no cost."
Retired law enforcement firearms instructor, Mike Waidelich
from Bakersfield, California strongly supports the Front
Sight concept of arming and training teachers. "Nearly
every tragedy on or off school grounds in the entire 30
years of my law enforcement career could have been
prevented or the damage done considerably limited, by the
presence of an armed and trained individual."
Concealed Guns
The training provided in Front Sight's basic training
classes easily exceeds the training provided in most police
basic training academies.
Front Sight proves it on their nationally televised
reality series Front Sight Challenge shown every week
on VERSUS Network. Seasoned law enforcement officers
from around the country go head-to-head in tests of
marksmanship, speed and tactics against private citizens--
including teachers-- who have not received any training
other than Front Sight's firearms courses. Remarkably,
the Front Sight trained, private citizens are currently
leading the series 8 : 5.
Piazza adds, "Teachers will be trained to carry a concealed
weapon, so potential attackers will not know which teachers
are armed and which are not. In states that have adopted
concealed weapon laws for private citizens, violent crime
has dropped. School attacks will drop as well once it is
known that any of the teachers and staff members on school
grounds have the ability and training to stop a violent
attack immediately."
Piazza explains that scientific research also supports
Front Sight's stance on concealed weapon training. He
references researcher, John Lott, Jr. from the University
of Chicago School of Law who published Crime, Deterrence
and Right-to-Carry Concealed Handguns in July 1996. "Mr.
Lott's research of cross-sectional time-series data from
all 3054 U.S. counties from 1977 to 1992 found that
allowing citizens to carry concealed weapons deters violent
crime and appears to produce no increase in accidental
deaths. If those states which did not have right-to-carry
concealed handgun provisions had adopted them in 1992,
approximately 1,570 murders, 4,177 rapes, and over 60,000
aggravated assaults would have been avoided yearly."
Gun Control Increases Violent Crime
Piazza asks, "How many times must we experience another
Littleton, Colorado or Virginia Tech before we wake up,
study the research and adopt policies which actually reduce
crime and begin saving our children instead of leaving them
helpless victims when the next psych drug user snaps?"
Gun control typically increases violent crime yet some
politicians continue to tout disarming law abiding citizens
as a solution. Front Sight has a better solution.
School districts interested in taking advantage of Front
Sight's commitment to help protect our children should
call us at 1.800.987.7719 or e-mail Front Sight at
info@frontsight.com. More information about Front Sight
training is available at http://www.frontsight.com.
Press Release Submitted by Reader - Reprinted by permission of Front Sight Firearms Training Institute | E-mail Comments on this article. | Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect the views of Reform America or its staff.
“This is the Zodiac speaking.”
Criminals and the media have always had a strange relationship with each other. Crime sells and everyone wants to be famous. No longer satisfied with others interpretations of their intent or actions, killers are now writing their own press releases. Killing not for profit or passion but as a way to get attention and share that inner image of yourself with the world.
In Jack the Ripper’s day one or two gruesome murders were enough to guarantee the front page. The Zodiac killer didn’t just read about himself in the papers, he directed their coverage of him. Details to the killings, instructions on exactly which part of his letter to print, the coded messages, ciphers, police taunts. Zodiac was thrilled at his celebrity. But real notoriety comes only once you’re exposed. Charles Manson still has a huge cult following, the Unibomber used his dark fame to get his book published and the Night Stalker was furious at the press getting his nick-name wrong. It begs the question: was fame itself the prime motive?
Both the Columbine killers and Virginia Tech gunman planned as much for the legacy they would leave behind as they did for the event itself. The people they became on camera and in their writings were not entirely who they were, but rather characters, personas, alter-egos created for the benefit of the mass media. A chance to be remembered not as the pimply, shy, awkward "Clark Kent" boys that they were but as menacing, powerful, dark "Supermen" striking back at the privileged society that created them.
It has become no longer sufficient to just kill those who have "wronged" you. Now in this age of extreme everything we have Harry Potter with an uzi, suicide by cop to the extreme, a maniac who took two hours out of his killing spree to mail the networks his press kit. Now that we televise wars you need a bigger body count to get noticed. Any thing less than a double-digit body count and you are lucky to make the local news. What will they do next, live web-cams, a video feed of the crime as it happens, which would of course be picked up and broadcast by al the networks simultaneously. We used to kill for love, or money, or love of money, but now it seems that getting your name in the paper or on tv is enough motivation to pull the trigger.
Let’s not give them what they want. Let’s not show the videos. Let’s not publish their writings or drawing. Let’s not show the photographs they send in for publication, let’s strip them of the image and costume that is so important that it’s worth killing for. Let’s dig up the most embarrassing photo possible and print and publish that over and over again. Let’s dig up the little details the stories that caused all the laughter and finger-pointing and replay those over and over again. Let’s make sure that the victims are given more air time, let’s publish their writings and home movies. Let’s make it clear to the next would be gunman that the humiliation you experienced in life is nothing to what you will be exposed to in death.
Kyle Pesonen - Staff Writer | E-mail Comments on this article.
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