LETTER: Schools need more guns, users for protection

To the editor:

Six minutes. That’s 360 seconds.

This is the average time, start to finish, of a mass shooting.

Coincidentally, according to FBI and other records, it’s the same amount of time it takes on average for a police response.

What does this tell us?

No matter how fast the police drive to the scene or go inside and try to take down the crazy person with a gun, it’s almost always too late.

In a Secret Service study of 67 school shootings, no police stopped a single attacker. Zero. The recent Nashville school shooting was over in 14 minutes. The police killed the attacker, but not before she killed six.

This is not a condemnation of the police (although they totally blew it in Uvalde, failing to learn the lesson of Columbine, which was to go inside and confront the attacker immediately), but simply a reflection of the reality of trying to stop a gunman with unarmed teachers and administrators. Some schools have a single school resources officer, but that single cop can’t work miracles.

What is the simple solution that most of us can’t admit? It’s to have firearms in schools. All schools. We need a simple bank of teachers, administrators, janitors and others trained to pick up a gun and stop the threat. It’s the same thing I’ve been teaching more than 1,000 men and women of all ages since 2012. Any adult with basic skills can learn this. It’s not a superpower that some police claim it to be.

Wisconsin has an existing law that allows anyone with a school contract (that’s most every employee) to carry a gun in school with the district’s OK. We just need a state legislator to get a legal opinion from the state attorney general. You can read this law at the Wisconsin Department of Justice website.

More gun laws never stop criminals, who by definition do not obey laws. We teach our school staff to use CPR and the Heimlich maneuver, fire extinguishers and other life-saving basics. We just don’t have the time to call for help when there’s a gunman in school. Many states have already armed teachers. What are we waiting for? More dead children?

Ross Bielema, New London