A Former Embassy Guard's Solution To School Shootings

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This whole gun debate is getting out of hand. We’re focusing on all the wrong things in my opinion. So, I did some thinking and came up with a tried and true way of bringing school shootings to zero. Or close to it.

Most of the arguments I hear about how to stop school shootings are focused on the shooter. That’s our first problem. It’s an impossible task to try to stop the next shooter when they’re all different, have different motives, and different resources. The other arguments focus on the weapons. AR-15’s bear the brunt of this. What makes this weapon so bad? Magazine capacity? Ok. So, will forcing the shooter to reload more save lives? Maybe, maybe not. Most everyone I know with an AR-15 shoots FMJ rounds like we use in the military. If I had to choose between my child getting shot with a green tipped 5.56 round or a 30.06 Core-Lokt round, I’ll pick the AR-15 round 6 days a week and twice on Sunday. So, let’s be careful before we force these murderers to choose a 30.06. Just food for thought.

So, if focusing on the shooter and focusing on the weapon won’t work, what will? We need to focus on the school. Bear with me as I walk through this.
I was a Marine Security Guard at the American Embassy in Bogota, Colombia and Harare, Zimbabwe. Despite what you see in movies, the MSG’s job is to protect the people and information INSIDE the embassy. Much like what needs to be done at a school. What happens outside was of little concern. We literally never talked about the threats to the embassy unless they were an actual force like the FARC in Colombia. There was no point in spending time trying to pinpoint some individual that no one knows who might do something one day. So how did we protect the people and information inside from these unknown threats? I’ll use the embassy in Colombia for this analysis since it was much more fortified. First, we start with the building to be protected being placed far away from any streets. How far? Far enough that if a car blew up on the street nothing would happen to the building. Next, we have a wall (not a fence) surrounding the property to keep people and vehicles from going off-road and getting to the building. The entry point will have armed guards and barriers. Every vehicle and every person is searched at this gate before entering. The armed guard inside has cameras on the entire property. Could someone still scale the wall and sneak onto the property? Sure, but we’ll cover that later.

What if someone shoots the guards outside and heads toward the building you say? Well the building is fortified with bullet proof glass and blast resistant doors. And those doors are locked and controlled by another armed guard inside. This guard also can control the barriers at the outside gate should he need to. (Make a mental note that at this time the guard inside just triggered an alarm and 5-10 other guys that are nearby are suiting up to come help.) Located around the perimeter of the building are CS canisters that the guard inside can deploy as needed. So, the intruder that killed the guards outside and made a run for the front door is now sucking in gas.

What if someone has a gas mask and somehow gets inside the building with a gun? Remember that armed guard inside the building? With the flip of a switch he can magnetically lock all the doors in the building. So now the intruder can only attack those who find themselves outside of the locked down areas. But he better hurry because that armed response team I mentioned earlier is only minutes away. And this team does nothing but train to clear and defend this particular building. They have rehearsed this scenario more times than they can count, and they know every nook and cranny in the building. You can’t hide. Their whole purpose in life is this exact scenario. The intruder will soon be dead.

You can see how much better this is than the current situation schools face where the shooter just walks through the front door and starts shooting. A single police officer may be there in a minute, but it takes some time figuring out what’s going on. He also doesn’t know the layout of the building. Meanwhile other law enforcement arrives and a plan is developed. All of this takes time and during that time people are dying.

But you also see the enormous cost this would entail. It is impossible to do what I’ve described in every school if any. So, what do we do? We start peeling off layers of security. The building won’t be fortified. Maybe we have an armed guard, but he isn’t in a protected position and most likely becomes the first casualty. We might install a metal detector, but it will be inside and useless for someone looking to start shooting. In the military we call this Risk Management. FM 6-0 defines it as the process of identifying, assessing, and controlling risks arising from operational factors and making decisions that balance risk cost with mission benefits. We know at the beginning of an operation people will die. We do what we can to limit that, but we can’t prevent it completely. Every layer of security we peel off from what I’ve described means we assume a little more risk which equates to possible deaths. Is the embassy scenario overkill? Probably. But at what point do you stop adding security measures and accept the risk?

The point of this is to show that A) there is a way to protect our children in school almost completely. And B) the cost to do so would be astronomical. Now we just need to decide how much we’re willing to pay (since our taxes pay for schools). But we must focus on the facility being protected. We don’t focus on unnamed, random threats in the military so why do that here? We also don’t focus on getting rid of something so prevalent as guns. We have entire government agencies focused on getting rid of illegal drugs and they can’t do it. If you think outlawing guns in the US won’t make every arms dealer in the world start drooling, you’re wrong. The influx of illegal weapons into our country would be enormous and immediate. It’s basic economics.

So, we have the plan. And like most other things in life it really comes down to money. How much are you willing to spend and how much risk are you ready to assume?