Posted on 04/17/2007 4:31:25 PM PDT by DeerfieldObserver
The Independent School District of Burleson, Texas, just south of Ft. Worth is the first in the country to adopt a policy of training students to immediately fight back and use their advantage in numbers to take tactical control if a gunman enters their classroom.
A group of Texas security experts with a company called "Response Options" has made instructional video tapes showing a gunman bursting into a classroom and being swarmed by students. The instructors tell students to throw their books, book bags, desk and chairs using everything and anything to disrupt and take down a gunman. Robin Browne, a major with the British Army, helped design the training course and says it is necessary for students and teachers to throw themselves into the line of fire.
"This is not a burglar. This is not a bank robber," Browne said. "This is someone who has come onto school property with the express intention of using a deadly weapon to hurt and dominate people who cannot necessarily defend themselves." A person who enters a school, Browne said, "is in the same category as serial killers."
"We are dealing with a predator here and a predator, when he is offered prey and the prey gives in will take advantage of that prey," he said. "What we are teaching here is for the children to not allow the predator to take control. … They actually become the superior the dominant party in the room, and it is actually the gunman who becomes the prey."
A Lesson From Columbine and Other School Shootings
Browne says waiting for police to take control is a deadly mistake and says that 15 people who died and 24 were injured at Columbine as police struggled to take control. By the time police responded the hostage at the Amish schoolhouse in Nickel Mines, Penn., students and school officials had lost control and ultimately, five girls died and the gunman, Charles Roberts, killed himself.
"If you have got 15 sixth, seventh and eighth graders, they can be an incredibly effective weapon," Browne said.
The students are instructed to respond the instant they see a threat.
"It doesn't give the guy any time to try to collect his thoughts, you just storm him and start hitting him with stuff," said one student, Ray Longo. So far parents, teachers and students support Burleson's take charge policy. But outside of Burleson, Texas safety experts are appalled at the notion of students being trained to storm a person with a weapon.
"When it comes to fighting an attacker even SWAT teams have a hard time knowing what to do. How can we expect kids to know what to do," said Ronald Stephens, executive director of National School Safety. Stephens also says the child who leads the charge is most vulnerable.
"Rushing a gunman with scissors or staplers or a book might cause a gunman to shoot that person on the spot," he said.
Browne concedes that his program of fighting back carries risk. He admits that the first student to swarm an attacker may pay with his or her life. However, he believes the risk may be worth it to save other lives.
"He won't be able to shoot the fourth, fifth, eighth, twentieth or thirtieth student," he said.
Would work against an airliner hijacker also; blankets, laptops, paperback books, etc etc
I take back my sarcasm. I thought you meant allow high school kids to carry, not college students. My apologies.
Training is to be commended. And courage it would take.
I and some coworkers have many hours of self-defense training which involves coordinated action by small teams. Communication is an essential component of small unit tactics. We would be hard pressed at a moments notice to employ an agreed upon plan and communicate this with other team members. The best we could do is probably: "On three rush this jerk. 3, 2, 1, go..."
There are a lot of excuses to be a coward...none of them make sense. We are supposed to be incontrol of our emotions not under the control of them. Master your fear and fight back.
Better to die on your feet than to die on your knee's
Hmmm, same thing we’ve taught our 11 y.o.
In fact, repeated frequently during the last 36 hours.
Yes, it is a risk, but waiting to be killed is not an option.
The critical distances are 50 yards and 1 yard. Beyond 50 you are probably safe from a poor marksman with a handgun. It's spanning the distance from 50 to 1 yard which is tricky. If you are still standing at 1 yard, you can try to deflect the weapon. Good luck.
Jacob "Jake" Ryker turned 17 Thursday morning and joked about it with friends in the cafeteria at Thurston High School.
Then he watched a fellow student walk into the cafeteria and start blasting away with a .22-caliber rifle.
Ryker sprang into action - after being shot through the chest - and emerged a local hero in a tragedy that has captured national attention.
Seconds after the shooting started, Ryker and three other boys - altogether, two sets of brothers - tackled the suspect, Kipland Phillip Kinkel, knocked the rifle out of his hands, kept him from using two pistols and held him on the floor until teachers arrived.
“Has any other civilized society treated it’s young so callously?”
Don’t the ragtops wrap their chillen with explosives and send them out to destroy us?
Unless you plan to have 12 year olds carrying, the teacher will get shot first. As good as it is to have another teacher in the school close enough to react, I'd prefer the kids be taught to do something in the meantime other than close their eyes.
Good! I haven’t wanted to say anything critical of those poor students at VT, because they were doing what they have been trained to do: just give in. It’s time to turn that around.
Yes, they did.
And 300 of the products of that society stood off 2.4 million Persians for nearly 3 days.
And the lottery is a waste of money, unless you pick the right six numbers, then its the world's best investment.
The point is, you don't know the mind of the perp, and passively finding out isn't too smart in my book.
I was going to post a tirade about what I think about the shooting but I don’t want to possibly upset people even more.
I will just say that this training represents the RIGHT thing, logically and otherwise.
It would be better to actually arm citizens though, but guns are evil; even though they are inanimate objects.
I fail to see your point. The entire concept revolves around teaching defenseless kids to overcome the freeze like a rabbit reflex.
Of course it would be great to have someone armed in the classroom, but once that's known the perp will just be sure to shoot the teacher first and lock the door. I see absolutely no negatives to teaching kids to run and/or fight.
But you know one of the faculty will have a bad, pull out the gun, and then we'll have to ban them again. /sarc
I had this talk with my HSer’s yesterday. I told them if anyone ever came into the school with the intent to kill you’re better to go down fighting than be executed.
Who can argue with the latter?
Ryker took on a shooter armed with a .22lr. Not a reliable stopper, unless it's a head shot. He may have known this and such knowledge (I believe) help spur him into action. Firearms knowledge is a valuable asset, even if you do not have one available.
I do one better. I encourage my children to have proper tools for the proper job, so they don't get slaughtered like sheep.
Finally, I prefer not to send my children into gun-free zones and I have assumed financial hardship to not have to do so. My daughter who is now in college has alternatives. If she's expelled or charged with criminal tresspass, those are circumstances we can live with.
AMEN! A no brainer.
When the room full are slated for shooting . . . the additional risk is nonexistent.
SIC EM! ATTACK WITH EVERYTHING VIGOROUSLY, RELENTLESSLY.
After our discussion on the other thread about the VATech shooting, I thought you might be interested in an article about teaching people “Let’s Roll”.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/1818327/posts?page=25
It is time to start fighting back. We have been so feminized in this country. Hundreds of people running like sheep from one gunman. Understanding it is difficult to know what anyone would do in such a horrible situation,, but,, we hear the message everywhere “give in, go along, submit, run away.” VT was a “Gun Free Zone!” They should have just called it a “Kill Free Zone!” How often do we hear “fight back by whatever means necessary!” Of course,, this will not fit with the Socialists! They will shout that we all must disarm and lay down even more! A man with a gun started this rampage,, and a man with a gun stopped the rampage. It is just sad testament to this nation that it was the same man. If another man or woman had had a gun as well, perhaps it could have been stopped before it even had started.
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