Armed Janitors Approved By Montpelier, Ohio, School Board To Stop School Shootings

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Janitor? Sure. I would favor anyone who works at a school be allowed to carry if they have a carry permit. Gun free zones do not work. Only honest people abide by them.
 
The only problem I have with this is that now we know it's the Janitors who are armed.

This could work for and against school protection.

If you know that a specific person in a school is armed, you can target that specific person when you begin your attack. If you don't know who is armed, things get more complicated. On the other hand, if you know that somebody is armed, you may choose a different target.

I actually like the idea of armed officers in schools, but not for protection as much as public relations. For most citizens, their first interaction with an LEO comes when they see flashing red and blue lights in their rear-view mirror. Why should the first interaction with a cop be a negative one?

A police officer in a school becomes a deterrent to crime and a trusted adult figure that children can go to for problems. He could help coach sports and provide a respectable adult role model. He becomes an initial positive example of police which could help reverse some negative opinions of LEO's.
This is why you need more than one armed person in the School.
 
Deltaboy is right. Sure arm the janitors, but let the teaches or administration have the option to CC. I even agree with giving retired or off duty LEO's an incentive (huge tax break, or something) to encourage them to take the job.
 
I agree that identifying which employees, or category of employees, are armed gives away too much information. Having it out there as public knowledge that unspecified and an unspecified number of employees at a school are armed (or even potentially armed) makes a school a harder target than providing more details to the public.

A police officer in a school becomes a deterrent to crime and a trusted adult figure that children can go to for problems. He could help coach sports and provide a respectable adult role model. He becomes an initial positive example of police which could help reverse some negative opinions of LEO's.

Up here the School Resource Officers we have in the schools definitely have a mixed mission of target hardening for the schools and community policing for juvenile population, with the latter being the primary day to day function.

The other thing the school district does up here is hold active shooter response drills quarterly. I don't know how widespread that is nationwide these days, but it definitely is to the benefit of staff and students to have a rehearsed plan of action that everyone is familiar with. (Details of how a recent incident played out here.)
 
Seeing as how I live near this community and I actually know the players involved by reputation if they don't know me by face, I do know some of the back story here.

Part of this is due in part by the Buckeye Firearms Association's Armed Teacher Training Program. You can read about it here. And HERE.

As you can see, it's sponsored by the BFA as well as the Tactical Defense Institute. www.tdiohio.com.

Small town politics is the group of guys in High School who all played on the football team in their glory days. So you wouldn't be surprised to find the Superintendent of the Montpilier Schools is friends with the Cheif of Police seen here. The Chief of Police, friends with the Superintendent of schools, is also an instructor at TDI Ohio. Seen Here. He's the 22nd on the list.

So the Montpilier Police Department will be developing a response plan to compliment the "Armed First Responders" which will be coordinated with the area SWAT program as well.

The fact of the matter is that I would love to see Gun Free Zones go the way of the do-do bird. However, the current climate demands that this program be initiated carefully, precisely, and thoroughly. With the backing and training from TDI and their cadre of instructors, as well as the Multi-Jurisdictional SWAT team that is also TDI- Trained, it provides an easier platform for this community to get on the same page so to speak. I think this is a great start.
 
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The fact of the matter is that I would love to see Gun Free Zones go the way of the do-do bird. However, the current climate demands that this program be initiated carefully, precisely, and thoroughly.

+1. I think this is a ground-gaining issue for guns rights, but if an armed teacher or other school employee is involved in misapplication of deadly force or other bad shoot sort of scenario, it will be costly to our side. If a school employee authorized by his employer to carry concealed goes postal or something, it could be catastrophic.

We can talk about how there should be zero infringement on carrying concealed and such, but the potential downsides are such that I think thorough background checks and attendance of a training/certification course covering proficiency with the weapon to be carried, as well as detailed instruction on appropriate use of deadly force, are in order.
 
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