Guards & Guns Won't Keep Schools Safe
There. Is. No. Way. To. Physically. Secure. All. American. Schools. From. Active. Shooters.
We don't have the money.
Also, it wouldn't work.
An enterprising, motivated shooter can get past lots of physical security measures. More so if that shooter is a devious, thorough planner. Even more so if the shooter has full body armor.
Physical security is an illusion.
Guns, guards, and magnetometers would never be enough to secure American schools against the threats active shooters pose.
Same goes for American theaters, American malls, American grocery stores, and so on.
The thing about risk management is that you don't just mitigate risk at one single point or structure. Like at the school.
You also mitigate risk elsewhere.
Like by reducing the easy availability of guns to potentially irrational, angry people such as young men.
Think about terrorism and 9/11.
We didn't just spend billions on physical security in the domestic US for government buildings and critical infrastructure.
We ALSO went after reducing the terrorist risk by going after terrorist funding, and by taking down terrorist networks.
Here's another lesson from terrorism:
Terrorists seek to cause terror in part to cause the target to spend themselves into oblivion with endless physical security measures because the people are afraid of getting hit in all the places.
It keeps a society on defense, rather than proactively investing in itself so that they can grow and thrive and flourish.
Over time, they are weakened from overspending on security. From not spending on much else.
Sound familiar?
Yeah that's because we're living it.
People proposing only physical security solutions like guns and guards to the active shooter threat are saying that that's where we should put billions of dollars - but now in reaction to our own homegrown threat that we completely enable with easy access to firearms.
If it was a foreign terror threat, we would be working to make their access to weapons harder. That's what we did when we took down terrorist funding networks.
That's not what we're doing here.
Here we have legislatures, governors, TV networks, radio networks, lobbyists, and a whole culture war actively advocating for easier access to weapons.
Physical security is an illusion.
Gun safety is not an illusion.
There are realistic ways to make dangerous things safer.
We would be wise to work to counter this threat from more than one angle.
There is no one single thing that will fix all of this.
We need to do MANY of the things to truly reduce the risk - not just one or two.
Be safe. Look after some humans. Check in with people during this difficult time. Our connection with other people is sometimes way more powerful than we think.
Speaking of which, later this week I will be talking with Aaron Stark, a gentleman who was almost an active shooter himself. Connection with other humans was super critical in a different path for him. It will be a Facebook Live, with a recording available after on that page. Check the Shift the Country Facebook wall for the time, or for the recording.
Keep the faith. We've got good people.
We need to help each other through all of this.