Nice try bdgr, but you can’t dissasociate yourselves from Burleson that easily. We expect to see Fort Worth schoolchildren up there rushing insane gunmen along with everyone else. You don’t want your kids to be sheep, do you? Teach them to be real men like the boys and girls over in Burleson. It’s your duty as responsible adults!
Everybody run! The Homecoming Queen’s got a gun!
well…I homeschool my kid (not for insane religious reasons), and he knows where the guns are. If we ever have a school invasion I’m pretty sure the pitbull will take care of it anyway.
Burleson schooling: kids taught to rush gunmen
Fort Worth schooling: pitbulls taught to rush gunmen
Fort Worth 1, Burleson 0
Yes, Burleson is separate from Fort Worth. Burleson had the courage to purge the sellers of sex toys from their Chamber Of Commerce (or was that Mansfield?) to keep their citizens safe. At least we know that schoolchildren won’t be charging the armed madman with dildos. 
Has anyone compiled the statistics regarding the number of gunmen in schools talked into surrendering vs gunmen in schools who killed everyone in sight vs gunmen in schools who killed some number of people but either more or less than they had hoped vs gunmen is school who surrendered without killing?
One of the issues with the WTC/Pentagon attacks was that we had over 30 years of hijackings in which the safest means to get out the most people was to talk. The al Qaida bunch relied on that to manage their hijackings and as soon as the passengers on Flight 93 heard how the rules had changed, they reacted differently.
Had the Amish kids attacked their assailant and fled, he might have killed fewer kids or more kids, but I don’t think we can accurately asses that situation. In the Colorado situation, again, we don’t really know whether six girls charging the nut would have resulted in more or fewer deaths.
In fact, reviewing a list of recent shootings, the number of times a gunamn has wandered into a school and held a classroom hostage is really tiny. Most of them seem to simply walk in and begin shooting. There is a reason that police departments moved from “let’s rush 'em” to hostage negotiators over the last 40 years and the reason is that the hostage negotiators tend to bring out more people alive.
I don’t know that the training in the OP is bad, per se, but I am not sure that it is really uselful.
That isn’t true when the perp is trying to shoot as many people as possible.
Wasn’t one of the criticisms of the police response to the Columbine shootings that they were slow and following standard procedures that weren’t appropriate for a mass murder in progress?
I’m still telling my kids to get the hell under the desk. There’s no way I’m telling them that bum rushing a psycho with a gun is anything but asinine.
It is possible that Columbine and the Amish school would be the exceptions where rushing the attackers might work.
On the other hand, the OP does not address attackers shooting everyone in sight, but a gunman invading a classroom. That would not, generally, be the same as a hostge situation, which is why I first asked about statistics rgarding actual incidents.
If the guy is already shooting, better to take one in the chest as a member of a charging group (others of whom may survive) than to sit under desks and be executed one by one. However, I’m curious what training is being given the kids to recognize the difference between an active shooting and a postential hostage situatiuon. The Amish shooter appears to have been prepared for a long event and only begun shooting when the police showed up in force. I wonder whether he might have been talked out of it without shooting had the first response been a negotiator? (And I am simply expressing that we don’t know; I am not claiming that the police made a mistake or pretending that I know what the “real” outcome would have been in other circumstances.)
I want to clear up that I’m not psychotic. I understand that 7 year olds rushing grown men is likely to fail. But high school students against other high school students? With 20 people throwing shit at one guy, who isn’t exactly a combat hardened special ops soldier, sounds like it could be pretty effective. Yes, there could be casualties - but you’re going to get casualties when a crazy dude comes in, guns blazing. I would hope that the training would include the idea of choosing the best routes, with an aggressive route being one of the options, based on the situation.
Also, I think schools should have more stuff you typically learn in the boyscouts - at least introductory first aid, if not more advanced - how to handle various emergency situations… knowing how and when to set a tourniquet is a far more valuable life lesson than what year the hudson river was first discovered by Europeans.
Oh that was burleson alright…They have a dildo task force of some sort just to stop the marital aid terrorists threat. I have a friend who’s a right wing pubbie…I introduce to people whith “but he’s from burleson so its not like he has a choice”. That gets a lot of understanding nods.
Questions from the back of the class:
“What if you think he’s got a gun? I mean, it’s always the geeks right? They can’t stand the good-natured torture they get from student-athletes and so they go nuts and start killing people. Happens all the time. So, what if you think a geek has a gun and is going to go nuts? Can you kill them then? That would be all right, saving lives and everything, wouldn’t it? 'Cause I got a list about a yard long of geeks who are right on the edge. Why wait for the inevitable? Get 'em now, before they have a chance to graduate … er, hurt anyone …”
Historically speaking, people walk into bank lobbies and start waving guns around because they want money. People walking into classrooms and waving guns around tend to have different motives ; the situations accordingly tend to result in different outcomes. At a minimum, a gunman walking into a classroom will result in a hostage situation, whereas most bank robbers have every motivation to get the money (preferably without the exploding dye pack) and get out as quickly as they can.
Strange that they’d care so much, but I guess that explains the three strip joints right off I-35 just a couple miles from Burleson. I live in south FW near I-35, and I go to Burleson a lot to shop and catch movies.
Given that the number of school shooting is, as has been noted, vanishingly small, I’m not sure two incidents can be called “exceptions;” it’s not like there are dozens of situations where passivity paid off.
The idea of training students to deal with armed madmen – if pursued for its own sake – seems to me a waste of time, only slightly more worthwhile to teaching them how to deal with alien abductions. However, if it’s part of a comprensive crisis reaction education, (as seems to be the case) with the real goal to teach students to be independant, creative and assertive in a variety of situations, I’m quite enthusiastically for it.
The specific skills students learn playing HS sports are in the long run worthless for most of them; but the character lessons can stick. Things like this can have the same effect.
AH-AH- AHCHOO! Darn hay fever. Watch where you’re waving those strawmen. The fact of the matter is the situation is a lot more nuanced than you think. As others, especially tomndebb, have mentioned there are more than one type of shooter, the kill 'em all shooter and the shooter with demands and occassionally those two overlap. Rushing a demanding shooter: Probably a dumb idea. Rushing a kill 'em shooter: better than getting slaughtered one by one, I’ll grant you that.
Its’ a shitty situation that, thank God, a tiny percentage of people will be in. I can’t see justifying spending that much money on that program when fifth graders in the district are reading at a first grade level and can barely count change.
lol…and the massage joints.
ever hit babes chicken? Best reason to go to burleson.
Tom, hit the nail on the head. There have certainly been scenarios where rushing the shooter would have been the best strategy. In a situation where a madman is picking off people one by one, where running away is not an option for the potential victims, the “crowd” has one advantage. Its size. If a shooter is intent on killing as many people as he can, waiting for your turn is not the best option. But what if that’s not the shooter’s intention? Or what if it is his intention–let’s say he’s even stated this–but he hasn’t started? What’s more effective, statistically, at that point? Negotiation or “bum rushing”? Who can be sure?
But it seems more than intuitive to me that in an instance where shooting has begun, and flight is not possible, rushing the shooter gives you the best chance. Whether or not training makes that counter attack more effective, I don’t know. But I think indoctrinating kids that their best chance for safety is NOT always being passive may be wise.
You mean the trained professionals?
Do you have some sort of cite or example of Western society “taking the fight out of men”? Or are you referring to the trend that violence as a solution to problems has become less acceptible over the years?
Americans have long held onto a Chuck Norris fantasy that they should be able to take control of any situation. The reality is that if a guy walks into the room with a Kalashnikov, he can probably take out half the people in the room before they can get close enough to subdue him. Also, no one wants to be the guy who gets shot in the face for being the hero. It’s a classical Prisoner’s Dilema problem. It only works to rush if everyone is pretty certain they will all die anyway.
The smart thing to do is:
-Escape if you can and call for help
-Baracade yourself in if you can’t
-Don’t provoke the gunman and wait for SWAT to arrive
-As a last resort, attempt to overpower the gunman
Why on Earth would you have a Gaul teach self defense?