Thwarting Loons Like Lanza: Tasers for Teachers

The Left’s solution is wishful thinking that is willfully obtuse, while the Right’s is more defensible yet reflexively narrow. Strip their arguments of knee-jerk mantras, and both camps reveal that they haven’t thought through the problem to arrive at a workable solution. What is wrong? Both resort to emotive arguments dismissive of the kind of reason that looks at implementation challenges. In the aftermath of last week’s Sandy Hook grade school massacre, mantras and fulminations have clotted debates to dispense nonsense that will hardly make a single school more resistant to the likes of an Adam Lanza bent on murdering defenseless innocents as he did in Newtown, Connecticut. The arguments, in a nutshell, run along two lines:

Left’s Answer: Policy Folly

The Left sees in the carnage a justification to regulate guns out of existence, on the theory that banning weapons does away with the capacity of murderers to kill. Never mind that school carnage of this sort happens elsewhere with edged weapons, bombs, or any object whose weaponization awaits only the initiative of a garden variety mass murderer. The fatal flaw in this argument traces to an absurd hope that regulation will somehow defeat predators and scofflaws without regard to data and history, both of which show that any killer with the means to drive a car and strike at defenseless victims consistently goes to some lengths to choose victims who cannot return fire or are unlikely to fight back. One need look no further than a comparison of venues or a study of recent history to see that, the world over, there are many more fatalities inflicted on children, shoppers, and churchgoers than on soldiers, cops, and outlaw bikers. Coincidence? Hardly. The first group is unequipped or disinclined to return fire, while the second group is certain to strike back. Consequently, attacks against the second group invariably have a lower casualty count.

The Left’s paralogisms do not stop with regulatory maneuvers that only the innocent will follow, thereby turning themselves into sitting ducks. The second popular mantra is to simply put more police in classrooms. The folly here is that the attacker always has the advantage of surprise, and there is no intelligent way to staff and deploy an army of gunslingers whose only real duty is to outdraw a shooter who gets to pick the time, place, and weapons to use in carrying out a massacre. What happens in the real world is that such sanctioned protectors, over time, become complacent, distracted, and even counterproductive. Their management then begins to assign them other duties, ostensibly to get more value from them. This, in turn, diverts them from their primary role. The net result is that when the hour sounds, the sanctioned gunslinger is more likely to become the first victim and a source of supplementary firepower. This is a corollary of well-meaning policy solutions propounded by theorists uninhibited by any real-world experience of protecting people at risk.

Right’s Answer: More Guns but Unforeseen Consequences

The Right starts with sounder data: gun-free zones are precisely where shooters gravitate because they are goal-oriented and risk-averse, no matter how loose their grip may be on traditional measures of sanity. However, when the only answer is to arm all teachers and give them concealed weapons permits, the remedy may easily become worse than the malady. Shooters won’t hesitate to kill because they are untroubled by concerns of hitting innocent passersby. Defenders, on the other hand, cannot afford to empty a gun into a crowd in the desperate hope of stopping a shooter who is firing into the same crowd. The fatal flaw, here, is in assuming that every teacher can or should be trusted with deadly force. Considering that America boasts some of the most expensive outlays in education that correspond to the worst results in any objective measure (literacy, drop-out rate, ability to think and function), is it wise to burden this failed bureaucracy with deadly force in the classroom? In addition to spawning an epidemic of shot feet among pedagogues, such a measure would certainly backfire by drawing would-be armed robbers to classrooms in hopes of overpowering bespectacled school masters to relieve them of their guns. [This is not to say that some teachers, perhaps an important minority, could not be trusted with firearms if they qualify for a concealed weapons permit and demonstrate the wherewithal not only to handle a gun safely but to be capable of retaining it out of reach of both students and opportunistic criminals.]

Real Need: Timely Intervention without Making Things Worse

Between such extreme positions, however, there must exist reasonable middle ground that leads to a practical solution capable of immediate implementation without creating unintended consequences. The principal unintended consequences are neutering defenders by overly restrictive regulations that only constrain law-abiding citizens (since murderers don’t hesitate to violate gun control laws) or posing unanticipated danger to the ones being defended by virtue of inadvertently increasing the odds for collateral casualties or for deadly weapons falling into the wrong hands. What is the solution?

Tasers for Teachers

Equip teachers with nonlethal tasers that can incapacitate without killing. Ideally, make these the taser equivalent of a laser-guided derringer which gives two shots and projects a red dot to guide taser darts to their target. Make this taser small, to enhance concealment and promote keeping it close at hand. Note that this implementation contrasts with the counsel of some right-leaning, pro-gun advocates who champion the idea of keeping a handgun locked in a car or other container – a useful precaution against theft or misuse but a serious security flaw if the effort to retrieve the weapon means giving a killer time to shoot more victims in the meanwhile.

How would this work? In Sandy Hook, consider the teachers and administrators first confronting Lanza, or even the heroic teacher who hid her pupils and told Lanza they were in the gym before he shot her to death. Any or, hopefully, at least two or three would have had a taser to use to stop the shooter from reaching the children. If one teacher managed to tase Lanza, another could have then also tased him again while the rest removed his weapons and summoned authorities. The advantage of a taser is that it can function as a stun gun without having to fire its darts. So the teachers could have stunned Lanza as much as they had to if they had trouble subduing him.

What are the other advantages to this approach? Tasers are not lethal. Sure, there are occasional allegations that they can be abused to the detriment of individuals with unrecognized medical infirmities and the like. Such cases are not only statistically rare, however. They are relatively insignificant in the context of thwarting a school shooter. A taser like this will not travel much more than 15 feet, while a bullet could travel up to a mile. Thus innocent bystanders are unlikely to be struck by a taser fired at a shooter, and if they do get in its path, the damage is insignificant compared to taking a bullet. Teachers who may hesitate to carry firearms and fear carrying them because of their inherent lethality, should find tasers much more user friendly. Moreover, thanks to advances in taggant technology, every taser fired now dispenses identifying, confetti-like traces at the scene. This innovation enables authorities to match the traces to each individual taser, which in turn leads to identifying its owner. The net result is a built-in audit trail that discourages abuse of the device. Tasers, even if used improperly, are much more forgiving than firearms. They just don’t enable the average user to shoot off feet or send people to the hospital or morgue. The taggant characteristic makes them less attractive for criminals to steal, because tasers supply a faster and more precise trace than ballistics do for guns.

The taser option offers anodynes for the Left and Right without playing to extreme agendas. A taser is not a firearm. (Look it up, according to the ATF definition of what constitutes a firearm.) It is designed as a defensive weapon, and its limited range means that innocent people can outrun it while attackers closing in on a target can still be stopped. For the Left, the taser option allows redirecting the policy impulse to find ways to increase the safety of defensive tools without denying them to the people one wants to protect. For the Right, this option allows potential targets to take a hand in their own protection instead of being sitting ducks or victims-in-waiting. There are no guns to argue over, in any case.

Threat denial is no longer an option. Nor is it realistic to wait for more law enforcement or more regulation to somehow throttle the predatory impulses of killers whose psyche awaits post-mortem dissection while body counts keep increasing.

Tasers for teachers? Why not? If we implement today, tomorrow’s only question will be, “What took them so long?”

-- Nick Catrantzos

Beware Villains and Varlets

Especially varlets. The rigors of rudimentary upbringing inculcate in most of us a healthy caution against villains, or the kind of uncouth, dangerous adversaries who mean us harm and will not hesitate to incapacitate or kill for no ostensible provocation. Result? Those of us who survive into a relatively successful adulthood learn to spot villains and to avoid them. At least we don't seek them out. When was the last time you ambled drunk into a biker bar and chose that moment to hold forth that, unlike vacuum cleaners, motorcycles position the dirt bag on top of the machine rather than underneath it? If you are reasonably sane and unbedeviled by a death wish, the answer should be never.

Now, villains always pose a danger. For the most part, however, the danger is manageable. We can see it coming and can therefore avoid it. Not so with varlets.

Varlets are the lesser scoundrels raging through every sphere of life like a pestilence. They seldom present the kind of cutthroat, terror-inducing danger reserved for villains. Indeed, varlets tend to appear innocuous or so anemic as to be comical. Does this make them less dangerous? Perhaps or at least initially it does. But there is more to this encounter.

If a varlet may indeed both seem and actually be, to all appearances, harmless, this means that the varlet is all but certain to have an easier time penetrating our defenses. He or she may ingratiate, fawn, amuse, or just weasel into our circle of trust. Often the varlet operates best just outside this circle of trust, making occasional thrusts inward when defenses are down or incentives are up. The varlet achieves by guile what the villain attains by force: personal advantage at your expense. He may even look as cuddly and lovable as a panda that ends up eating all your bamboo (see photo above).

As holidays approach and seasonal celebrations amplify bonhomie, beware the villains and varlets, especially the varlets. This is their high season, and your lowered guard is their invitation to strike. Purloined presents, burgled homes, vanishing company assets, and even more harmful attacks during periods of minimal staffing and maximal distraction are their stock in trade. Leave these varlets unchecked, and soon their impact will be indistinguishable from that of true villains.

Happy holidays.

-- Nick Catrantzos