My heart goes out to the friends and family of the victims of this horrible incident. These tragedies are just unimaginable and it angers and saddens everyone….everyone.
With that said, my viewpoint on how to stop such incidents or at the least, to minimize the amount of death and destruction that happens during these types of incidents is to not ‘depend’ on someone else for the defense, but to be ready to ‘receive’ the assault. To be prepared.
To have the proper mindset about school or mall or whatever facility defense, I think the words of Sun Tzu ring true.
“The art of war teaches us to rely not on the likelihood of the enemy’s not coming, but on our own readiness to receive him; not on the chance of his not attacking, but rather on the fact that we have made our position unassailable.”
So for the defense, any administrator whom is tasked with evaluating their security protocols should be asking two questions–are we ready for an attack by an active shooter(s) and have we made our position unassailable? And once a plan is in place, that administrator should test the plan and apply Kaizen or continuous improvement to it–to constantly improve their defense.
My other commentary here is that humans are a better defense against active shooters. A machine can fail–from cameras to ‘security glass’ to alarms. If it is made by a human, it can fail and it can also be defeated by a thinking human intent on destroying that in which you love. Your best defense is a well trained and thinking human, that is ‘backed up’ by all of those security gadgets.
The other point to bring up here is how fast this happened. The shooter in this attack was able to accomplish his goal within several minutes. The only people that could have stopped him would have been the teachers themselves. Because police could not have reached the scene in time. If there was a guard on the campus, he could have stopped the shooter at the entrance–because the security glass certainly did not stop the shooter.
But what if that guard is killed in the initial assault? It will be your teachers and others to step in to do what is right. It is about survival at that point, and a prepared staff is key. Having guards as a stop gap will definitely be optimum. An armed guard can also be intimidating to potential attackers and their plans–which might cause them to go elsewhere.
So hire guards, create an effective plan, and do not allow your facility and people to be victims. RUN/HIDE/FIGHT. Empower your teachers or employees with the knowledge necessary to survive and even defeat this type of attack. Get prepared and protect the most precious resources this country has–it’s people. –Matt
Sandy Hook massacre: New details, but few answers
By Steve Vogel, Sari Horwitz and David A. Fahrenthold,
December 16, 2012
The gunman who killed 27 people, including 20 children, on Friday targeted a school to which he had no apparent connection — forcing his way in and spraying classrooms with a weapon designed to kill across a battlefield, authorities said.
On Saturday, law enforcement officials gave new details about the rampage of Adam Lanza, which ended with Lanza’s suicide. Their new narrative partially contradicted previous ones and made a baffling act seem more so.
Lanza’s mother, for instance, was not a teacher at Sandy Hook Elementary, after all. She apparently was unemployed. So it was still a mystery why her 20-year-old son — after dressing in black, killing his mother and taking at least three guns from her collection — then drove the five miles to a school where he was a stranger.
The part of the story that remained grimly, awfully unchanged was what Lanza did when he got there.
Authorities on Saturday released the names of those Lanza killed at the school, who ranged in age from 6 to 56. And the state’s medical examiner — speaking in sanitized, clinical terms — described the results of something deeply obscene: a semiautomatic rifle fired inside an elementary classroom.
“I’ve been at this for a third of a century. And my sensibilities may not be the average man’s. But this probably is the worst I have seen,” said H. Wayne Carver II. Carver described the children’s injuries, which he said ranged from at least two to 11 bullet wounds apiece.
He had performed seven of the autopsies himself. A reporter asked what the children had been wearing.
“They’re wearing cute kid stuff,” Carver said. “I mean, they’re first-graders.”
On Saturday, this small New England town and the country played out what is now a familiar ritual: the dumbstruck aftermath of a young gunman’s massacre. Word came that President Obama would arrive Sunday for an evening interfaith service, repeating his role from Fort Hood, Tex.; Aurora, Colo.; and Tucson, Ariz. He would again be chief mourner. (more…)