A decade ago today, I was on the West Coast, teaching at the Firearms Academy of Seattle, when word reached us of the horror that was happening at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. The incident left not just a deep scar on the collective American psyche, but a festering wound that has never quite healed. It\u2019s a wound that became infected, and the infection still flares up again occasionally, with fatal results.<\/p>\n
The initial wound was caused by two young monsters named Harris and Klebold. The recurring infections were other hate-filled losers who followed in their footsteps. I was at the International Law Enforcement Educators and Trainers Association conference outside Chicago when the twisted Cho murdered 32 helpless victims at Virginia Tech two years ago this week. Cho and other punks who did the same elsewhere in the US and in Europe cited Klebold and Harris\u2019 rampage as their role model in the sick rants they left behind.<\/p>\n
I was on the ground in Littleton only a few days after Columbine, to study the police response. I learned a lot of things about what happened, some of which have never been made public.<\/p>\n
Some lessons have been learned. Armed with a 9mm carbine among other weapons they illegally possessed, the teen butchers were able to stand off the first responding police \u2013 the school resource officer and a motorcycle cop, both armed only with handguns \u2013 from a distance of some 70 yards. The third responding officer, however, was armed with an AR15 rifle, and when he started beating them at their own game, the young cowards retreated. The cops who had risked their lives pitting pistols against a long gun had tied the killers up long enough to allow countless potential victims to escape, yet would be excoriated as cowards by the clueless. Lesson: cops need patrol rifles. They\u2019ve been widely adopted throughout American police service in the years since.<\/p>\n
While it\u2019s true that formal SWAT entry was made late \u2013 it takes a while for the troops to arrive and assemble \u2013 the fact is that an ad hoc team of SWAT cops from different departments had entered the building within minutes. They were hampered by many things: deafening fire alarms were blaring, they had incompatible radio frequencies, and the sprinkler system was going like an indoor monsoon. All this interrupted their communications. Incorrect reports from terrified students that the killers were exchanging clothing with victims to hide their identities, and were booby-trapping hallways full of dropped backpacks and turning them into IEDs, naturally slowed the team\u2019s progress.<\/p>\n
Today\u2019s protocol is \u201cactive shooter response\u201d by the first few arriving officers. My friend and colleague Ron Borsch created a storm of controversy in the police training field when he recommended sending the first officer in alone under some circumstances to hunt down the gunmen, but his tactic worked great a few weeks ago at the old folks home in the Carolinas. A single 25-year-old cop made his way into the building and, though he was shot in the leg himself, this young hero cop felled the gunman with a single pistol bullet to the chest and stopped the killing. Lessons have been learned here, too.<\/p>\n
A few days after Columbine, I was on a national morning news show recommending an armed teachers\u2019 program like the one that had and has worked so well in Israel since the Maalot school massacre so long before. (And in the Philippines, and in Peru, for that matter.) That recommendation has, for the most part, fallen on deaf ears. A shame. You\u2019ll notice that no megalomaniacal murderer has ever been stupid enough to open fire in an armed environment such as Firearms Academy of Seattle or an ILEETA conference. Predators seek prey, and steer clear of sheepdogs. Unfortunately, by their nature, the sheep can\u2019t distinguish between wolves and sheepdogs and seem to fear any creature with canine teeth, even those that are there to protect them. <\/p>\n
There had been ample warnings that the two crazy young \u201ctrenchcoat Mafioso\u201d were about to explode, but they were ignored by parents and schoolmates, by school authorities and others. Schools around the nation quietly instituted programs urging students to confidentially report such aberrant behavior warning signs, and this has nipped countless mass murder plots in the bud. This life-saving lesson got little publicity, but has saved untold lives.<\/p>\n
The most important lesson was lost on the media. For weeks, even months after the shooting, the dead punks were all over the news, their faces on the covers of TIME and NEWSWEEK. It happened again two years ago after Virginia Tech. To this day, the media sends the message to every thwarted loser that all they have to do to become famous is get their hands on a gun and murder a few helpless schoolmates. But instead of looking its own culpability in the face, Big Media insists on demonizing law-abiding private citizens who own guns, instead. <\/p>\n
Why are the most important lessons the ones that are the hardest to learn?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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