The dual terror attacks at Old Dominion University and Temple Israel last week could have been far more deadly were it not for the heroic actions of ROTC cadets in Virginia and armed security in Michigan, who were able to put down the attackers within seconds.
As Newsnation recently reported, the Synagogue Security Council of North America says it’s trained tens of thousands of volunteers on how to respond to a similar attack in their own house of worship, including the use of firearms in individual and collective self-defense.
“Regardless of how quick you dial 911, synagogue congregants will always be their own first responder,” Carmi Lawrence, the group’s managing director, told NewsNation on Sunday. “We have to stop delegating our security to the government, to third-party security organizations, to outside organizations, regardless of how good their intentions might be, and take accountability ourselves.”
Lawrence said even if police respond to an active-shooter incident within minutes, “There’s still a lot of death and destruction that can happen.”
The not-for-profit works with synagogues in person, over the phone or via Zoom. Lawrence said the group has seen an uptick in interest with recent antisemitic attacks across the U.S. and after the onset of the current war in Iran.
I would argue the same is true of our nation’s public and private schools, both K-12 and higher education. Delegating security to local law enforcement is a recipe for disaster if an attacker chooses to target one of these locations. And with Democrats pushing to get rid of school resources officers and on-campus security, many of our K-12 schools are utterly defenseless these days.
From what I’ve seen, it doesn’t seem like the idea of armed security in churches and synagogues is all that controversial, even when it involves armed parishioners and not just paid security. Yes, some anti-gun Democrats have tried to make this an impossibility by making houses of worship “gun-free zones”, but those blanket edicts haven’t fared well in court, and across the country these broad prohibitions are the exception, not the rule.
Treating our schools the same way is a very different story. While more than half the country allows for the presence of armed school staff, at least in theory, in most states it’s still an uncommon practice. In Minnesota, for instance, there doesn’t appear to be a single school district that authorizes employees to be armed on the clock even though superintendents have the authority to approve individuals to lawfully carry. The lack of participation hasn’t stopped Democrats in the state from trying to repeal that law this session, and Minneapolis and several other school districts don’t even allow for SROs on campus.
Florida lawmakers have taken a modest step forward this session by expanding the state’s School Guardian program to higher ed, but the program remains voluntary, and its requirement that Guardians have more than 140 hours of training and do not have a job that involves teaching full-time will limit the number of participants.
We need to protect our students, and that means having an on-campus response to any targeted attack. Ideally that would involve both school resource officers and armed staff, and if districts can’t afford to have uniformed police at every school then it’s even more important that they allow vetted and trained staff members to carry while on the clock. Public colleges and universities shouldn’t be “gun-free zones,” but should instead be open to those who can already carry lawfully off-campus. Committed killers aren’t going to be dissuaded by a “no guns allowed” policy. Instead, these policies just ensure that those intent on carrying out mass murder have a window of opportunity, however small, to carry out their attack with impunity… at least if they’re not planning on attacking a classroom filled with ROTC cadets who are ready and willing to fight back.
Editor’s Note: The radical left will stop at nothing to enact their radical gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.
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