Let's Roll.

In my ongoing attempt to keep this spot from turning into a one-note symphony rant against the Islamist threat to my way of life, I bring you this:

'BURLESON, Texas (AP) -- Youngsters in a suburban Fort Worth, Texas, school district are being taught not to sit there like good boys and girls with their hands folded if a gunman invades the classroom, but to rush him and hit him with everything they've got -- books, pencils, legs and arms.
"Getting under desks and praying for rescue from professionals is not a recipe for success," said Robin Browne, a major in the British Army reserve and an instructor for Response Options, the company providing the training to the Burleson schools.
That kind of fight-back advice is all but unheard of among schools, and some fear it will get children killed.
But school officials in Burleson said they are drawing on the lessons learned from a string of disasters such as Columbine in 1999 and the Amish schoolhouse attack in Pennsylvania last week.'

The article can be found in full here, and as always I’ll leave it you to make up your own mind about the utility/advisability of this tactic. However, also as always, you won’t get out of here without hearing what I think about it. ;)

For the record, I think it’s about bloody time we stop thinking like victims-in-waiting and start being prepared to ass-kick anyone who wants to do us harm. The gist of the tactics are to overwhelm armed attackers with numbers, chaos and noise, swarming them and taking them down instead of cowering on the floor hoping not to get shot. For those of you who think this won’t work, I can again offer a bit of Kipling:

We sloshed you with Martinis, an' it wasn't 'ardly fair;
But for all the odds agin' you, Fuzzy-Wuz, you broke the square.

To save some of my loyal readers a bit of research/head-scratching, the poem refers to the fact that mobs of Sudanese warriors armed with medieval weapons managed to overrun the strongest formation (the Square) of the best conventional troops of the late 1800s due to sheer numbers and gumption. And oh yes, in this context a Martini is a breech loading rifle, not a mixed drink.

So my example isn’t precisely analogous, so what? The principle is the same, and 20 kids and a teacher in close quarters armed with books, binders, pencils or just hands to grab hold of arms, legs, etc. will be able to overpower pretty much any single gunman before he can get off more than a few aimed shots. Once he’s down, he can be disarmed by whatever means are available (kids taking turns stomping on his neck, for example) and neutralized. And now you, the hunted, have the gun, aimed at the door by anyone who’s ever watched a movie, ready to shoot anyone who isn’t one of yours who comes in.

Obviously this won’t work if the SAS/JTF2/Delta storms your school, but that’s not who does this sort of thing. It’s one or rarely two guys, usually students, and in any event, they won’t be highly trained, armed and equipped with the best kit and operating in teams.

The important thing here is to ensure that the training sticks, and that a critical mass of students, etc will do what needs to be done and not hesitate. This is a lot to ask of adults, let alone kids, and some of them will inevitably freeze. This couldn’t just be a one-shot training deal. This would have to be practiced regularly, even more than fire drills, and leaders would have to be identified and encouraged.

What I see as important is to get people, not just kids, mentally prepared to defend themselves, and give them a realistic appraisal of the options and likely outcomes. Hostage situations don’t seem to be what’s going on, and a shift in the threat means a shift in the response. 9/11 could only work once, and United Flight 93 that day marked the realization that you may die if you fight back, but you will definitely die if you sit around waiting for help that might not be coming.