My Thoughts on Active Killers

I've held my thoughts in pretty well considering the horrible tragedy in Florida. I have heard ZERO police, politician, school official, teacher, or parent talk about the real problem with active shooters. Those mentioned above spend way more time blaming each other when the real problem is staring them right in the face! Before I go into this in detail let me tell you about my background. I have almost 20 years of law enforcement service to the communities I have lived in. This experience ranged from traffic patrol, homicide investigations, working as a narcotics officer, and SWAT. I have been a private detective for the past 5 years working for myself; which has it's own challenges.

In 2014 I looked into taking a month long course out near Las Vegas, Nevada at CRI Counter Terrorism Training School. I felt this opportunity would benefit the armed security side of my business. The training was damn near $10,000 so that stalled me for about a year until I could come up with the money. This course focused on advanced executive protection, counter terrorism, and high end private security operations. I impressed the right people with my firearms shooting and was offered a teaching position 4 months after I graduated their program. Not long after that I was promoted to Lead Instructor. I spent about a year teaching out in Nevada and loved every minute of it, except being away from the love of my life. This experience teaching taught me a lot about advanced protection services and the skill of predicting failures in security operations.

Now that you a little about my background here are my educated thoughts on active killers. First off, forget about mental health issues of the killer. America needs to wake up and treat these people for what they are, terrorists! Do you think security would change at schools if a person tied to terrorism committed the horrific acts! Hell yes it would! Why are we blaming the gun, blaming mental health, blaming the actions or lack of actions by the police or the FBI! None of that matters, it's all after the fact! Lets start working on prevention instead of marching on Capital Hill pointing fingers and blaming objects or others.

Is the solution or part of the solution arming teachers? Is it taking away semi-automatic rifles? Is it metal detectors in schools? How about raising the age of persons wanting to buy a rifle? None of the mentioned solutions even come close to what the real problem is... Its allowing these terrorists to be in close proximity to the property, to the students, to the teachers! Open your eyes America! Arming teachers? Hell no! It's already too late if the terrorist gets into the building. How will the teachers get trained! CCW permits? Those requirements don't even tell you if a person can shoot. They are about passing a written test and a shooting test that I passed with my eyes closed. There is nothing about tactics, the mindset to kill, fight or flight, or moving to the sound of gunfire. Take a tactical workshop course? That is a little better but you must continually practice to stay at the same level and remember the tactics taught. The majority of the public thinks police are skilled gunfighters. You are dead wrong if you think that. Most states only require police to certify with their weapons one time a year. ONE TIME A YEAR!!! That is a joke! If you were a very good golfer and then you switched to only golfing one time a year how do you think you would do! Yeah, think about that. There are officers that go above and beyond and practice on their own time but I have been told to my face by many officers, "If I won't get paid to train, I'm not going to do it." That is sad!

Taking away semi-automatic rifles? Do you really think this killer or others are going to say, "Damn, I guess I won't go commit mass killings today because I don't have a rifle." First of all they don't follow rules. Murder is illegal and that does not stop them! When a bomb is used you don't hear people wanting to ban pressure cookers, pipe, nails, or whatever else these people come up with. Determined killers will find a way!

The solution is highly trained security forces at each school. Not armed with just a handgun, armed with a rifle as their primary and their pistol as their secondary tool. Having a School Resource Officer is more about positive relationship building between law enforcement and students. They don't stand guard at every access point, they are not trained in counter terrorism tactics, they don't even have access to their rifles, those are out in the parking lot in patrol vehicles. Police do not want to be security guards, so hire highly trained operators that never leave their post at entry points and also have roving security outside in parking areas and around the buildings. Whenever students are outside have security stationed at strategic points on the property. The point of all this is to NOT LET THE TERRORIST ON THE PROPERTY! Start treating our children like high end VIP's. Most people bitch about how that will look and what has this come too! Well, if you want it to stop this is the answer! The only answer! It won't be cheap but it will solve this issue.

I put a security team together to guard the Prince of Saudi Arabia in Aspen, Colorado, last Christmas. We were heavily armed and people knew it. They didn't even get close the the Prince and our show of force was silent, ever evolving, and adapting to our surroundings. We spent hours conducting advance work, driving several different routes, and getting to know all the areas he wanted to attend. And this was all before he arrived. A true security force knows more about there area then most locals. We also had a tactically trained trauma surgeon on our team; why? Because we were paid to keep him alive. He had 16 people in his entourage and that made things challenging. Our job was protection and we did it well.

Terrorists do not like resistance and will select another target if they see heavily armed security forces. Laws won't stop terrorists, parking a police car beside the school won't stop terrorists... Nothing will stop EVIL, but you can sure guide it in a different direction with a show of force.