What Works and What Does Not

 John R. Lott today has an interesting piece at Townhall.com entitled Will Phobias About the AR-15 Keep Schools From Adopting This Innovative Product? The product in question is a bulletproof backpack with a collapsable AR-15 inside that can be carried by school resource officers throughout the day. The product manufacturer is Byrna, a company that makes a variety of innovative self defense tools.  As Lott explains:

Time is of the essence in mass public shootings. Civilians and police stop a lot of mass murders by carrying handguns, but sometimes you need a larger round than is available in a traditional handgun. It often simply isn’t practical to carry around a rifle. And school staff might not have time to run to a locker to retrieve the needed gun.

Andrew Pollack, whose 18-year-old daughter, Meadow, died in the 2018 Parkland school mass murder that left 17 people dead, is fighting to give school districts the tools they need. Byrna, a company that makes innovative self-defense tools, has donated eight backpacks containing collapsible AR-15s to Pollack’s “Meadows Movement” nonprofit. These guns fire .223 caliber rifle rounds and are more powerful than traditional handguns.

On January 4th, Pollack will give the backpacks to the Bradford County Sheriff’s Office for use by school resource officers (SROs) and Will Hartley, superintendent of Bradford County Schools.

“The folding rifle is easy to carry throughout the day for a school resource officer inside the bulletproof backpack,” Pollack said. “The seconds to get minutes lost retrieving a rifle from a locker vs. pulling the bulletproof backpack into a vest and having the rifle on hand equates to the number of lives that could have been saved.”

The school superintendent echoes his comments. “I wish more people could have it,” Hartley notes. “Because if someone comes on your campus and they have a long gun, we need to be able to meet their force with the same kind of force.”

Florida is one of the states that now allow staff to carry concealed handguns on school property with of course proper training. Note that Andrew Pollack drew entirely different conclusions from the events and Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School from those of David Hogg. Hogg believes that if we disarm ourselves and make ourselves weak, that somehow that will inspire the thugs and psychopaths among us to play nice. Pollack takes the more reasonable approach of hardening our schools to be better prepared for an attack.  The old Roman axiom, to have peace, prepare for war is appropriate.

My study of human nature over the last 70 years tells me that Pollack's approach works, Hogg's does not.