Something to think about
In 1974, Palestinian terrorists launched an attack into Israel which culminated in them taking more than 115 hostages in the Netiv Meir elementary school, 105 of them children. They then proceeded to issue demands for the release of 23 terrorists being held by Israel, or they would kill the hostages. When elements of the Golani Brigade stormed the building, the terrorists did indeed try to kill all of their hostages, using grenades and automatic weapons. The siege ended with 25 hostages dead (22 of them children), and 68 injured.
This is not greatly dissimilar to the numbers of dead and injured in Sandy Hook, CT.
What have we, in the US, done in response to school shootings?
We have declared our schools to be "gun free zones", thus guaranteeing that our schools and their students are defenceless in the face of an attack.
Has this worked?
Don't look to me to tell you. Open any newspaper, turn on any news channel, and you tell me whether it's worked.
What did the Israelis do in response to Ma'alot?
Israel instituted a program in which volunteer school personnel, parents, and grandparents received special training from the civil guard, and were seeded throughout the schools armed with concealed 9mm semiautomatic pistols.
Since then, there has not been one successful mass murder at an Israeli school. NOT. ONE. Every single attempt has been very rapidly ended by the armed defenders placed in the schools, with minimal injuries among the innocent.
Think about it. Then tell me which approach to preventing massacres in schools makes more sense.
I'll wait.
(Footnote: The worst incident which I am aware of at any Israeli educational facility since 1974 is the shooting at the Mercaz Harav, a private yeshiva or seminary in Jerusalem, in 2008. There were initially no armed responders in the facility when the attack began; the first armed responder, a captain in the IDF, entered the building six minutes after the first call for help, and he and a part-time student were engaging the attacker with gunfire three minutes after that. Despite firing an estimated 500-600 rounds of ammunition from an AKM rifle, the Palestinian attacker succeeded in killing only eight students, with 11 more wounded. The yeshiva was not a public school and was not covered by the program previously mentioned.)
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