A local ‘expert’ chimed in on #SchoolSafety and suggested schools should be treated like the secure zone around the President. His point was that more guns are the answer. As a former Secret Service Agent, I want to explain why ideas like this are fantasies. (thread)
Let’s say you want to create a secure bubble. We need to hire a top notch security force. Back when I joined the USSS it costs about 100k to train me. That’s right. 100k. But these security professionals wouldn’t have to learn everything a USSS agent would, so let’s say 50K.
This isn’t accounting for inflation since the time I was trained, but whatever. Now this person needs a salary & benefits. Well, these are our kids we are talking about. We can’t be cheap. It’s going to be pricy. Now this person has to man the door. But wait. It’s not that easy.
We’re screening for weapons, right? We need an expensive magnetometer and a hand wand. And, shucks, kids have backpacks, so we need an x-ray machine or they need to be inspected. You really need a three person team to man this door. And the line is HUGE.
Since the line is long, we need to open more doors. How many more teams do we need… 2… 3? That’s 9 highly-trained, well-paid security personnel at this one medium-sized school? And who is watching the busses. Oh, no.
Any protection agent can tell you there is a higher risk to your protectee(s) at the point of arrival and departure. So you have to protect the bus arrival/departure area. That’s another team. This has become a massively expensive embassy, not a school.
And the best part, there are 130k more schools to go in the US. Some with open campuses, some with thousands of students and multiple challenges. Are we going to create secure bubbles around all of them?
Or are we going to acknowledge that the one constant in gun violence is… guns.
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