Three children and a teacher went to an elementary school in Oregon on Oct. 15 and never came home.
According to authorities, a 16-year-old gunman shot his way through locked doors at Silver Rail Elementary School in Bend. Another child and another teacher were critically injured.
The children killed were 5, 8 and 11.
Kaylub Giamanco, a father of two girls and a carpenter, was near the school on his lunch break and saw the attacker entering the building. Giamanco followed him inside and shot him. Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek credited that intervention with helping end the attack and likely saving lives.
So, let me ask a question that has troubled me for a long time: Why do we accept substantial security as a basic necessity in government buildings, yet argue endlessly about providing armed protection for our children?
Recently, I visited the passport office in Stamford, Conn. Getting inside felt like entering a fortress. The security presence was striking, especially compared with the relatively modest office operation I could see.
Of course the employees and members of the public inside that office deserve to be safe. So do children learning to read.
Here in Halston Media’s coverage area, we cover seven school districts. Most serve thousands of students. Some have one school resource officer (SRO) per building; others have an officer covering multiple buildings. Even where there is an officer in every building, that can mean one person responsible for protecting hundreds of children, along with teachers and staff.
That officer cannot be everywhere at once.
Yet there always seems to be a debate over how to fund these positions and who pays. The county? The school district? What about the municipality? Our children’s protection should not depend on which government entity finally agrees to pick up the tab.
If we recognize the need for substantial security where adults process passports, surely we can recognize its value where thousands of children spend their days.
In an exclusive Halston Media interview on Saturday, I asked Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman, the Republican candidate for governor of New York, how he would strengthen school safety.
Blakeman described measures he said he has implemented in Nassau County: an emergency app that allows schools to summon police with the push of a button, security planning with schools and daily police checks.
He advocated a layered approach involving security personnel, stronger doors and locks, technology, and intelligence to identify threats before an attack occurs. He also called for greater investment in mental health.
Blakeman also called for uniformity in school security and said he would significantly increase funding.
“I don’t think safety should depend on the economic situation of the school district,” he said.
I agree. A child’s protection should not depend on the wealth of the district where that child attends school.
These proposals are a welcome start.
But we still need to answer this question: Who can protect the children already inside when an attacker gets through?
Blakeman is right to talk about layers of protection. I believe we need an additional layer within the school itself.
In 2000, I spent six months studying at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, the capital of Israel.
Throughout that country, the sight of off-duty soldiers carrying weapons was ordinary. I remember seeing them in public places, such as malls, restaurants and movie theaters, going about their lives with their weapons alongside them.
Their presence made me feel safer.
I understood that if someone tried to hurt the people around me, there were trained people nearby who could respond.
Israel and the United States are different societies. Military service plays a very different role there.
But the experience challenged an assumption that often dominates our own discussion: that seeing a gun necessarily means seeing a threat.
A weapon in the hands of someone intent on murdering children is a threat. A weapon carried by someone qualified and prepared to protect those children can be a means of stopping that threat.
The intervention in Oregon deserves to be part of this conversation.
It does not prove that every armed person will act successfully, or that armed security can prevent every tragedy. It does demonstrate why dismissing armed civilian intervention out of hand makes no sense.
I believe every school should have trained, armed officers present during the school day. That should be a basic public responsibility, supported by dependable funding.
But given the number of students and buildings our officers are responsible for protecting, I also believe we need to consider additional protection through carefully selected volunteers already working inside a school.
Principals, teachers or other staff members who want to undertake that responsibility should have a lawful path to be deputized or otherwise formally authorized to do so through a program overseen by law enforcement.
Participation would have to be voluntary. The standards would have to be demanding.
Background checks and a basic firearms-safety course would be a starting point. They would not be sufficient qualifications by themselves. A serious program would require substantial additional training, recurring qualification, clear accountability and coordination with responding police.
New York currently restricts schools from authorizing teachers and administrators to carry firearms unless they are primarily employed in specified security or law-enforcement roles. What I am proposing would require a change in state policy. Lawmakers should be willing to consider it.
There are legitimate questions about such a program. How would participants be selected? How would firearms remain secure around children? How would police identify authorized personnel during an emergency? Who would oversee performance and remove anyone who failed to meet the standards?
Those questions deserve serious answers. They are reasons to design a program carefully.
I know this discussion inevitably becomes a debate over gun control.
I support the Second Amendment. Its significance extends far beyond hunting. The right to keep and bear arms concerns self-defense and the relationship between citizens and government, including the danger of tyranny. In November 1938, Nazi Germany explicitly prohibited Jews from possessing firearms and other weapons. As a Jew, that history carries personal weight. Given the antisemitism rearing its ugly head in America today, there is no way I would surrender my right to defend myself and my family. Nor should any other law-abiding citizen be asked to surrender that right.
But there is also a danger of anarchy. A “well-regulated” group of responsible citizens, trained, deputized and accountable to law enforcement, is a logical response to people who would terrorize our communities. I believe that kind of organized citizen protection is consistent with what our Constitution envisioned.
Every community should be asking who is responsible for protecting its students, whether that protection is adequate and what happens during the minutes before outside help arrives.
Those minutes matter.
We can work out funding formulas. We can establish demanding standards. We can resolve questions of oversight and responsibility.
What I cannot accept is treating the gaps in our children’s protection as inevitable.
I left the passport office confident that someone had thought seriously about protecting the people inside.
Every parent deserves that same confidence when leaving a child at school.
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