It
has been 400 some years since Shakespeare’s Hamlet first posed the question,
“To be or not to be.” Today, a modern twist seems to be a recurring question;
to arm or not to arm.
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Edwin Booth as Hamlet
By J. Gurney & Son, N.Y. (19th century)
Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
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Since
the shooting at LAX that left one TSA agent dead, the question of arming TSA
officers has come up. I’ve seen arguments both for and against arming TSA. It
is not unlike the arguments about having armed security in schools or even
arming teachers.
It
is not a simple question to answer. First and foremost is to avoid making
decisions in a knee-jerk reaction. It is amazing how often within the security
realm that an event happens and suddenly there is a rush to make changes. It
may be within an organization that experiences a crime, such as an attack on a
staff member, resulting in new measures that may or may not always make sense.
In other cases, such as this with the LAX shooting, the response and attention
is in the public eye, not just an internal matter.
When
there is a major incident or security breach, it is common sense, even wise to
review what happened, and make changes when necessary. However, the changes
should be well-thought out and address the situation at hand. Following a
shooting, there is almost an element of surprise that it happened in that
location or type of organization. However, we’ve seen shootings occur almost
anyway, from churches, hospitals, museums, small businesses, universities,
rural and urban schools and even an Amish school. The bottom line is that a
shooting can happen in any location, in any state, in the city or in the
country. So a better reaction would be to avoid the next shooting or protect
the next target instead of thinking about stopping the last event. Often
military leaders are accused of training and preparing to fight the last war,
instead of looking to what will be needed to fight and win the next war.
It
is easy to focus on the past instead of looking to the next steps and it is
natural, in this case to wonder about arming TSA officers. I have seen some
opinion pieces by airline employees argue against arming TSA. The bottom line
seemed to be a lack of trust or maybe even an underlying fear of firearms in
general. It strikes me as odd, that a group who are entrusted with protecting
our airlines from terrorists would be untrustworthy to carry firearms. On the
other hand, this was a single incident and does not automatically mean that TSA
officers are a target. In fact, I would argue that airports are far safer than
many other public venues. Airports have more security and a large contingent of
armed police officers to respond to any types of violent acts. I have also seen
TSA officers, in uniform, on their way to work, sometimes using public
transportation. If TSA is such a high risk target then those employees should
be instructed not to wear the uniform on the way to or from work and change at
the airport. In fact, that would create a risk that someone could follow an
employee home; steal their uniform and perhaps identification to pose as a TSA
officer to gain access to secure parts of the airport.
Self-defense
techniques and training unarmed individuals on how to respond to an active
shooter have been growing more popular as well. I certainly believe in the
benefits of learning self-defense and think that unarmed individuals should not
just give up and become victims during a shooting. However, there is an old
saying about bringing a knife to a gunfight being a sure way to lose. Bringing
nothing to a gunfight is even more risky. Many of the techniques appear to be
good ideas and could help save lives. However, most of these attacks are
carefully planned and the shooter will certainly see the same news stories and
watch the same online videos and adapt their tactics to counteract any
resistance.
So
the question really comes back to what is the best way to protect individuals
from armed attacks. Lots of money and training has gone into teaching unarmed
response. Perhaps we need to reconsider the response yet again.
Most
active shooters have ended when the shooter is confronted by armed response.
The real solution may be to train on-site security personnel how to respond the
way law enforcement does to an active shooter. This is certainly one solution
not getting much attention and is especially suited for organizations that do have
a dedicated security force. Hospitals are one example. Shopping malls are
another, as are many office buildings in urban downtowns. For enterprises or
locations that do have onsite security, the focus should shift to training those
personnel how to respond to and stop an active shooter.
Following
the shooting at Columbine High School, law enforcement began developing new
tactics to respond to active shooters. At the time, I was a police firearms
instructor so was very involved in that training. For the first few years
afterwards, the tactics changed repeatedly. As police officers, we finally
settled into accepted tactics that we focused on learning and practicing.
However, as important as this training was, the amount of time spent for patrol
officers was one time a year, often not even a full day. In fact, officers
might only run through a couple of active shooter scenarios during the
training.
The
point is that private security could easily train and learn some of the same
tactics in a relatively short amount of training time. In fact, private
security officers would know the building and organization much better than outsiders
would and, being onsite, could respond much quicker than law enforcement. Just
the presence of armed security would likely deter a shooter, at least away from
that target.
The
decision about arming or not arming security is certainly daunting. However,
for those organizations that do have security, serious thought should be given
to providing private security with the training and tools that would be the
strongest deterrence and most protection from an active shooter attack.
Eric
Smith, CPP is the leading authority on organizational self-defense. He has
extensive experience in law enforcement as well as security management. Eric is
available for staff education and security awareness training as well as
business coaching to help organizations provide safe workplaces. To learn more
email Eric at businesskarate dot com.
If
you would like to reprint this post, please contact Eric at Eric at businesskarate dot com.
