News item: Growing number of Ohio school districts embracing armed staff

An Aug. 19 article by WBNS-10TV highlighted a rural Ohio school district in its report about a growing number of districts in the state choosing to arm teachers and staff.

The story at 10tv.com focused on Benjamin Logan Local School District in rural Logan County, noting it was among the first in the state to adopt an armed response team after the law went into effect in 2022.

From the article:

Weapons are kept in safes across school buildings or worn on select staff, all with hopes of stopping an armed intruder before police can arrive.

“When we learned it could take 10 to 15 minutes for deputies to get here, we knew we needed to have an immediate response," said Superintendent John Scheu.

Today, Benjamin Logan schools have three-armed school resource officers, but 17 additional staff members have also undergone training to serve on the armed team. District leaders argue that relying on officers alone isn’t enough.

“The first person an intruder looks for is the one in uniform. This gives us backup inside the building," said Scheu.

The article pointed out that of Ohio's 600-plus districts, the number adopting armed staff has risen from 22 to more than 90.

By now, classes have resumed for most Ohio schools.

Dean Rieck, Buckeye Firearms Association executive director, said he's glad to see an increasing number of school leaders recognize a real and effective commonsense solution to keeping them safe for the next nine months.

"I'm glad more school districts have decided to train and arm staff members," Rieck said. "But the question is, why do so many decide not to? It's all about response time. If the police can get there in 15 miniutes, fine. But a lot of killing can happen while you wait. if someone can be there right when the trouble starts, isn't that better? Letting kids die to satisfy someone's politics is just stupid."

What isn't commonsense is the flawed "run, hide, fight" philosophy. As part of BFA's education mission, we held a seminar in spring 2024 featuring Ed Monk, an expert in active-shooter, mass-casualty events. Monk is also a former law enforcement officer, a schoolteacher, an Army officer, and a firearms trainer who has researched and provided training on the active-shooter threat for nearly two decades.

BFA seminar: Active-shooter expert Ed Monk shows why 'run, hide, fight' is all wrong

Monk noted several events, dating back to the late 1980s, and a consistent theme among active-shooter events was obvious — time and math do not lie. If school district leaders realistically want to keep the victim count to single digits, they must plan to stop the attacker within 30 seconds of the first shots being fired, he said.

Such a plan must involve people who are present, trained in armed response, and willing to respond.

"So what people don't want to hear is, you can't outsource this problem if you want a low victim count," he said. The only way to keep the count low, he said, is to have somebody there who can counterattack because the shooter is going to hit a victim every few seconds. Victims cannot be treated until the threat is neutralized.

As a member of the armed response team told 10TV, “We can take on the threat until law enforcement arrives.”

Joe D. "Buck" Ruth, a longtime small-game hunter and gun owner who spent nearly three decades in the news industry, is the website and social-media manager for Buckeye Firearms Association.