PREVENTING A WEAPON RELATED ASSAULT IN YOUR SCHOOL (OR, WORKPLACE)

Howdy, friends.  Thought today I should opine on preventing weapons assaults in our schools.  Perhaps like you I was bothered by the horrendous recent active shooter event at a Maryland newspaper where five innocent workers lost their lives at the hands of an irate crazy person.  As usual, this inspired me to once again encourage our school’s (and workplace’s) Security Staff to redouble its ability to prevent another such shooting by honing our awareness and prevention skills.

Thing is, students and visitors can easily carry & use weapons on any campus if school officials are not alert to issues surrounding detection & prevention.  For the sake of my credibility, allow me to add that, for over 30-years, I trained educational, health care, law enforcement, criminal justice, security and military professionals (and non-professionals) on the Art of Detection (of concealed & unconcealed weapons).  I think I posted some articles here entitled Develop Uncanny X-Ray Vision.

WEAPONS CONCEALED IN CLOTHING

With a little practice and a lot of what I call Situational Awareness (or, Intelligence), teachers, administers, security personnel, other students (whose lives may be endangered) and even parents can detect when an unauthorized student or visitor is toting a concealed firearm (edged weapons are a little different, but I can teach you how to detect them some other time).  Guns can be concealed in a pocket, in a waistband, in a purse, in book bags, practically anywhere.  Here is how to be your own Metal Detector:

  • He or she will walk differently if a weapon is concealed in a waistband.  Here is a key.  If you are aware of how a student walks “normally,” you will be immediately be capable of detecting the difference now.  Because of the gun’s location, the subject will short-step going up or down stairwells.  Going up or down stairs, a gun secreted in a waistband will cause the leg on the side of the weapon to short step.  If you are paying attention – and I hope you are – it will look like the person has just now developed a “hitch in his giddyup.”  A limp.
  • If it is in his or her pocket (pretty common), he or she will generally try to double-conceal the weapon by wearing a coat.  If it is in the pocket of a coat, look for the collar to be super-tight on the side of the concealed weapon.
  • If it is concealed in a pocket of the coat, you can detect the weapon easily because he will unconsciously touch that pocket from time to time.  This is called “Indexing,” an act to assure himself that his weapon is still there.  If he or she runs or moves a little quicker, he or she will hold that coat pocket because that pocket-side will “fly out” as he or she moves!
  • If it is secreted in the pocket of a jacket or coat, you will see that the collar of the jacket or coat will be very tight against his or her neck on the side of the gun!t
  • If he or she takes a seat, the person will sit carefully (to avoid the gun making a telltale sound), and, again, will hold that pocket.  The same things go if the person has a gun concealed in his waistband.
  • Here’s something else.  The very last thing the potential shooter does not want is to be detected.  The thing is, though, that this conscious decision to (A) carry a weapon into a no-gun zone, and (B) unleash hell on students, teachers and others, forces the brain to communicate to its host (the body) to commit itself to a “Detection Dance.”  Whether the shooter knows it or not, when walking past a teacher or security, he or she will unconsciously sidle (blade his or her body so that the gun, although hidden, cannot be detected.  That is a lot of words to warn teachers and security to watch for the “Body Blading.”

Disguised Weapons

Of course, firearms aren’t the only weapon type that can threaten your safety.  Students also have easy access to a mind boggling array of inexpensive, disguised weapons.  A razor disguised as lipstick,  ball point pen knives, and pocket calculators containing hidden knives, to name just a few.  The damage-value of each weapon can be measured in their disguises, their difficulty to detect.

Next Post.  What to do once you detect a weapon(s)?

Until then, Stay Safe.

The Hammer

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