Texas School District Learning to Fight Back Against School Gunmen

Oct. 18, 2006 — -- The Independent School District of Burleson, Texas, just south of Ft. Worth is the first in the country to adopt a policy of training students to immediately fight back and use their advantage in numbers to take tactical control if a gunman enters their classroom.

A group of Texas security experts with a company called "Response Options" has made instructional video tapes showing a gunman bursting into a classroom and being swarmed by students. The instructors tell students to throw their books, book bags, desk and chairs using everything and anything to disrupt and take down a gunman.

Robin Browne, a major with the British Army, helped design the training course and says it is necessary for students and teachers to throw themselves into the line of fire.

"This is not a burglar. This is not a bank robber," Browne said. "This is someone who has come onto school property with the express intention of using a deadly weapon to hurt and dominate people who cannot necessarily defend themselves."

A person who enters a school, Browne said, "is in the same category as serial killers."

"We are dealing with a predator here and a predator, when he is offered prey and the prey gives in will take advantage of that prey," he said. "What we are teaching here is for the children to not allow the predator to take control. … They actually become the superior the dominant party in the room, and it is actually the gunman who becomes the prey."

Browne says waiting for police to take control is a deadly mistake and says that 15 people who died and 24 were injured at Columbine as police struggled to take control. By the time police responded the hostage at the Amish schoolhouse in Nickel Mines, Penn., students and school officials had lost control and ultimately, five girls died and the gunman, Charles Roberts, killed himself.

"If you have got 15 sixth, seventh and eighth graders, they can be an incredibly effective weapon," Browne said.