Sheriff: Investigation Shows Armed Teacher Could Have Stopped Parkland Shooter

By Ron Capshaw August 12, 2018 at 2:54pm

It is said that some law enforcement officials do not believe that citizens should own guns.

Pinellas County, Florida, Sheriff Bob Gualtieri is not one of them.

While gun control groups chant that arming teachers and school staffers would not stop school shootings, this sheriff appointed by the Florida state government to investigate the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School disagrees.

As reported by New York Times Miami Bureau Chief Patricia Mazzei, Gualtieri concluded that the shooter could have been stopped by an armed school employee.

The sheriff based this on the reload time required for the AR-assault rifle used by the shooter:

"There were several other times when he was in that school that his gun was empty," the sheriff said, noting that the rifle had a six-round magazine. A reload break allowed a teacher on the third floor of the freshman building to move students away to safety, he said.

— Patricia Mazzei (@PatriciaMazzei) August 9, 2018

On the school security camera, the assailant was shown reloading several times.

Gualtieri said his conclusions were validated by the school official who used the reload time of the assailant to get many freshmen to safety.

Thus, lives could have been saved if teachers and other school officials had been armed:

“If he had somebody in there with a gun, they could have mitigated this. There were opportunities for staff to have intervened if they had been armed,” Gualtieri said, Mazzei wrote in a tweet.

"If he had somebody in there with a gun, they could have mitigated this," the sheriff said. "There were opportunities for staff to have intervened if they had been armed."

— Patricia Mazzei (@PatriciaMazzei) August 9, 2018

Unfortunately, the one armed official on site, Deputy Scot Peterson of the sheriff’s office in Broward County, did not go inside during the shooting.

Would arming teachers prevent school shootings?

Peterson later said he did not know the location of the shooter.

Peterson has since resigned.

A survivor of the school shooting, student Kyle Kashuv said in July that arming school staffers is an idea that desperately needs to be implemented.

“First, we have to do what works, and that’s arming teachers and staff and having guards on school that can act immediately. We have to make sure that we have properly trained individuals who can act immediately when there’s an [attack],” Kashuv said in a Fox News interview.

Conservative actor and president of the NRA, Charlton Heston, as reported by ENEWS, once said that gun control celebrities like Barbara Streisand know nothing about the guns they want banned.

Clearly the gun control groups are ruled by emotion when they should be focusing on how to save lives after the guns have been purchased and the slaughter starts.

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