It is Front Sight Firearms Training Facility's current mission to instruct teachers across the nation in concealed weapon use for free. Front Sight's founder and owner, Dr. Ignatius Piazza, intends to get trained concealed weapons experts into all of America's schools and thus prevent further disasters like Virginia Tech or Columbine. The response to this has been remarkably supportive.



?I can't imagine anyone being opposed to the idea of putting concealed weapons experts into schools ? what else would scare off these gunmen? Certainly not laws against them owning guns!? ? R.H.

?How many times must we experience another Littleton, Colorado or Virginia Tech before we wake up, study the research and adopt policies which actually reduce crime and begin saving our children instead of leaving them helpless victims when the next psychiatric drug user snaps?? ? I.P.

?First off, Front Sight is incredible, I would trust the competence of anyone coming out of that school with my life! Second, what a great idea for Piazza to give free training to school teachers. It's one thing to care about school shootings ? it's another thing altogether to offer, for free, the best firearm training in the nation in order to make sure that they stop altogether.? ? A.S.

The meager opposition to Piazza's idea will come from those who think that guns are what cause murders, multiple homicides and murder-suicides. For whatever reason, legislators are convinced that preventing law-abiding citizens from carrying firearms will prevent terrors like those witnessed at Columbine and Virginia Tech.

Not so! The answer lies in Front Sight and concealed weapons training for our teachers. What could be more intimidating to a potential gunman than knowledge that any attempt to draw a firearm on a classroom or schoolroom would result in immediate failure? Many legislators would argue that more laws against gun ownership are the keys to our problems. But, when discussing gun control, the unfortunate fact is that legislation only affects those who follow laws in the first place. Gunmen who shoot down their own peers and classmates are not going to consider the legal ramifications of owning a gun in addition to multiple homicide!

Laws do not prevent horrors like Virginia Tech and Columbine. What those students did was illegal ? and making their actions more illegal wouldn't have stopped them. Legislating guns away from law-abiding citizens is backwards and insane. What's needed is training for those law-abiding citizens.

John Lott, Jr. from the University of Chicago School of Law published Crime, Deterrence and Right-to-Carry Concealed Handguns in July 1996. Lott's research of cross-sectional time-series data from all 3054 U.S. counties from 1977 to 1992 found that allowing citizens to carry concealed weapons deterred violent crime and showed no increase in accidental deaths. If those states which did not have right-to-carry concealed handgun provisions had adopted them in 1992, approximately 1,570 murders, 4,177 rapes, and over 60,000 aggravated assaults would have been avoided yearly.

As if in direct, illogical opposition to this empirical data, laws exist in most states which prohibit the possession of firearms on school grounds even when the possessor is qualified and has a concealed weapons license. Dr. Piazza quickly points out that those laws did not prevent or stop the gun violence at numerous schools over the last tens years. He states, ?The brazen attacks in school after school during the last decade indicate criminals have concluded that 'Gun-Free-School-Zone' actually means 'Government Certified, Helpless and Unarmed Victim Zone.?

So take a stand against these illogical laws ? support Dr. Ignatius Piazza and Front Sight Firearms Training Facility. Tell your school administrators that you expect their Safety Monitors to be sent to Front Sight for their free concealed weapons training. Front Sight and Dr. Piazza want America's schools safe ? so much so that he is willing to train School Safety Monitors for free ? what objection could anyone raise to taking advantage of this opportunity?