Less-Than-Lethal: The Best Way To Protect Kids From Gun Violence in Schools

In light of the horrible school shooting in Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia this week, I keep thinking about the debate many Floridians had just a few years ago, after the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Valentine's Day 2018 Massacre in Parkland, FL on whether or not to arm teachers.

American education system is in big trouble.

Boys are being emasculated in schools by catty female teachers and weak 'soy-boy' male teachers. Don't get me wrong, most teachers are great people, who truly care about educating the future generations, but there are too many bad apples, who are teaching children dangerous woke ideologies, contributing to a mental health crisis.

Punishment for bad behavior seemingly no longer exists. Mentioning the Bible and God in public secular, non-religious schools is not allowed. Kids are constantly on their phones, disconnected and distanced from their classmates except for those who they attend after-school programs with, for extracurricular academic and scholastic sports interests.

During the pandemic, kids were kept home for almost 2 years in many cities and school districts, especially those controlled by progressive leftist Democrats.

Children of Gen X and Millennial parents are also growing up in households which are increasingly inattentive to their emotional and mental well-being. Just notice how parents are naming their children these days with generic butchered-up names. Mental health problems among children often start at home, not at school, with careless and inattentive parents, get fueled and flamed by destructive social media, and eventually spill into tragic events where innocent lives are lost from a troubled soul's continuous self destruction.

Overall, we have a serious crisis on our hands and our youth is in trouble.

Whether or not we have gun control or gun reform, there will be more school shootings, as sad as it is to say. School shootings will not stop until we address mental health and also take threat assessments and security screenings of both students and parents more seriously. For now, focusing on minimizing threats and prevention is important.

Many people, including parents of school children, argue that part of that effort has to include arming teachers. Most teachers are against guns and most people, including teachers, do not have it in them to take a life. It takes a very special “good guy” to eliminate a “bad guy” in the real world. Very few people, even in the military, are capable of inconsequentially taking lives to save others. Unless specifically and thoroughly trained for this action, taking a life can have profound long-term negative effects on most people.

The good news is that there’s a way for the pro-gun and anti-gun crowds to come together.

This common-sense, bi-partisan solution is called “Less-Than-Lethal” or LTL. This means you can have a gun and shoot it, without the worry that a life will be taken. You can neutralize a threat with the expectation that the threat will subsequently be subdued and taken into custody.

LTL is a CO2 gas-powered gun, which discharges small, round, chemical-filled projectiles, similar to those in the hopper of a paintball gun, which harm and disorient the intended target. Byrna, a manufacturing company headquartered in Andover, MA since 2005, is one such provider of LTL products. Andy Pollack, one of the parents of a Marjory Stoneman Douglas Hight School 2018 shooting victim, is a prominent spokesperson for the company. In 2022, Pollack traveled the country to educate parents about school safety with Byrna so that no parent will have to go through what he did. While Byrna is only one LTL manufacturer, consumers can find other similarly-effective and similarly-priced products in the market.

While he was not its inventor, Duane Chapman aka Dog The Bounty Hunter popularized LTL through his self-titled hit TV series. As a former convicted felon, he is not allowed to use firearms, but he and his team carry LTL weapons, which they have used at times to subdue unruly subjects who were evading arrest.

Until as a society we solve the mental health crisis that our children face, LTL stands as the best possible solution for arming teachers and staff and preventing or stopping senseless tragedies.

For the purpose of self-defense and specifically home defense, I own several LTL products and I could not be happier and more at peace knowing I can protect myself and my family if stuff hits the fan.