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I appreciate Ms. Williams' concerns about the presence of firearms on campus. As a 25-year teacher myself (secondary English - American and British Lit), I am entirely familiar with the fear we experience every time our nation endures a mass casualty event in the form of a school shooting. However, I am also a pragmatist who wants to see more done to effectively stop mass killers from targeting our school children.

The points Ms. Williams makes in her column highlight a general misunderstanding of how laws work. H5762 and S636 won't change how mass shooters behave. Laws have no power to change behavior in and of themselves. Laws exist for two reasons: first to codify societal expectations for how people should conduct themselves, and second to codify punishment for those who violate said societal expectations.

When a shooter steps onto school grounds with a loaded firearm, he is already violating numerous laws involving weapons on campus. Entering the school and targeting innocent people is a further violation of the law. Do you honestly believe that someone who exhibits such contempt for human life and the laws of his state is going to be deterred by yet another law that declares carrying a concealed weapon on school grounds to be illegal?

Further, Ms. Williams states that only seven out of 250 active shooter events have been stopped by armed intervention. The logic here is glaringly simple: most active shooters - and all school shooters - target gun-free zones. Law-abiding concealed carry permit holders don't carry their weapons in such places, thus accounting for the low intervention rate. Ms. Williams wants to use the obedience of law-abiding gun owners against them. That is an unfair tactic.

In addition, Ms. Williams claims that armed police are superior to armed civilians due to training. Two problems there: first, many police receive scant amounts of active shooter training and even less live-fire training. Several of the officers with whom I have spoken over the years admit that they or their colleagues haven't fired their weapons in months (in some cases years). The assumption that police are more qualified for the actual shooting component of an armed confrontation is largely misguided.

Second, police need to actually be on site to intervene. The average police response time (nationally) is about eight to 10 minutes. At Sandy Hook, 26 innocent lives were taken in about six minutes. Further, having an officer on site doesn't necessarily result in thwarted attacks. School resource officers were present at Columbine, Virginia Tech, MSDHS (Parkland), Santa Fe, and a host of other attacks. The casualty counts for those incidents is exceptionally high in spite of the presence of armed police on campus.

Contrary to Ms. Williams' assertion about 'best ways to keep schools safe', the truth of the matter is this: the real first responders are the people in the school - students, teachers, and staff - and they need to be trained to effectively resist and/or aggress the shooter. If that means being permitted to carry a concealed firearm on campus, then so be it.