This Private School Trains Student “Warriors” To Swarm An Active Shooter (VICE on HBO)

In the wake of the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, last Wednesday, schools and state legislatures around the country are grappling with how to protect the lives of their students.

But more than five years before a 19-year-old former student killed 17 at the Florida school, Pastor Larry Allen, a a superintendent in Albuquerque, New Mexico, took a radical approach to preparing his school for potential gun violence.

In a Season One episode of VICE on HBO, correspondent Thomas Morton visited Allen's school, the New Life Baptist Academy, to talk to the pastor, a former cop, and his wife about the training they require students undergo.

In addition to active shooter training for every student from kindergarten through 12th grade, a group of select upperclassmen also receive tactical training, designed to help them stop a gunman. They're called the Pastor's Warriors.

New Life Baptist Academy's 20 teachers also have at least five loaded handguns divvied up between them.

In the wake of last week's tragedy, pro-gun groups like “Florida Carry,” along with public voices such as Rush Limbaugh and several Republican senators, want to pass emergency legislation to allow all public school teachers to bring concealed firearms to their classrooms for defense.

But many of those who witnessed the massacre of their friends and loved ones in Parkland think enough is enough. More guns is simply more violence, not more safety. Students even held a "lie-in" on Monday in front of the White House, where demonstrators called for tougher gun control laws to help make schools safer.

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