In the wake of the mass shooting final week at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, we have heard a familiar chorus from those steadfastly opposing any gun reform: To stop armed college students, placed armed guards—or teachers “adept at firearms,” as President Trump proposed—in colleges. As the argument goes, we put guards with guns in banks to stop thieves, so why not use that same strategy to protect our youngsters? After all, we cherish those younger ways more than we make our financial institution deposits, don’t we?
There is a gut appeal to such controversy, to be sure—and if the handiest the statistics agreed with it, it is probably persuasive. But they don’t. Indeed, the records (and the aid of “statistics,” I mean the facts) counter this line of reasoning in 3 simple approaches. First off—and here’s a shocker—banks hardly use armed guards. Despite definitely each bank robbery film you’ve ever seen, most banks and financial institution branches are guardless nearly all the time. We can see that from searching at one critical subset of banks—um…the ones robbed.
In 2016, there were three 733 industrial financial institution robberies across the U.S, in step with the FBI’s financial institution crime facts. (There have also been extra 400-plus robberies at credit unions, S&Ls, and mutual savings banks.) Lest you believe you studied, this subset is a carve-out of just the wimpy banks, or the careless banks, or the robbery-inclined banks—and that’s why they have been marked…it isn’t. Rather, this massive pattern is reasonably representative of the U.S. Business bank populace on the entire—which totaled beneath four,900 in the contemporary sector, in keeping with the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
So, what are we able to learn from these incidents? Start with this: In the best 224 of them, did the “victim organization” actually have coverage of hiring security guards, and in just 177 of the cases, turned into a guard responsible at the time of the crime (see the lowest of web page 2 in the FBI stats).
Why? Well, that brings up the second one marvel: The presence of armed guards tends to dramatically boom the chance of violence and damage all through a robbery, as the Center for Investigative Reporting located when it analyzed detailed FBI crime incident reviews from 2007 to 2011—which the institution got thru a Freedom of Information Act request. In robberies where there had been no guard gift, there have been violent occasions (including the firing of a weapon or damage to a client or employee) in 4% of cases. When an armed guard was on responsibility, that fee greater than tripled to twelve.Eight%.
