A plan to arm some Florida schoolteachers has met with controversy in the Florida Legislature, but one expert says it could work -- if it is coupled with professional guards.
How important is it to have armed security guards and police officers in our schools?
Russell Ricalde of ITAC Services says, "I don't see any other alternative because anything that they're working on right now any of the legislation to change gun laws any of the arming teachers the training that will be required for all of that. All of that is going to take a lot of time.
"It's not going to happen tomorrow these events are happening now. The only way to stop these events is with a man with a gun. A good man with a gun against a bad man with a gun."
I-Tac Services provides armed guards for schools. He showed us how his company trains guards.
"You have multiple active shooters which, of course, we've had in the past," Ricalde says. "You have a hostage situation. In this depiction we have a child. The training is the ability to shoot in between innocent people and actually hit the bad guy
"It's not like being at war where the enemy is on one side."
In this situation you have to act instantly, and by yourself you have to be able to think on your feet. The training has to be extensive in mindset and in firearms training knowledge of terrorist incidents knowledge of active shooters and pre-surveillance.
Ricalde says either a veteran law enforcement officer or a veteran of the military "are the only people I hire and really the only people for this job."
What is it that he do when he trains people?
"The training has to be extensive," he said. "The person that we choose has to already have a combat mindset, a survival mindset. This is a situation with an active shooter. You have to by yourself engage a person that's using deadline force that would normally be engaged by an entire SWAT team.
"We're not talking about a security guard, so that means the person you are describing will be in a different pay bracket because you're expecting so much experience "
He said the average security guard in Florida makes somewhere between $10 and $14 an hour maximum. That's for an armed security guard.
"You can not the quality of person that you need for that job at that price. It's impossible. Those type of people who are coming out of military with a college degree or former law enforcement officers retired they can't work for type of pay. You get what you pay for."
He said a trained armed guard can be a deterrent.
"These people that are doing these active shooting scenarios, they don't want to be taken down by police. That's why they normally commit suicide. They commit suicide because they are cowards as soon as they are engaged. ... If they know there is an armed trained person on the campus they're not going to pick that campus."
