NO!

Youngsters in a suburban Fort Worth, Texas, school district are being taught not to sit there like good boys and girls with their hands folded if a gunman invades the classroom, but to rush him and hit him with everything they've got -- books, pencils, legs and arms.

"Getting under desks and praying for rescue from professionals is not a recipe for success," said Robin Browne, a major in the British Army reserve and an instructor for Response Options, the company providing the training to the Burleson schools.

That kind of fight-back advice is all but unheard of among schools, and some fear it will get children killed.

I guess I should probably provide a little background about myself so that you, the reader, will understand that I my opinion is based on some experience. I am a Martial Artist, and began my training when I was a child of ten. I have studied many different styles and even worked as an instructor.

I have also taught women's self-defense classes and have dealt with the question of defending against a weapon like a knife or gun. My usual advice to women being attacked was that it was an individual choice for every women, whether or not to submit to the attacker in the hopes that he will not kill her, or to fight back and attempt to overpower the attacker. It is a choice that only the person in the situation could possibly make.

But when the weapon is a gun my advice is always the same, don't fight back. Guns require virtually no skill to use and they put the absolute power over life or death in the finger of the gunman. It would require a great deal of effort an skill for most people to disarm a gunman and almost no effort for the gunman to end your life. That is not much of a contest.

That is one of the reasons that I am for more gun control laws in this country. Handguns are for killing, not for defense! The idea that we are going to keep instruments, whose sole function is to end a life, in our homes just in case we get attacked is almost always an overeaction to a perceived threat. But the idea that the weapon may fall into the hands of somebody who uses it to harm another person is far greater then the possibility that it will be used to actually fend off an intruder. That is just the facts.

And don't bother quoting the third Amendment of the Constitution to me, the right to bear arms did not include handguns which were not nearly as prevalent when this amendment was ratified. Handguns have changed how weapons are used in this country and what they are used for. When the third Amendment was introduced almost all guns were rifles used for hunting and defending livestock against predators. That is a world that most of us only know from period pictures and historic novels. What is happening now is completely different.

Okay I will end my rant and return to the issue of children rushing a gunman. That should never happen! Training these young people to confront an armed assailant may give them false confidence in their abilities which may translate into emboldening them to attempt to disarm a friend or aquaintance waving a gun at a party or other event which will almost certainly result in somebody getting shot. I have trained most of my life and I would definitely never confront a gunman unless I felt that they were going to shoot somebody, or myself, regardless of my response.

I have actually been in that situation, and I can tell you that right now thinking about it is making my heart race out of control. There is no more frightening experience.

There is no perfect response to an armed man threatening you with death, but telling our children to rush him is near the bottom of the list of choices. And arming teachers is ridiculous as well. I would support putting more security personnel in the schools as well as metal detectors but never providing weapons to the staff.