Former Reading Schools superintendent recalls guns-in-school debate

READING, Ohio - On April 20, 1999, a teacher and 12 students were murdered inside Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo.

John Varis won't ever forget that day.

He was Reading Schools superintendent at the time and knew that he had to mobilize the community to do whatever it took to make the city's schools safer.

That effort included the possibility of having weapons in school buildings.

"Guns can be used to protect as well as take lives," he said at the time. "You wouldn't ask any questions about whether or not a private security guard is armed in the school, right? Take it to the next level. What if every teacher chooses to be deputized as a private security guard?"

Now retired, Varis said Thursday that he was trying to deal with a problem in a very rational, logical way.

"The ultimate outcome was making it safe for children," he said. "The children come first in spite of everything.  There is no number two."

The effort wound up costing Varis his job.

Varis' goal of increasing community awareness began with Reading police bringing in confiscated guns so people could see what different types of weapons looked like. 

"It's not what I wanted to do. It's what I felt had to be done," he said. "We increased knowledge."

Next came personal self-defense sessions that included the concept of "The Magic Circle."

"If you're within 20 feet of somebody, generally you can get to them before they can clear their holster," he said.

Police even test-fired guns at textbooks and found that a series of books placed together could stop a .44 Magnum or .45 and .22 caliber shells.

Plans veered off course when Varis proposed taking teachers, school personnel and others to a gun range so they could see and hear weapons being fired.

Even though only volunteers would have been involved in the program, it never got off the ground.

"Activists on the other side suddenly made it an issue of arming teachers, which was never intended," he said.  "First of all, you can't arm a teacher. Secondly, you can't arm someone that refuses to defend themselves. Thirdly, I don't have the budget or the capacity, but I can work with people that are interested."

That shelved plans to consider using people accustomed to handling guns -- retired police officers, retired military personnel and even grandparents who were trained and ready to become involved.

"We never got to any of that stuff," Varis said. "Everything stopped simply because people were saying you're going to arm, you're going to make the environment even more dangerous. And you were trying to be rational and say it's already dangerous because if somebody comes in, who's going to stop them?"

Other ideas on the table included making special signs teachers could put in windows so police could see them from the outside and know which rooms were safe. In addition, walk-throughs by police could have been conducted and officers could have had lunch in buildings to bolster security.

Many of those items are now standard for school districts and police departments across the country.

When Varis sensed the argument had shifted from keeping children safe to what he was doing, he resigned.

"I tried to explain to anyone who would listen that I'm going to leave, but you still have the problem, which, in fact, you do," he recalled. "Because my finger is not on the trigger. It's a person you don't know who is out there planning the next atrocity."

Looking back, Varis said he wouldn't change the steps he took, but he is concerned about one thing missing in the current discussions after the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre in Connecticut.

"I never heard anybody say that we really ought to impose the death penalty on the person doing the shooting," he said. "I even heard one person say that our goal is to get everybody to come out alive including the shooter. I corrected them and said, you know, my goal is to save the kids, not the shooter. I don't care if they come out alive or not."