Enough is enough, says an armed U.S. Army veteran in Indiana who has decided to take student and teacher protection into his own hands after the horrifying Florida school shooting and threats of school violence rocked his own town.
Mark Cowan says he is keeping watch outside North Side High School in Fort Wayne with his AR-15 and a handgun – at least until added security is in place. Cown told WANE-TV 15 that he’s standing guard to protect students and defend them against anyone who might threaten their safety while they’re in school. He has been in contact with local police and the school resource officer.
“I [decided] to get my butt off the couch and come out here and keep an eye on these kids and teachers. They deserve it,” Cowan told the news station. “They all deserve a right to go home every night without fear of what’s going to happen during the day.”
In addition to being an Army veteran, Cowan is a member of Oath Keepers, an organization of former police officers, first responders and veterans.
“These kids mean a lot to me,” Cowan told WANE-TV 15. “These teachers mean a lot to me … this is my community, and they need protecting. And our law enforcement, as good as it is, can’t be everywhere. So it’s people like myself and the other Oath Keepers that say, ‘I’m gonna take up that slack.'”
However, the school district doesn’t appear to be thrilled by Cowan’s efforts to provide more security.
“We take the security of our schools very seriously,” Fort Wayne Community Schools spokeswoman Krista Stockman told WANE-TV 15. “We understand he has a right to be out there, but we do not believe it adds to the safety of our students. At North Side, as at all of our schools, we have security procedures in place. In addition. at North Side, we have armed police officers in the building every day.”
As WND has reported, the idea of having armed military veterans and law-enforcement officers act as guards to improve school safety is not new. Action star Chuck Norris, an Air Force veteran, has promoted the idea for several years in his exclusive weekly column.
“Which one of our fine law enforcement or military personnel (in any branch) wouldn’t consider it their greatest duty and honor to take a paid or volunteer shift as a guard infront of our schools protecting those precious souls?” Norris asked in his Feb. 19 column.
And in 2013, Norris pointed to Israel, arguing that it’s a “beacon of light for how to protect our children in public places.”
“Israel mandated armed guards at the entrances to all schools in 1995, and those guards are backed up by special police forces,” he wrote. “Despite that school defenses are primarily intended to thwart terrorists, they also deter any would-be psychos who would cause harm to their children.”
Norris continued: “Back at the home of the brave, the U.S. faces multiple mass shootings on academic campuses and the majority still refuses to post any type of armed guard or even unarmed security at schools to protect our children. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, 70 percent of public schools do not have a police officer, and more than half (57 percent) have no security staff. There is an old-fashioned term for that lack of security response in these times: stupid.”
I find there is no psychological check run on Oath Keepers members to determine their mental condition and no criminal background check either. If they are ex- military, there is no determination made to see if they suffer from severe PTSD.
Shockingly, someone doesn’t’ even need to have any current of prior service in the military, police or first responder to join. Any John Doe can receive “huge discount on Oath Keepers memberships.”
Instead of paying $40.00, for just $29.95 per year....you get:
Official Associate Member status
Membership certificate suitable for framing
Laminated membership card with sequential member number
Access to our members-only national forum
2 Oath Keepers bumper stickers and 1 back window sticker
Color Oath Keepers brochures and Oath Keepers “push” cards (size of business cards) as an outreach “start up kit.”
Oath Keepers DVD
Pocket Constitution.
And the right to stand across the street from a school with an Oath Keepers patch on your cap while armed with an AR-15 and a pistol.
Reading their membership application, the best I can determine that even the school shooter Nikolas Cruz could have joined and stood across the street from the school with an “Oath Keepers” patch and his AR-15.
A quick search of 82 shootings on the internet shows that at least 28 of the shooters had been in the U.S. military.
Military veterans are more than twice as likely to be mass shooters.
So what we have here now is an individual sporting his “Oath Keepers” patch who has not been vetted in any manner dressed in civilian clothes and wearing sun glasses with a pull-down cap standing across the street from a school with an AR-15 and pistol.
Is this what you REALLY want….is this what we REALLY need?
Reading their membership application, the best I can determine that even the school shooter Nikolas Cruz could have joined and stood across the street.
What a colossal load of steaming bullshit! It's unbelievable what your fevered delusional mind comes up with.
Reading their membership application, the best I can determine that even the school shooter Nikolas Cruz could have joined and stood across the street. What a colossal load of steaming bullshit! It's unbelievable what your fevered delusional mind comes up with.
Is it?
I would be extremely grateful to be proven wrong. See if you can do that by going right now and use a pseudo-name with all other false information to join. You will find that you can join the Oath Keepers as a “John Doe.” I have shown you their membership application….NOW, you PROVE me wrong.
I have shown you how Nikolas Cruz could have joined Oath Keepers and become an Associate Member. Stop with the insults and show me where I am wrong.
PLEASE….show me how Oath Keepers members are vetted with background checks in any form or fashion….PLEASE.
You won't see any of these guys cowering behind a car during the next school shooting.
So YOU say, and of course you would. Oath Keepers are like Gods to you.
Of course you will chose to ignore the fact that one of your Gods, Matthew Fairfield, while as president of a Oath Keepers chapter was jailed on 54 criminal counts related to his alleged storing of a live napalm bomb at his home, along with other explosives kept at a friend's home. And that he had already had been sentenced to two years' probation for carrying concealed weapons.
Then in Tennessee, thre was an armed man driving a pickup truck emblazoned with an Oath Keepers logo arrested in a bizarre scheme to place two dozen officials in a town under arrest.
Oh, there was another Oath Keeper, Charles Dyer, was arrested in Oklahoma for the alleged rape and forcible sodomy of a 7-year-old child; he was also charged with possessing a grenade launcher that had been stolen from a California military base in 2006.
There are MANY other cases, I could go on and on…but you should get the message and understand it.
Yet YOU don’t seem to and you show that you completely satisfied without any reservations whatsoever that these types of individuals are eminently qualified to stand across the street from schools armed with an AR-15 and a pistol….proudly displaying their Oath Keepers patch.
Yet YOU don’t seem to and you show that you completely satisfied without any reservations whatsoever that these types of individuals are eminently qualified to stand across the street from schools armed with an AR-15 and a pistol…
Fricking liar - properly vettted Oathkeepers standing guard at schools is a workable approach.
Yet you still think the cops will "save the children" even after you've seen that they will cower in fear when innocent lives are on the line.
The only "oath" a cop swears to is that he makes it home alive at the end of his shift.
They are not “properly vetted.” They never have been and probably never will be.
So your absurd claim is that Oathkeepers will allow just anyone to stand guard in front of schools? Maybe some of the members in the past have been unsavory characters, but as you say about cops - "it's just a few bad apples". That certainly applies here.
Your agenda here is to denigrate a group of veterans and COPS who refuse to follow UNCONSTITUTIONAL orders and have a plan to offer protection to schools.
Would you be on-board with this if the group worked together with the local police departments who could run background checks on any of the volunteers and weed out those who do not pass muster?
As fellow members of the state organization, I know you get questions about Stewart Rhodes because I do.
Disbarment
I recently had a conversation with former National Oath Keeper Board Member Steve Homan. I need to begin by saying that Steve is a Marine, Vietnam veteran and received multiple medals including the Purple Heart (more than once). For a long time, he was my conduit to the national organization and he did a lot to support Virginia before we broke away. I am sure Steve was disappointed when we left, but he also understood on some level why we had to go. Steve made it another year and recently resigned after fighting the good fight for a long time. I think he was just tired of having to explain decisions he had not made. When he resigned, Stewart Rhodes called Steve Homan a coward. I find it odd that a man who never served in combat had the audacity to call a decorated veteran a coward, perhaps Mr. Rhodes should think back on his own actions. His unwillingness to attend his own disbarment hearing after leaving fellow Oath Keepers in front of a judge without representation seems awfully cowardly to me.
I spoke with Steve for a couple hours and he shared a few important tidbits with me. One, there are indictments that have yet to be executed for some of the leaders of the national Oath Keepers who participated in the Bundy stand down. They may never be used but it is important information to be aware of and prepare for. Second, national has been unable to make payroll for several months. As many here in Virginia can attest, a large part of our disenchantment with the national organization was related to our observations of Stewart Rhodes and his financial behavior when he visited the Commonwealth. Watching expensive dinners being purchased and shots lined up at the bar all while using the Oath Keepers credit card gave many people pause. The high-performance Mustang rental car was another item that people noticed. Of course, there is the infamous helicopter arrival in West Virginia.
Financial Improprieties
When we were promised dues sharing for over two years and were told there was no money for it, we had patience. Later when I was told our bank account was set up and on the way, and when it never arrived the state leadership encouraged me to support moves that would allow Virginia the autonomy to be self-reliant. While many have not made the move from national to the state organization, Virginia is financially solvent; we have money and are no longer operating out of my personal checkbook. We are very frugal with your money and it is not spent on anything that does not benefit the membership at large. I now know that the actions of national resulted in many Virginians simply not paying dues to anyone. Honestly, I understand that and I would rather have people keep their money than send it to national for steak, liquor, and fast cars.
I write all of this not to bemoan the wrong-headed actions of Mr. Rhodes or to lament the disrespect a combat veteran received but to let my fellow Virginians know that the national Oath Keepers organization is due for some close scrutiny. There have been multiple financial lapses including the embezzlement of hundreds of thousands of dollars. There have been bad decisions that have led to Oath Keepers being placed in compromising positions legally that could have been avoided. The financial structure of the national organization is questionable at best and my hope is that all Virginians have ceased to send money to that sinking ship. When Oath Keepers hits the national media please be prepared to explain that we all saw this coming. I have spoken with our Board of Directors and told them that we need to have ready answers for that day.
I also want to encourage you to explain to people who ask that the Virginia Oath Keepers has been an independent organization since 2015 and that we have a voting board that can remove any officer for cause at any time, including the President. Hopefully, everyone understands that as your president I cannot introduce a motion, I only vote on the board in the event of a tie and I am duty bound to be impartial on most issues. In August 2017 I will be stepping down from my position. I am a long time believer in term limits and the future of your Virginia Oath Keepers depends on the organization reflecting the republican (not the political party) values we pledge our allegiance to when we renew our oath.
Stay Focused On the Constitution
Between now and then I am working to strengthen our focus on two of our three pillars that have been largely ignored these last few months; RTI including Constitutional education and non-partisan political action at the state level. Our winter statewide training will include a four-hour block of Constitutional education. I am encouraging all current and future state and chapter officers to attend these classes. We have all taken an oath to the Constitution, but many do not understand or know the document. We will also have a class regarding political advocacy and lobbying that will be the foundation of our efforts during the 2017 Virginia election cycle. While I will not be endorsing any candidates in the Virginia Oath Keeper elections in 2017, I would ask the membership to not support any candidate who has not taken these two classes. After all, we are the Virginia Oath Keepers, you deserve leadership that knows exactly what the oath means.
In closing, I am asking all of you to work hard during these next few months to ensure the sovereignty of the Commonwealth of Virginia. 2017 is a crucial year for our beloved home, and the fight for the control of the House of Delegates, the State Senate and the Governorship is much more important than I think many people realize. The liberty of Virginians depends on people who understand that to honor our oath and ensure our freedom we must think locally and act locally to defend our republic. Please consider attending our statewide training in early 2017 and I look forward to seeing many of you soon.
The Virginia Oath Keepers is an independent state-level organization and is not affiliated with Elmer Stewart Rhodes or the national organization he runs. We do not endorse his positions or statements.
