I hope this finds some traction. Missouri has a conservative base so I think it has a shot.

Ol dad

https://www.firstalert4.com/2025/09...uri-rangers-aiming-protect-kids-schools/

ST. LOUIS, Mo. (First Alert 4) - While the state of Texas famously has the Texas Rangers as its elite police force, a Missouri lawmaker is hoping to create the Missouri Rangers.

State Sen. David Gregory said the team would focus only on school safety and be highly trained to keep students and teachers safe.

“I tend to pray over my kids so I don’t get too worried but it is concerning,” said parent Sandra Davis.

Davis told First Alert 4 with the level of division in the country right now — and past history with school shootings — she does worry about her kids. Gregory believes he has a solution.


“I’m constantly getting this outreach, denator do something, do something and do something fast,” said Sen. Gregory.

Gregory said he plans to file a bill next legislative session to create the Missouri Rangers. Unlike the Texas Rangers, who fight a range of high-level crime, the Missouri Rangers would be specialized to only focus on school safety.

“A lot of chaos, a lot of kids running, a lot of people scared, you need a high level of training and a high level of focus to make sure we protect every life,” said Gregory.

Gregory pointed to shootings at a Catholic school in Minnesota last month and another mass shooting at a Presbyterian school in Nashville two years ago, saying school kids are at risk. The final straw for Gregory was the assassination of Charlie Kirk on a Utah college campus last week.


“One of my concerns, being a person of color, would be to have diversity within that population,” said Tyra Buchanan.

While Buchanan wants to make sure the Missouri Rangers would be diverse, she thinks it may be necessary.

“Seeing what’s going on in our world today, I think it’s very important to have extra security, I don’t think you can ever have too much,” said Buchanan.

Gregory said the proposal would cost at least $10 million to $20 million. But after school shootings nationally and locally, including CVPA in 2022, he said every dollar is worth it.


“When you’re talking about a $50 billion budget, that is very small and when you’re talking about the lives of our children that is a small price to pay to make sure they’re safe,” said Gregory.

But some, like Davis, believe the money could be better spent.

“Rangers that would be reactionary, I think we need more preventative measures in schools,” said Davis.

She believes the state should instead invest more into education and mental health services, adding mass shootings have also happened at schools with school resource officers.


“It’ll be better served in those areas than having a ranger in schools, to me that’s not going to be effective,” said Davis.

Gregory added the Rangers would not replace school resource officers, but for schools that have them they would instead be on top of what schools already have.

They would also prepare for potential natural disasters such as tornadoes and floods

What's the matter with the local police, state police, and sheriff depts....don't they have specialized , and swat units?
Seems it would make more sense to deputize school resource officers and give them some training...

Access control is what would make sense. Metal and explosive detectors like I went through every day at my places of employment for decades. The same things you go through at an airport or a courthouse.

A lot of schools here in the county have "Resource Officers" that are supposed to do that.

There are various options to stop this. I'm just glad that someone is finally proposing an initiative to do it. I have no problem with the Missouri rangers nor other armed options. I don't like the idea of metal detectors. If I go to a high school basketball game I want to be able to protect myself. Maybe biometrics with some type of automated door, but that would require giving up some of your personal information.

Ol dad

It's a start. I think some resources dedicated to sniffing out potential bad doers on-line, before it happens, would be worthwhile as well. It seems everything the SHTF there were some obvious signs that were ignored prior to it.

And some of them were reported to the authorities. And they were ignored.

This a scary proposition. I pray for the Children.

My wife's a school nurse, but with it being a small rural school she has a ton of different hats she wears. One of those hats is the safety director. Every year she brings in an outside training company star something... sorry dont know the name off hand. However they come in do training with the local shierff, cops and state patrol. They go through one on one with each teacher in their rooms where too place the kids how to lock the doors plus baracade if need be. Do a live event with guns and acting bodies, for the police. Wife says its very intense. Her job is to go into the safe they have with all the cameras lock herself in and direct student and teachers out 1 by one as intruder is different hallways. That company is big on locked doors everything is locked, also do recommend some people on staff be trained and carry a gun at all times, they do the best recommendations on who that should be within the facility. Not every teacher needs a gun, they said anyone that will talk rather then shoot first just needs to stay locked away, I said that leaves my wife out because she wouldn't shoot she would try to talk and reason with a person/kid. Told on the teachers never to reason always act 1st. Whatever that action should before them but that's what they do. We do have staff that carries through the day. That's top secret no one knows which has been approved by the board.

Alicia said it was sad the first time the locals joined in, because they were not equiped to handle the situation it was chaos. But she said it opened the eyes to them and they made adjustments year to year and knew they needed more training. So truth is, especially in smaller rural communities they are not prepared! Short staffed, and un educated.. sad but true, the nearest swat is probably 45 min to 1 hour away from us. Alot of damage will be done before they get there.

Im on board with many different opinions, trained staff carrying, something like this Rangers. We need to go above and beyond even if we waste money and never fully use whatever it might be. to protect our kids and educating staff. We waste money on worse worse things everyday! Just my opinion. But may be bias with 2 kids and a wife works within the system.

Great post ST! Spot on! I agree 100%.

Ol dad

Spousal unit was teacher for over 30 years. Daughter is today. Threat from outside whack job coming in to shoot up the place.....while always possible.....is very remote. Not saying it's not a concern and not something to worry about, but remote. I like all of ST's solutions. All of it.

BUT......bigger problem in schools is day to day kid stuff. Bully's.....boys and girls.......kids peddling drugs, etc. They kids all know who the bad seeds are......and teachers and administrators do too. Apples not falling far from the tree........parents of bad kids not much better. What most schools lack is motivation to do anything about it. Have a niece with autistic son......now around 20. He got a job as janitor at school, and by all accounts, was doing well. Almost robotic and very maticulous about cleaning. Then girl in school made it her mission in life to make his life living hades. Then one day got physical.....so kid got frustrated, yelled.....and spit on the floor. He got fired.....3 days before school was out........she got nothing, zip, nada. She won....he lost.....the exact opposite of what should have happened.

Then there are the gangs, drugs, and other stuff. Gangs of mean girls might be the worst. Physically abusing and terrorizing other kids in school. Solution to a lot of that is to just kick them out of school. Parents will complain.....not so much as to welfare and future of uneducated child as much as loss of day care / baby sitting function school provides. Schools handicapped in this. They need to be able to enforce some pretty strict code of conduct.......or else. Remember a lot of these school shootings are kids that have been bullied showing up at school for some payback. Nobody protected them.......so that is they way they fight back. Shouldn't have to be that way.

Should require training good intentions won’t get it done when the time comes all the talk in the world is not training. Let the games begin.

that is good training and prep

Rangers sound good and forming them is a deterrent but you and I know a reactionary force coming from a distance is an issue.
our swat/tri county ERT is 90 minutes away , some live here in town and said if they are home or near they are coming in their POV they keep enough gear with them.

I would say form the rangers and set them to that task of training local departments, get neighboring departments to train together then have rangers come to take over or supervise incident command and lead the investigation. this frees up funds , time on local departments and gets a standard of training established.



we have WI DOJ Department of School safety , they are a training and advisory department , they will review your plans , do trainings , go over your plans and work with your local department with some best practices, they came to our school and did a training this year , it is very eye opening every time we have a training we find something we hadn't thought of in the last or things that changed.
we are working to improve our plans.
every year our police run a training without students in the building , police , medics and a few staff , that is a big how little can we 1. disturb the students and 2. educate them in what the reaction will be , it is about 50/50 that the person who would act to hurt students or staff is a student.

we are a small rural department, but we have worked to train more and better.
it was interesting at the training the DOJ guys commented on how happy they were to see both our police chief and Sheriff as well as officers and deputies in attendance and we worked them into our live training event were we all had to play student , parent and incident command staff , LE played themselves in these 3 training scenarios.

we are small and we realize we need to work with our partners in local LE in near by departments if they have an event or if we have an event.

a lot of this training was pre-event best practices , how to do our best to catch things before it is an event. and then post event how we have to handle re-unification.
the active threat training was separate

WI DOJ is also huge on the fastest way to lock a door is to have it already locked. as am I

my oldest daughter is a school teacher , and has 2 schools with a class room at each , we have absolutely talked about locked door , blocked views and hard corners.