In wake of College shooting, Oath Keepers to Form College Chapters and Train Students to Fight Back. by Jason Van Tatenhove, October 9, 2015
Stewart Rhodes and Jason Van Tatenhove
Reporting from Roseburg, Oregon
In the wake of Umpqua Community College shooting, Oath Keepers to form college student groups on college campuses across the U.S. (starting here in Oregon) to teach the students to fight back. As part of its new S.T.O.P (Students Taking Over Protection) program, Oath Keepers military, police, and first-responder instructors will teach the students to fight back with empty hands, improvised weapons, knives, and firearms, and will teach them effective combat mindset and awareness techniques and strategies so the students can be their own “first-responders” and take out an active shooter.
Just as post 9-11, where people no longer submit and cooperate in their own murders on planes, the obvious answer to school shootings on college and high school campuses is that the students must stop submitting and cooperating in their own murders. They must fight back, and we will show them how.
Like millions of other young Americans, these college students have been conditioned since grade school to be passive, submissive and “non-violent” – taught that violence is “never the answer” despite reality showing that sometimes violence is the ONLY answer. So it should be no surprise that the students at Umpqua Community College (with the notable exception of Army veteran Chris Mintz) were passive, submissive, and obeyed the commands of the shooter. They allowed themselves to be herded into a corner and then complied with his commands to lay down on the floor and obediently remained on the floor until ordered one at a time to stand up where they were asked by the shooter if they were religious or not. If they answered “no” they were shot in the arm or the leg, If they answered “yes” they were shot in the head. The shooter did this one at a time, one after another, with the students obediently laying on the floor until it was their turn to stand and be shot. The conditioning was so severe that even when it was made clear that they were all to be shot, they still remained on the floor.
What they should have done was to instantly rush, tackle, and subdue the attacker. Even without training in hand-to hand-combat or gun disarmament they would have put an end to the shooting just by attacking the attacker. This is not a “hardware” problem. It is a “software” problem. It is a problem of mindset. Young Americans have been conditioned to not to fight back even when it is the only option that will save lives and end the violence.
So Oath Keepers is now going to form Oath Keepers Student groups on every U.S. college campus, starting right here in Roseburg, Oregon, at Umpqua Community College, where our local chapter leader, Rob Price, is an alumni and we also have Oath Keeper members that are now currently students. We will teach them to fight back with their empty hands, with improvised weapons, with less than lethal tools such as pepper spray, com-tech stingers, kubotans, etc. and lethal force tools such as knives and guns. We will provide a full spectrum of training and leave up to them which self defense tool they will use. But the most important shift will be in their mindset.
Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes taught rape prevention and street crime survival for three years as a volunteer instructor for the Jean Nidetch Womens Center at UNLV, teaching students to do exactly what we will be teaching them now across the country, with a focus on combat mindset and need to resist. This includes awareness and mental conditioning so that they can see an attack coming and have a plan for response.
Also assisting in this curriculum will be John Karriman, Oath Keeper Leader from Missouri, who is a current serving police academy defensive tactics instructor and Rick Moon, our Arkansas state chapter president who is a U.S. Army Special Forces Veteran and has also worked for TSA in threat analysis and identification methodologies. In fact, while working for TSA, Rick Moon actually identified and stopped an active shooter at a airport before he could open fire.
John Karriman, in his defensive tactics classes, routinely has the students undergo a realistic active shooter scenario. One student is given a semiautomatic Simunition handgun, firing paint marker rounds, and plays the role of an active shooter who walks into the room and opens fire while the 10 – 12 other students react. He teaches the students to react by instantly attacking the attacker, en-mass, and taking him down and disarming him. In all of times that he has run this scenario, no more than two students are shot by the role-playing attacker before they are able to overpower shooter. Even without training in disarming techniques, any group of people – even unarmed – can overpower an armed attacker just by taking decisive action – by instantly attacking the attacker. This is the most important thing to teach students. But we will also teach them effective techniques. Each class will include running through this very scenario with a paintball gun or Simunitions pain marker gun. And each class will also be taught the full spectrum of effective tools of defense, and how to use them.
Once again this is first and foremost a mental “software” issue, not a “hardware issue.” Much as post 9-11 we no longer just submit to an attacker on an airline, but instead attack and subdue them, we must also do the same when it comes to active shooter situations in our schools. We will start in our U.S. colleges with these student groups and then work backwards through our high schools (forming Oath Keepers high school student groups) to undo the conditioning that our kids are being subjected to, which makes them passive victims in the face of violence.
Remember, this passive victim conditioning makes them submissive not just to private violence, abuse, and oppression, but also to government violence, abuse, and oppression. And we believe this is the big-picture goal of such social conditioning – a nation of passive, submissive, and obedient serfs. Those of us who are police, military and first-responder veterans understand the need for the warrior mindset of decisive action, and we need to pass it on. It is our duty to teach our young people to defend themselves and each other. This effective answer does not rely on politicians, but will be done by the people themselves, and we will lead the way.
Below is a video of an interview with Red List News Where Stewart Rhodes and Jason Van Tatenhove discuss this program and the details around it with hosts Dave Hodges and Jim White.
Oath Keepers National will be publishing a full curriculum and training videos that our local and state chapters can use to institute this program on campuses. Please check back to the website for upcoming details. We will also be setting up a donation fund to help support this initiative.