Ignatius Piazza, the founder and director of the largest shooting school in America, Front Sight Firearms Training Institute, extended his heart-felt condolences to the recently traumatized nation of Finland today. Finland experienced last week one of their first school shootings, a horrible event in which six students, a principal and the school nurse were killed when an 18-year-old student attacked the school with a pistol.

Ignatius Piazza, having devoted himself to the training and empowering of American citizens in safe, effective gun use for nearly a decade and a half, finds the issue of school shootings and gun-related murder a particularly sore subject. To one who operates a shooting school as successful as Front Sight, a shooting school which delivers firearms training to more students annually than all other major shooting schools in the nation combined, to hear of someone betraying the implicit agreements one accepts when one owns a firearm is extremely upsetting.

And that is precisely what happens when one owns a firearm: he or she agrees that there are codes, practices and training regimens which are proper to the use and handling of that gun. Front Sight Firearms Training Institute is one such place where formal training in such mores is delivered. As the founder and director of Front Sight, Ignatius Piazza obviously expects that his students understand the key fundamentals to security and proper, responsible use, but he doesn't only extend his expectations to his students. Ignatius Piazza expects everyone who owns a firearm to understand what responsibilities come with that. It is clear, then, why any responsible, able gun user, and especially Ignatius Piazza, is particularly shocked at what the Finnish student did last week.

Front Sight Firearms Training Institute has been addressing the issue of school shootings for about as long as the problem has been making headlines in the U.S., about a decade. About ten years ago, Ignatius Piazza announced his proposed solution to the matter, and every time a school shooting has rocked the nation, he has spoken up again and louder, trying to get more and more citizens to understand the simplicity of getting our students and teachers protected.

What is Ignatius Piazza's solution? It is one that many very conservative and very liberal thinkers will find averse, but the more rational, centrist thinkers will understand and agree with: train and arm the teachers. And as many people who are versed in the situation know and often say, it worked for Israel. In the 1970's, Israel faced a problem of school shooting much like the one that is now facing America. Israeli lawmakers, in addressing the issue, had many different possibilities to consider, and after a large amount of research and study, decided that requiring all teachers and parent aides to be armed with a semi-automatic firearm would handle the problem.

It did. Since the implementation of that policy, the rate of school shootings in Israel plummeted, to a yearly average of almost zero. Ignatius Piazza and all of Front Sight Firearms Training Institute see this as the solution for America. Already Finnish lawmakers are looking for ways to handle the problem in Finland. Lucky for Finland, the lawmakers are intent upon not taking drastic actions to remove firearms from society - with luck they'll make the right decision and arm the teachers. Ignatius Piazza and Front Sight certainly hope for it, as do the common sense thinkers of the world.