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EMIL
FRANZI |
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Guns were always in our schools
February 27, 2008
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Glendale,
Calif., early 1950s, grade school
assignment: Tell us about someone in
your family and bring an object showing
it. A cowgirl type chose her
grandfather, once a riverboat gambler,
and brought an old Remington Derringer.
She passed it around at recess. Nobody
thought a thing of it.
A few years later I plunked down $40 for a semi-auto .22 rifle at a local sporting goods store. There were four coming-of-age moments for my generation: at 14, buying a long arm; at 16, getting a driver’s license; at 18, registering for the draft; and at 21, voting and buying booze. That $40 came from delivering the old L.A. Herald-Examiner, back when your paper came from a kid on a bike. My buddy one-upped me. For the same $40 he found an old Winchester ’73 at a Burbank gun store and proudly rode it six miles home over the handlebars. Nobody cared. A year later, in JROTC, I was issued an M1 Garand and learned how to field strip and clean it, and the 1911 Colt, the M1 carbine and the BAR all were in the school armory where we shot .22 rifles on the indoor range. They even had a rifle team for girls, and some of them out-shot me. This wasn’t the Wyoming prairie, it was just a few miles from downtown L.A. It was normal everywhere else, from California to Maine. These vignettes totally contradict the current crew of Chicken Littles who claim that allowing guns back onto school campuses by those holding a concealed carry permit will somehow cause people to randomly shoot others. It won’t, because it never did. Others reasons are given for opposing guns on campus. Mass killers are suicidal so being shot themselves wouldn’t deter them. If they were only suicidal, then they’d shoot only themselves. They want a large score, and they go where that’s easy or else the school is the real object of their wrath. Ever see a serial shooter try it in a police station or a gun show? Armed folks also can perform the highest form of deterrence, recently proven when one maniac was shot in a Colorado church by a parishioner. One whining state senator worries that some teacher will leave a gun in a purse or locker and invite theft or will be overpowered by a student. Gun classes and common sense teach otherwise. Nobody leaves their piece around. They carry it, and no one will know because it’s concealed. Any school worried about teachers being overpowered has a bigger problem than armed teachers. One more disturbing argument: A local teacher claimed that defending her kids against an armed maniac wasn’t part of her job. Yes it is. Just like getting them out of the building is if there’s a fire. You don’t just call 911 and leave. A teacher’s obligations — both legal and moral — extend beyond the daily lesson plan. Opposition of some law enforcement leaders gets cited, but they usually reflect the political views of those appointing or promoting them. These are the same folks who told us there would be dire consequences every time other gun laws were liberalized and claimed violence would increase if we allowed concealed-carry permits in the first place. Violence has actually declined in jurisdictions allowing such concealment. Most street cops already knew that. There are many reasons why America has morphed on this and other issues in recent decades. Media group think, creeping pacifism, pathological egalitarianism that values the perp the same as the victim (notice the media now counts the perp among the killed), the growth of personal cowardice and the lessening of personal responsibility and its increasing assignment to government are all exhibited in this one debate. The sky will not fall if those with licenses carry their guns on campuses or anywhere else.
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BUT WATCH WHAT YOU SAY! |
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