Is That a Pistol in Your Pocket...or?

Here’s a good idea: Let’s follow Texas. Let’s let college students carry concealed weapons. Yeah, let’s do that. Freshman frat boys make level-headed keepers of the peace. Go ahead - Allow concealed weapons on college campuses.

Neither Texans, nor the rest of us have forgotten the ominous 1966 shooting at the University of Texas, Austin, when a gunman killed 16 students shooting from the school’s landmark clock tower. The bill that’s working its way through the Texas legislature right now is authored by those who hope to prevent such events as this and the more recent Virginia Tech massacre.

The idea of the legislation is to allow innocents to arm themselves so they can defend themselves, and others, should the need arise. The bill has the support of Texas’s pistol-packing Governor Rick Perry.

Since I’m planning to take a course at my local community college this summer, I know I’ll feel safer if my peers in the classroom are armed. I’m certain they will all be rational.

Professors too. They should be armed. After all, they never get in the same frame of mind as stressed-out students. Their lives are sound and stable or they wouldn’t be professors. And who’s in a better position strategically than the guy at the front of the class?

Let’s go ahead with the next logical step and allow high school students, at least the 18 year old seniors, teachers (and administrators!) to carry concealed weapons. After all, there are many tragic examples of shootings on high school campuses. Parents and students, everyone in public schools can finally relax with gun totin’ good guys in classrooms, in the cafeteria, and on the quad.

I’m sure it will be helpful in the battle against violent crime to put more weapons into everyday circumstances. Then, if someone brandishes a weapon, almost anyone could shoot that person! Yeah. I’m likin’ the sound of that.

We’ll let all the good guys carry guns, so when the bad guys show their guns, it will be a fair fight.

I’m just wondering about cabbies and bus drivers. They see a lot of unexpected violence. And we shouldn’t leave out the clerks in liquor stores around the country. They definitely need to be able to defend themselves and their customers.

I once read that convenience store clerks who greet customers as they come in the door are less likely to be robbed. Greet ‘em with your Gloc! See how many robberies we have after that.

Finally, bank tellers, we’ve gotta take care of the bank tellers. Amazingly, banks are still getting robbed, just like back in the Wild Wild West. Can’t think why concealed weapons were outlawed in the first place.

We’ll have to consider cross fire of course. Maybe we could establish some guidelines. The first one to draw on the bad guy has dibs. He (or she) becomes the designated shooter, defender, righter of wrongs. Everyone else, duck! Because if all the armed people, legitimate and illegitimate carriers, pulled out their guns and started shooting, well, you can see, it would be confusing. The wrong person might get hit.

We’ll have to set up good guy criteria so gun salesmen can sort out who to sell to. Otherwise, just anyone could be carrying a gun. That’s kind of how it is now, right?

Certainly entrepreneurs will be glad to see this law go into effect. The opportunities in fashion alone are staggering. We’ll need new lines of handbags for sure. Makers of the popular organizer-style bag will want to include a built-in holster to keep a woman’s weapon at-the-ready while out of the way of her cell phone and lipstick. Boots? Just formalize the popular informal location for a concealed gun. And for the purist, a simple ankle strap holster will suffice.

Levi’s and the GAP will want to begin developing jeans with an interior waistline holster for carriage down-the-front or small-of-the-back, depending on the carrier’s preference. A designer line of under-the-armpit holsters is sure to do well: lightweight, colorful. Not just leather any more!

We’re onto something here: A boon to the economy and a lift to the spirits of safety conscious Americans.

Now off to my errands: I’m going to run by the post office, then to McDonald’s, and of course, “Books, Guns & Ammo.”

Moral Obligation

One of the greatest satisfactions of being a school principal is found in that rare moment when you feel you’ve made a difference. Principals are suckers for that. Give us the tiniest inkling that we’ve somehow helped, and we’re in it for another year.

Such a moment presented itself recently after a particularly disheartening event at my school.

We had a fight.

Not all that unusual on a high school campus since the invention of high school campuses. Kids get mad at each other. The anger builds up. They don’t always have the skills or finesse to deal with their anger more subtly. So, they hit.

Maybe ten years ago, that would have been that. Now, it’s not just that any more. Fights seem worse these days, even if they’re just the same old fights among teenagers we had back when our dads were punching each other behind the gym. Because the whole world seems to be racing toward the brink, we cannot feel confident that this fight might be the ordinary old kind of fight. This fight might be the fight that leads to the next one and the next one…the never-ending retaliatory kind of cyclical fight that defies logic and common sense. It could be that kind of fight. Or it could be worse.

Because we want to avoid all fights, we keep our collective ears to the ground and respond to the smallest murmur of discontent between individuals on campus. We counsel and advise young people in how to deal with peers they don’t like. We offer a wide range of options so that student A can resist the urge to smack student B.

We’re actually pretty good at it. But we’re not 100%. And so, this week, at lunch, A smacked B. B smacked back. And because they were equally matched, we had a frenetic fight with a big audience.

Such things are so very discouraging for so many reasons. Word goes home from the audience, and the community adds that piece of data to their view of our schools. And because of human nature, those bits of data get repeated more frequently than say, the data that we had 82 Scholar athletes from our Fall Sports teams. That’s 82 athletes with GPA’s of 3.0 or higher. We have another 63 from Winter Sports.  Spring Sports are likely to be impressive too.  Graduating seniors going to Stanford and Berkeley.  Another Gates Millenium Scholarship winner this year.

But aside from that, such events create a stir on campus that may take days to subside. So, I went on the PA and talked to the kids. I said they each had the moral obligation to keep us informed if they knew a conflict was escalating.

They usually do know. They see the hard looks, and hear the insults, sometimes days before the players face off. We do get tips. We always act on them. And, we are quite successful at averting combat when we have the information in advance.

I told the kids all this and appealed to their moral sensibilities. Help us stop the fights before they begin. Help us stop the violence.

Now, in the lunchroom are Mike and Jacob, two seniors, pals, horsing around. They’re “play fighting,” making a show for their own amusement and for that of their friends, other big healthy strapping boys who smile and watch. It’s slow motion, as though these two are rehearsing for the next take on a movie set. They grab each other and pretend struggle.

I see this from across the room and begin to move toward them to fulfill my role of killjoy. But Danny sees them too. Danny is small and developmentally delayed, and Danny has heard my speech.

Before I reach Mike and Jacob, Danny gets there. He pushes himself between them facing Mike with outstretched arms to protect Jacob. Danny looks up at Mike’s fake snarl and says, “Stop! Stop the violence!”

By now I’m on the scene and Mike turns to me with a questioning smile. “We were playing, Mrs. Plath.”

“I know, Mike, but he doesn’t.”

Danny has turned to Jacob. “Aw you all wight?”

Jacob, too, smiles a questioning smile, but turns to Danny and clapping him on the shoulder says, “Thanks, man.”

I thanked Danny too. He helped me know there is hope. Someone is listening.