For the record, I am a gun owner. Not sure why I feel the need to front this information, but somehow I feel it is a fact that might enhance my credibility among the gun lovers out there. I will say, however, that I am not a gun lover. I am merely somebody who likes to be a well-rounded human, and that includes knowing how to hold, load and shoot, specifically, a bolt action rifle. I don't know why, but like driving a stick shift and starting a fire, it seems like one of those life skills I ought to have. Maybe it is being raised in the apocalyptic US culture that teaches me such preparedness means I could, in the event of a major catastrophe, drive a range of vehicles useful in survival situations and keep myself warm, fed and protected. At the end of the day, I see it as a tool. A tool I appreciate, but nonetheless, a tool. That aside, I do have dreams about my gun. Dreams of going hunting with my big brother someday. Bonding with him over the hunt and roasted deer after hours of crouching in some shelter. Maybe we shouldn't call them dreams, but more like daydreams. Those ephemeral thoughts couched in shadow and vague detail. But there is one place I never dream of bringing my gun, or dream of others bringing their guns, and that is in my classroom. Such "dreams" would, obviously, count as nightmares. And yet there seems to be a driving desire by politicians, and Trump most recently, to get rid of gun-free zones in school.
Let me start with this suggestion to Trump and those like him. Start with your events instead of in the schools where myself and my friends teach. If you are willing to allow guns into all Trump hotels, into your press briefings and frankly into any event that you host, then maybe we'll talk. But as far as I understand such events, the Inaugural celebration included, do not allow for guns. Political events that feature important political figures are often "gun free zones" are they not? I wonder why? I mean, if guns make us all safer why don't they start allowing firearms in the Capitol? It is interesting that those proposing gun free zones work at the Capitol, where security measures are tighter than ever for the average, ordinary unarmed visitor. Gun-free zones are for everywhere but where they work. "Open carry - but not here!" - that is the message from Republican lawmakers.
There are those who claim I would be safer, that my students would be safer, if there was an open carry policy in public schools. Let's, for arguments sake, agree. Indeed, having a ton of armed people in American classrooms makes students and teachers safer! Safer than what? This is where we have truly reached crazy land. How many Western, democratic nations, with a healthy public, need an armed citizenry to keep public schools safe? Is that the landscape we live in? Where our society is so dysfunctional that the only answer to violence in society at this point is that everybody takes up arms alongside their books? Our police are not enough? Americans are so awful that they cannot be trusted to to shoot up an unarmed classroom? That is the country we live in? This sounds more like the landscape of a failed state. Yes, in a failed state, I reckon guns are an imperative for keeping students and teachers safe. Images coming out of Rwanda in the 1990s come to mind. Or Syria today. Open carry in schools in a functioning state however is loony toons and clearly nobody is consulting teachers en masse.
I do not want to teach an armed student population. I have enough on my mind. The chances for a mass shooting in my classrooms are small. In fact according to the Psych Law Journal (http://www.psychlawjournal.com/2012/12/school-shootings-what-are-odds.html) there are about 2.46 such shootings a year. Granted the article accounts for K-12 and not community college, but I'll take the whole aggregate, even though on average there are less community college shootings in comparison. I have a higher chance of dealing with a person who is terrified of writing, than I do with dealing with a live shooter. I would rather focus on what I've been trained to focus on. I am not saying mass shootings are not a problem. They are. And there should be a concerted effort to dialogue with educators, mental health professionals and campus security to create a system that can identify a student in trouble, intervene before there is a threat and when there is a threat, have an updated policy on how to respond.
This is not a rant against gun owners, this is a plea for sensible and rational policy and gun rhetoric. Arming students and teachers is not a solution, it is madness wrapped in a nostalgic political ideology for the Wild West. There is a reason gun laws were enacted to begin with. I don't think most sane people are looking to prove themselves at another Hyde Park Gunfight or its more well-known but less deadly cousin, the OK Corral in Tombstone, Arizona.
