by Pa Rock
Former School Principal
(For Boone Macy)
I have been both a teacher and a public school administrator in a past life, but I left that life in 1992 and never looked back. It was a different time then.
In the late 1970's and early 1980's I worked at a large rural high school where it was not uncommon for some students to bring guns to school in their vehicles. It was a sign of manhood for high school boys to have gun racks in the back windows of their pickup trucks where they displayed their deer rifles. But those were different times, and the shooting at Columbine would not happen until 1999, long after I had left public schools and gone into the more dangerous world of state child protection.
While serving as a rural high school principal and being aware of how angry some students - and some parents - could become, I mentioned to our school superintendent one time that all of those guns in the trucks in the student parking lot made me uncomfortable, and I will never forget the sage advice that he offered on that subject: "Oh God, Rock. Don't get me in a gun control flap!" And I didn't, but upon reflection I probably should have. ( I understand today that guns are no longer allowed in student vehicles at that same school.)
Students, of course, are not allowed to carry guns in any schools in America, though the NRA probably regards that as an unjust infringement of their constitutional rights. But the guns come to school nonetheless, and damned near every day there is a shooting in an American classroom. One of the more memorable of this year occurred in January when a 6-year-old boy in Newport News, Virginia, brought a handgun to school in his backpack and shot his first grade teacher in the stomach causing serious injury.
Yesterday a third grader in Grand Rapids, Michigan, a city of approximately 200,000, and the boyhood home of US President Gerald Ford, brought a loaded handgun to school in his backpack, but school authorities found it before he could do any harm. The authorities in the Grand Rapids Schools are very good - that was the fourth student gun that they have found and confiscated this school year.
The Grand Rapids School District has banned the use of backpacks by students for the remainder of the school year. It is unclear at this point whether the NRA will regard that as an infringement on a student's "constitutional" right to be armed or not.
My oldest grandson, Boone, graduates from college tomorrow morning with a degree in elementary education. I am happy for him and wish him the very best in life, but I am concerned. Teacher's pay today is crap, even compared to when I was teaching, and the times are certainly more challenging.
We all need to be demanding that guns be kept off of the streets and beyond the reach of criminals, the mentally impaired, and children! Anything less is neglect of our kids, of our teachers, and of our civilization!
Enjoy your work, Boone. Teach those kids, and always stay vigilant!
1 comment:
There is no constitutionally protected right that comes anywhere near the demagogic called "Constitutional Carry." The operative case is District of Columbia v. Heller,2008.
The holding in that case is summarized by www.lawcornell.edu: "The Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that arm for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home."
Specifically, Scalia said "Like most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited. From Blackstone through the 19th-century cases, commentators and courts routinely explained that the right was not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose... Although we do not undertake an exhaustive historical analysis today of the full scope of the Second Amendment , nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms."
Likewise, we must recognize two facts when it comes to guns being carried by children in schools. First, a gun is inherently dangerous, and I don't give a damn what the Missouri Legislature's Republican demagogues say about it. They are wrong. Second children suffer from a legal disability common to every person. It is called minority. They will age out of that disability, if they aren't slaughtered at school first. When they become adults, then they claim a constitutional right to carry firearms.
It cannot be said too frequently nor too loudly that militias, ad hoc militias, are illegal to varying degree in all fifty States of the Union. See, https://www.law.georgetown.edu/icap/our-press-releases/fact-sheets-on-unlawful-militias-for-all-50-states-now-available-from-georgetown-laws-institute-for-constitutional-advocacy-and-protection/. Today's "independent and well regulated militia" is called the National Guard.
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