Ronald Reagan wasn’t the only American to confuse the silver screen with stark reality. It’s a Colorado problem, too.
Reagan frequently exasperated White House staff with his obsession with the 1951 sci-fi classic, “The Day Earth Stood Still.” He referred to the movie about an alien coming to annihilate humans if they didn’t end their warmongering.
Observers said it wasn’t just the metaphor Reagan was reaching for, the former president actually saw workable strategies in the film. Some state lawmakers and plenty of others around the state have the same problem. Confused about what Indiana Jones and The Greatest American Hero can do on screen and what real people can do in the real world, some folks with a loose grip on reality want to make it so teachers and other school employees can pack heat at school.
You don’t have to have much of an imagination to see how this would turn out for dreamers and realists alike.
For the Reagan types who grew up on a steady diet of Hollywood and walked out of the theater feeling pretty damned good after seeing “Die Hard” and “Dirty Harry,” House Bill 14-1157 makes perfect sense. The measure would allow teachers or janitors to strap on a gat each day and bring it to school. That way, when the next crazy guy shows up in the crowded hallway with an assault rifle, all Mrs. Weidermeyer has to do is pull her Beretta out of her purse or garter, march down the hall and shoot the little jerk right between the eyes, outdrawing him in the same way she can rattle off the last sentence of the Gettysburg Address before her kids can even crack a book. No muss. No fuss.
No? You haven’t watched enough movies. You don’t think that after a few gun safety classes and some trips to the shooting range that your middle-school social studies teacher couldn’t take out the lunchroom bully if he walked into the classroom with a Glock in his hand? “Bam,” “Pow!” “Zonk.” Before he knows what happened, Mr. Hallow could do a 360, grab and hurl an eraser, distracting the gunman. The eraser would ricochet off the globe, knocking the gun out of the villain’s hand, and at the same time Mr. Hallow would pull his Ruger out of the back of his BVDs and fire three hot ones into upper, central and lower thorax of the little jerk, blasting him right of the door he came through.
“Now,” Mr. Hallow would say as he blew at the smoke curling out of the end of his pistol. “Where were we? Oh, yes. The sacred Second Amendment … ”
Consider this: Teachers have turned out here and en masse across the country to tell lawmakers this is a stupid idea.
It’s stupid because even highly trained, dead-eye, Kevlar-clad cops are loathe to fire a weapon into a crowd because, invariably, some innocent will get shot. So do you want your kid taking a chance in the hallway as gunfire erupts between Johnny Nutball and Dead-Eye Dan the Janitor? I didn’t think so. Do you want the shakiest gun in the west wing pointing her heater at the classroom door as everyone cowers in the back of the room only to shoot dead some poor kid who comes in looking for a place to hide?
What if Crazy Caleb doesn’t come to school in stand-out camo or jail stripes when he goes postal at school? The attendance principal races out of his office with his cocked Colt in hand to see a hundred or so kids running down the hall, which one should he shoot? The one that looks the meanest? The tallest? The craziest?
I know. It doesn’t happen that way in the movies. In Hollywood, the kid is all alone, donning a Rambo head band and sleeveless hunting vest, walking right down the middle of an empty hallway so the gym teacher can pick him off on his way to football practice.
This is the best we can do to make kids safer in schools where a seemingly endless supply of psychos come to wreak havoc?
If you want to make schools places where kids are less likely to be killed or terrorized, put more trained cops and guards inside, and provide meaningful and effective mental health services inside and outside schools. Train teachers how to spot and react to potential problems, not to fire on probable targets.
Reach Editor Dave Perry at dperry@aurorasentinel.com
Dave, do you feel good about yourself, denigrating others, to boost your own ego? You’re a small, small man with a small forum to spout your hate. Let’s hope the forum gets even smaller.
Hate? Do Dave Perry’s words sound hateful? I am grateful that he is trying to protect our children – ALL children – from being accidentally killed in their schools. Sounds like love and common sense to me.
Common Sense? Its not to common on the Aurora Sentinel staff.
Look at how quickly the shooter at arapahoe high school was stopped by someone armed. How many kids would have died had they not been there?
You’re right, the gunman at Arapahoe High “was stopped by someone armed” — himself.
Teachers have turned out “en masse”? What are your sources? Nice predictable opinion piece. I would rather take my chances with an armed teacher fending off “Johnny Nutball” with her Beretta than watching you hide behind her skirt.
Look at where shootings occur, in gun free zones! The people who commit these crimes are small minded scared little babies themselves. They don’t dare go somewhere in which people have a right to defend themselves. They go where they have absolute power. They go where their victims are entirely helpless. They go where they can slaughter sheep and feed their power/control based ego. Here is an idea, TRAIN the teachers. Or is the teaching staff in our schools unable to be educated not to shoot into a crowd of people?
You may also want to revise your statement concerning “highly trained, dead-eye, Kevlar clad cops”. Law enforcement officers will be the first to admit the are woefully under trained on firearms. FBI statistics showing less than a 20% hit rate prove this.
The mere threat of force is more often enough to dissuade violence from escalating into an actually harmful engagement.