Gunfight at the H.S. Corral!

Originally published at Doc Sweet's Office Hour 10.2007

Early this month Representative David Agema of Michigan introduced a bill in Congress that would allow teachers to carry guns in schools. I am trying to find one good reason to not just love this idea, but nothing is coming to me. Why? Law of the jungle baby! Our schools are beset by rogues, and any animal husband . . . husbander? . . . worth his orange vest will tell you that the best way to discourage rogues is to thin the herd before they arise.

Representative Agema will tell us that his bill is intended to allow schools to be safer during and/or after a school shooter starts blasting. He is probably just doing that so as not to spook the namby pamby majority of people—already co-opted by big health and safety—who believe that the more guns we have in schools the more likely we are to suffer gun-related injuries. Okay. They kind of have a point. While school shootings get a lot of coverage, they comprise a relatively insignificant fraction of the 2,000 or so 6-18 year olds who die from gun violence every year. In fact, you would have to lose roughly thirty kids in a school shooting every eight-hour day of the school year for that figure to match the national trend.

Fine, let’s submit for the sake of discussion that population management isn’t the best use of the gats our local faculty will be packin.’ I still wanna be there on that fateful day when the stress of being all-everything finally gets to Troy and Chad. They blaze through the main hall doors a few minutes after morning final bell, their leather trench coats blowing in the breeze and their mail order Kalashnikovs cocked and ready. The hall monitor thinks it’s just a prank. “Hey, Troy!” She says. “Is that an intermediate-power, comparative range semi-automatic rifle in your pants or are you just glad to see me?” Troy let’s off a light burst as the hall monitor dives behind the sign-in table.

That short burst is all it takes for Shane Crunkle, Civics teacher to spring into action. Crunkle—or "The Crunk" as the kids call him at Lazer Tag—whips out his Heckler and Koch Combat .45, says “Get under your seats and prepare to discuss manifest destiny when I get back!” then charges in serpentine formation down the hall.

And Crunkle’s not alone. Lon Floyd, custodian, tears open his mop closet and yanks out his trusty M-16—the same M-16 he would have used in Nam had he not had that crazy wandering eye thing the day he went in to enlist. He pulls down the Rigel 3250 Compact Night Vision goggles he knew he would need to neutralize the cigarette smoke as he cuts through the Teachers’ Lounge, and meets up with Crunkle by the Snapple machine. Troy and Chad round the corner and never know what hits them. Another blow for character education and another triumph for responsible gun play.

Mission Accomplished. A total win for the good guys. Heck, they didn’t even have to cancel classes; there was already a janitor on the scene. All because one gutsy Congressman from Michigan—home of Harbor Country and the Sovereign Citizen Movement—stood tall.

As the press and police go away, little Joey Starrett yells down the hall “Shane! Shane! Will we ever see you again?”
To which his valiant replies, “That’s Mr. Crunkle, kid! And I’ll see you again . . . in detention.