Bring Your Gun To High School!

There was a furor over a posting at myspace.com suggesting just that. Next, were the predictable panic, police investigation and national news story. Imagine the absolute horror of that scenario!

That exact scene played out for me once a week as I brought my rifle to Senn High School in Chicago. At age 14, I'd leave home with my rifle in a rifle scabbard, board a CTA public bus, transfer to yet another bus and enter the school. There were no cops, helicopters, major panic or news stories.

I simply brought the rifle to Sgt. Ketzner or Sgt. Mautner who would place it in the vault with nearly 100 genuine M-1 rifles and at least one Browning automatic rifle. When it came time for my practice shoot on the indoor 50-foot range I’d get my rifle and fire away. I was only scolded for missing the bull’s eye!

It was just three short years after I left high school when I was drafted into the Army for the Viet Nam War. My basic training and light weapons infantry training was effortless because of Junior ROTC. I graduated with the extra confidence that my chances of returning home safe because of my earlier ROTC training.

I got orders for shipment to the Republic of Viet Nam while stationed at the once beautiful Fort Ord near Carmel and Monterey, California. An angel intervened canceling those orders for a trip to Germany. Okay, I only fought in the saloons, only with the women and they always won. I somehow wound up in an exciting job as a medical corpsman for the rest of my service time.

Whatever fighting force we have to protect this country is far away in Iraq and Afghanistan. Any major insurrection or armed invasion on our own soil would go unchecked because of the pacifist mentality of our politicians and bureaucrats. We’ve become a defenseless land as a result.

One only need look at how small groups of skinny Arabs were able to take over and crash planeloads of able bodied Americans. Instead of recognizing that the Muslim terror events always end poorly and fighting for their lives they used cell phones to call 911. Americans are so well trained to let the authorities handle everything. Someone please tell me what a 911 operator can do for you at 30,000 feet while you’re traveling at 500 miles per hour?

Flight 93 passengers responded too little and too late to save their own lives. They were on their cell phones and voting on the idea of a passenger uprising. The average size of the 9-11 Arab terrorists was that of the average American woman.

I hold the FAA and our politicians as responsible for 9-11 as the terrorists for disarming all the off-duty police officers that used to fly with their side arms and for not training and arming the pilots. The FAA’s, “give the terrorist hijackers whatever they want while you sit down and shut up” policy was straight out of some Viet Nam War protester’s handbook. We are a weak and cowardly nation that does not appreciate freedom and liberty.