NO GUNS IN SCHOOL

Pennsylvania Statesmen are trying to get a law passed to allow guns in the classroom.  The idea of guns in schools sends chills through my body.  I have a number of friends who are teachers.  To a person…they don’t want to have a gun in their classroom.  

“Have you ever been in a room with 30 kids, getting their attention, teaching, and making sure everyone is on task?” asked Rae, a teacher of many years experience.  “I have a locked locker in my class where I place my purse, phone, and private things,” she continues, “these kids are so smart I even had one student figure out how to get into my locker while I had my back turned to the class writing on the board, and before I knew it he had reached into my bag and grabbed my phone.  Now imagine a gun in that locker!”  

I don’t want to imagine.  My last job was in a high school setting, and I was an administrative secretary to the Principal that did discipline for 11th and 12th grades.  In all the years I worked at this position, there were only 3 or 4 kids that I was concerned about and in these cases, the kids were on some heavy duty drugs.  The rest were just teen risk takers and I loved them!  

I have been in settings where things got out of control suddenly and without warning.  Put yourself in the back of the classroom, away from a locked up gun, and tell me what good would it do to have that gun in class.  Your instincts are to gather your students, protect your students, and get them to a safe place.  

To our state Congressmen and Congresswoman…tell me if impassioned letters from teachers who lived through the Sandy Hook scenario say over and over again that having a gun in their hand would not have changed the outcome of their event, then what reasoning will you listen to?  If Teachers across this land tell you they don’t want this responsibility in their classroom, then what will you listen to?  If as a parent, I tell you that I don’t want a gun around any group of children, whose curious nature would/could lead them to a tragedy beyond description, then who would you listen to?

I grew up with guns in our home.  And even with the warnings, threats from parents to stay away, there were a couple of moments I remember as a tween…where my brother and I played with and tried to smash a shotgun shell.  When I think back on those acts I think how lucky we were to survive the recklessness of those moments.

I am so saddened by the rhetoric of some of the politicians today.  Common sense is missing.  Voices are quiet and politicians continue this craziness and all I can ask is why?