Friday, Aug. 1, 2003 | 4:25 a.m.
When I was a farm boy in Wisconsin during the Great Depression, our family found venison and other wild game a good source of food.
Mom canned venison and we corned large pieces of it in huge crocks in our root cellar. Fried squirrels, rabbits and grouse were every bit as good as any gourmet meals served today at fancy restaurants. After hunting all day in the cold weather or sweating in the fields during summer months, the meals were truly delicious in every respect. Oh yes, don't forget the wild blueberry pie to end the meal.
By now the reader must assume that we hunted the wild game with rifles and shotguns. When moving to a Minnesota city on the Mississippi River our guns went with us. The ducks coming down the river in the fall added many good meals to our evening suppers and Sunday dinners. The big river also provided plenty of pike, bass and catfish for Friday night fish fries.
I couldn't take my guns or fishing equipment when leaving for the Marines after graduating from high school. No need to worry, because the Corps gave me an M-1 rifle all of my own. After finishing boot camp and combat training, I was issued a new rifle that I carried for the rest of my enlistment. The serial number of my rifle became as familiar to me as my name and personal USMC serial number.
In later years, at college, my guns again became handy to supply meat for meals and the meals of several friends. No longer do I hunt but there are still guns in my house, and that's exactly where they are going to stay except when friends and relatives borrow them. I don't bring my guns to work nor have I found it necessary to conceal a handgun beneath my jacket because a lousy column has angered a reader. Maybe this lack of protection should be given some additional thought.
Evidently there are enough people in nearby Utah who believe there is good reason for teachers to carry a gun into the classroom. John R. Lott Jr. of the American Enterprise Institute wrote an article for The Los Angeles Times and later it was published in The Salt Lake Tribune. The Utah newspaper gave it the following headline: "Letting teachers pack guns will make America's schools safer." Lott wrote, "Acting under a new state law, school districts across Utah have started drawing up regulations allowing teachers and other public employees to carry concealed guns on school property."
This is the kind of thinking that can help develop the reflexes of first-graders. The kids don't reach for their pencils when the teacher tells them it's time for a fast-draw contest. If he makes a fast move with his hand that's the time every kid dives under his or her desk. The slowest kid is required to stand in the back of the room with an apple on his or her head hoping the teacher is a good shot.
I remember a couple of kids out in the country who carried a small-caliber rifle to grade school so they could kill dinner on the way home. We never gave much thought about the teacher packing a gun. During my five years as a high school teacher there was never a thought of any student or me being armed. Public and private schools, like churches, aren't places for firefights in a civilized society.
My home, or in the field, not schools or churches, is where my guns belong. Do you want your children or grandchildren attending school where the teachers carry guns under their coats or in their purses? That idea sure doesn't make sense to me. It's my opinion a teacher who feels the need to carry a concealed weapon in the classroom is too insecure to be teaching children.
Every American who isn't a convicted criminal has the right to own and keep guns but they don't belong in our classrooms.
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