Keep Arkansas Safe: Arm The Children
The school district of Clarksville, Arkansas (just northwest of Little Rock) has decided to arm twenty administrators with 9mm pistols to help keep their schools safe. Arkansas Education Commissioner Tom Kimbrell is against this plan. Donna Morey, former president of the Arkansas Education Association opposes it too. Lots of people are calling this idea crazy. Not me. I’m calling it “a good start.”
As the proposal stands currently, twenty teachers and administrators will receive firearms and training. That seems like a ridiculous number. Way too low to keep an entire school district safe. For students to feel most comfortable, every teacher needs to possess a gun. That way, the sense of wellbeing that accompanies proximity to firearms can wash gently over every schoolroom in Clarksville. After all, there is no one a high school student likes and trusts more than his or her teachers.
I think back on my own childhood, remembering my physics teacher, Mr. Monroe. He had recently divorced and once missed three days of school after his dogs attacked him. Mr. Monroe had to choke the hounds unconscious for fear they would tear him to shreds. I shudder to think at how much more of his tutelage I would have absorbed, had that man been carrying a concealed weapon, giving me the peace of mind needed to retain the coefficient of friction for various textiles and surfaces.
We can all agree, then, that providing light ballistics for each educator, administrator, custodian, and cafeteria worker will help keep students safe. But if it’s the children we’re so worried about, should they not carry weapons as well? Think about it. If every student knew each of his peers possessed the capability to end a human life with no more difficulty than it takes to snuff out a candle, imagine how much more civil schoolyard interactions would be. Fisticuffs and other violence would decrease immediately if every student had, on his or her person, a state-issued firearm. An age of peace and tranquility will befall the community, a veritable Cold War, if I may say so.
Picture, if you will, the ensuing learning environment. Rows of attentive students, unencumbered by fears of gun-toting maniacs or lesser bullies. A tense, charged quiet permeates the air. Each syllable spoken by the teacher has the assembly’s full attention. Each pierces the silence with the force of a bowling ball striking a tile floor. The students, to a one, sit rigid in their seats, unafraid and alert. The highly focused congregation maintains this inflexible bent on the lesson at hand until the bell rings and beyond. The classroom has become a glorious Mexican standoff of learning.
Obviously, this plan is incomplete. The students can’t very well leave their guns in their lockers. That would leave open the possibility of violence outside of school hours. And every high school student cannot simply bring a gun to and from school every day. How would the rest of the community feel? The only solution is for each parent to be outfitted with a firearm of his or her own. This measure will make any domestic disputes fair while keeping the guns in the hands of the children, where they belong. Finally, the childless and the elderly must also be given pistols, so as not to put them at a disadvantage in an argument against one of their well-equipped neighbors. Every citizen of Clarksville, Arkansas must own a gun.
Certainly, if twenty pistols can increase the feeling of security, nine thousand guns will heighten that sensation exponentially. The cost ($1,100 per person for the weapon and the holster, plus the price of ammunition and training) will not even approach the price of funerals and flower arrangements that would befall the town without the proliferation of firearms. The only way to ensure no one ever gets shot is to bring the firearm saturation as close to 100% as possible. Once the nation witnesses the utopia that flourishes in Clarksville, Arkansas, surely we will be ready to adopt this program on a larger scale.
Take Chicago, for example. People get shot there all the time. They must not have enough guns to go around.
Sincerely,
Joshua Gondelman
Concerned American Citizen
