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Guns in schools: No-win situation

It’s the law, but that doesn’t make it sen­sible:

If you have a license to carry a con­cealed weapon, you can legally bring it into a school.

The theory behind this law is … what? That an armed citizen just might happen to be in a school when some idiot decides to shoot it up? And then that armed citi­zen, surely knowing the proper way to handle the weapon and to deal with an armed idiot, will gun down that armed id­iot before he, or she, can kill an innocent person or more?

That’s a nice theory. Interesting that people who will not accept Darwin’s The­ory of Evolution seem perfectly willing to accept the "theory," and treat as fact, that an armed citizen wandering around a school is perfectly reasonable.

But in New Hampshire, it’s the law; ergo, it must be perfectly reasonable.

The Milford School Board, however, has tried at least to mitigate what we, and we assume it, see as the danger behind this perfectly reasonable law, to wit, it is ap­plying the federal Gun Free School Zones Act and forbidding students from carry­ing concealed weapons into school build­ings. But just students; that’s the best the board can do.

But good for the board in saying that a student who brings a firearm to school faces expulsion.

Of course, the nutty thing here is that the Gun Free School Zones Act apparent­ly applies only to students and not, say, someone who graduated a few months be­fore. He, or she, can bring in that Glock.

Still, good for the Milford School Board in doing what it can, although the proba­bility is that some gotta-be-armed citizen will challenge the board’s ruling because … oh, undoubtedly a multitude of reasons that will make little sense to anyone who gets the very concept of "Gun Free School Zone," with the emphasis on "Gun Free."

Guns are fine tools and fine implements for hunting, but too many people see them as symbols of manhood or some "right" they insist that they have that gives them the "right" to do things that just don’t make any sense, such as carry guns into schools or legislative buildings.

We are the most gun-happy society on the planet, at least in terms of legitimiz­ing the "right" to have and carry them. But the theory always seems to be that it’s better to be armed just in case you can step in and stop something from happen­ing.

Please let us know the next time you are aware of such an occurrence. Or the first time.

It should be of some concern to the legislators in New Hampshire who think that carrying weapons into public build­ings is a good idea that the vast majority of police officers, here and around the country, think it’s a very bad idea. Police officers know that untrained citizens with firearms are a danger to themselves and others, including police officers. And a few hours on the range isn’t the same as being trained to use a gun in an emergen­cy. It just trains you to point it and pull the trigger. It isn’t the same thing.

What we seem to have in New Hamp­shire is an overriding idea among some public officials, especially legislators, that doing what they think is "right" un­der the Second Amendment trumps com­mon sense.

The Milford School Board came down on the side of the latter. Hooray.