Keep guns out of our schools

Let me begin by saying this: The rights guaranteed by the Second Amendment are vitally important. Guns rights allow us as a people to protect ourselves from a government that would behave in an unjust way. Gun rights grant us self-sufficiency, the ability to provide meals for ourselves and our families.

This being said, however, guns have no place in schools.

At the expulsion hearing Monday night for Demari DeReu at Glacier Gateway Elementary, a number of people got up during the public comment period to state their opinion on whether or not School District 6 had acted fairly in its actions taken in Demari’s case. Many of those people then continued to voice their thoughts on the matter.

Some of those thoughts were downright troubling.

One man stood up and called the use of contraband dogs in schools “a shakedown” and that the dogs create a “prison-like environment.” But do they? By a show of hands, how many parents would like to know that their children or other children in School District 6 schools have marijuana or other illicit drugs on their person? Isn’t it a public service for schools to conduct searches for drugs and weapons, to protect the well being of students and teachers?

Another man came to the microphone and said that situations like this teach students to mistrust their teachers, for fear of expulsion. How would guns in schools solve that problem? In reality, allowing guns in schools or on school grounds, even unloaded guns in locked trunks, degrades the trust in the learning environment. Wouldn’t a student be more likely to feel fear knowing that his or her fellow student could produce a gun and kill people at any moment?

Perhaps I hold this opinion because I grew up just seven miles away from Columbine High School, where in 1999 12 students and one teacher were murdered by two disturbed teenagers, who also killed themselves. Perhaps this has given me a heightened sensitivity to the issue. But I find it completely preposterous to state that a rifle is not a weapon if it is used for sport or recreation — a gun isn’t a weapon until it is. The guns that killed those people — one of whom attended my church — in the Columbine cafeteria and library were not weapons until they were. They too were kept in locked trunks.

Blacksburg, Va. was a sleepy college town until a deranged student went on a rampage and killed 32 of his peers at Virginia Tech in 2007, later killing himself. This renewed my fear. I looked around in my classes at university and wondered, “Would you kill me if you wanted to?”

This is not to say that Demari had any intention of harming her classmates. Of course she didn’t. She made a mistake and she’s learned her lesson. But the very public expulsion hearing, completely blown out of proportion by certain organizations and the media, should be a lesson to her fellow students. Guns have no place in schools, even in Montana. As much as we say, “It could never happen here,” the fact of the matter is that it could.

Finally, legislators have no business proposing legislation that would allow guns on any piece of school property, even if they’re unloaded and locked in trunks. Jerry O’Neil’s proposal at the expulsion hearing to clarify state law “to allow a rifle in a locked trunk to be in a school parking lot” was pandering to the crowd and will no doubt be shot down in Helena. Any such legislation is a direct violation of the Gun-Free Schools Act, which was enacted for good reason, to keep students and teachers safe.

- K.J. Hascall