Date: 16 Mar 95 16:34:03 -0700
From: [l--e--l] at [lever.ncdl.com] (L. Neil Smith)
To: [N--B--N] at [tomahawk.welch.jhu.edu]
Subject: "Voices against Violence"

+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+ KIDS AND GUNS AT SCHOOL +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=

                          by L. Neil Smith

    Somebody has to be the first to say it -- and I was, 18 years
ago, when I wrote my first novel, _The Probability Broach_.

    In that book, an American policeman is suddenly plunged into an
alternate world where dropping a weapon in your pocket every morning
is as ordinary and unremarkable as doing the same thing with a
wallet -- and even children carry guns.

    Of course what I meant, writing that part of the book, was that
children _especially_ carry guns.  They're little, not very strong,
and they need guns more than big people do.

    In the wonderful world of _The Probability Broach_, there
weren't any public schools, and not only were administrators -- that
is, the owners and operators -- of various private school systems
not disturbed at the prospect of their little charges toting magnum
semiautomatics to class, they offered courses to improve the kids'
proficiency with them, just as their parents deemed proper.

    The customer, after all, is always right.

    Look:  in our world, in the 19th century and well into the 20th,
kids and guns went together like ham and eggs.  Boys could be seen
everywhere, every day, wandering the countryside with .22 rifles
dangling from their grubby little fingers. True, times have changed,
but only to the extent that it should now be something a trifle more
effective than a .22 (the likeliest game being bigger and meaner
than the squirrels, rabbits, and rats of an earlier era), and little
girls should carry guns, as well.

    Should anyone argue that these rifles and their owners belonged
to a rural period of history, rather than the urbanized America of
today, I'll cheerfully concede -- adding that this seems to me like
an argument in favor of handguns, as opposed to rifles.

    The only thing wrong with kids bringing guns to school is that
the wrong kids bring them, for the wrong reasons. Moreover, the
solution isn't metal detectors in doorways, locker searches and
seizures which make it tough to teach the 4th and 5th Amendments, or
the mandatory expulsions for a year which even Rush Limbaugh
advocates -- it's simply rearranging things so the right kids bring
guns to school for the right reasons.

    Self-defense.

    Everybody's basic, human right.

    I know that all liberals, the majority of conservatives, and
even many libertarians are going to have trouble with this concept
-- once they awaken from the apoplectic coma it sends them reeling
into -- though it wouldn't have troubled science fiction author
Robert A. Heinlein (who turned out to be right about so many other
things, as well) even 30-odd years ago, when he wrote _Red Planet_,
a novel that concerns itself with this very subject.  The same
people -- liberals, conservatives, even many libertarians -- often
have trouble with an even simpler idea:  freedom works.

    Any time, any place.

    Consider:  in Orlando, Florida, as we know by now, a massive
increase in the number of rapes was halted and reversed by the
expedient of offering classes in firearms-handling to several
thousand women over one long, hot summer (see Paxton Quigley's
_Armed and Female_ for details even I had never heard before).

    We also know, in general, that wherever ordinary people exercise
their unalienable individual, civil, Constitutional, and human right
to arm themselves, crimes of confrontation diminish, whereas exactly
the reverse is true wherever that right is narrowed or suppressed.

    So I ask, why not take that valuable lesson to school where it
belongs?  Why continue to maintain the public school system as a
sort of holiday camp away from reality, if reality is what we're
interested in conveying to our children?

    Unlike liberals, conservatives, and many libertarians, I don't
believe the Bill of Rights begins to apply to an individual only
when he or she reaches some arbitrary age of legal majority.  In my
experience, adults have just as much difficulty exercising their
rights intelligently as children do.  In fact, children seem to
understand rules -- such as "No one has a right to INITIATE force
against another human being for any reason" -- better than those who
have simply grown bigger and older without getting wiser.

    As long as public schools exist, they should be required by law
to offer mandatory courses in safe and effective gun- handling.  It
is an historic fact that hoodlums, for the most part, lack the
self-discipline to shoot well.  So, over the course of time, they'll
be out-classed -- and out-shot -- by kids capable of learning the
shootist's craft, and the problem will be solved.

    Forever.

    Or until people forget the lesson and have to learn the hard way
all over again.

    I do have lingering doubts about the schools' ability to teach
anything -- let alone safe and effective gun-handling -- to anybody,
and the real answer to that is to abolish public schools altogether.

    But that's another story.

+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=