A man who was threatening bodily harm to students and faculty at American River College was arrested this week. He was apparently going to do something today.
Over the years I taught at American River, I usually taught on Fridays. I still teach at Sacramento City college, which had a shooting a few weeks ago.
Every day that I go to work, my life is in danger.
Students and teachers face an enormous threat right now. Preschoolers are more in danger from bullets than active duty police officers.
I’m tired of hearing that things would be better if there were more guns around.
You really want my students to be armed when I catch them cheating, when I give them an F, the F that might get them disenrolled from this university? The F that sometimes means deportation? The F that means no med school?
Some might say I should carry a gun.
A. I don’t want to.
B. I have poor depth perception.
C. Most mass shootings happen so fast that I’m likely to be gunned down way before I manage to find the hopefully secured gun that would be rattling around in my backpack (so unsafe; I would probably shoot myself in the ass).
D. If I see a student with a gun, I will not assume that student is armed to protect me from a shooter. I’ll assume the student is a shooter.
By this logic, I could then shoot the student and claim fear of bodily harm, right?
I could shoot the occasional stalker student, right?
I have never felt safer in the presence of a weapon.
When I was growing up, my mother was in abusive relationships with gun owners. Was I supposed to be happy these guys–one of whom threatened to kill me if she left him–had their constitutional right to terrorize us?
The hard facts are that I have always more danger than safety from a gun in a relative’s hand or in a student’s hand or in a co-worker’s hand.
I see people post things about how we protect the President, airports, etc. with guns.
The posts never mention two things:
A. We protect the President etc. with guns carried by people with extensive gun training, with a license to carry that weapon at work–a license that can be taken away–and with clean background checks and mental health records.
If everyone who carried a gun did so under those circumstances, I’d be fine.
B. Also, that asinine post doesn’t mention whom we’re protecting people from with those regulated guns–we’re protecting the President etc. from crazy people with guns.
Telling me that guns are fine because we use them for protection but conveniently forgetting that we need law enforcement to carry them because other people are coming to shoot the rest of us is a gross oversight.
A lot of days now, when I’m walking to campus, I’m not thinking about the lesson I’m about to do, my research project, the students I mentor, that one student who seems to need extra help, or even what I’m having for dinner after class. Instead, I’m thinking about how vulnerable I am.
Today, I’ll walk across campus four times.
I hope.
