Issue link: https://www.epageflip.net/i/102818
6A Daily News – Thursday, January 10, 2013 Opinion Teachers and guns DAILY NEWS RED BLUFF TEHAMA COUNTY T H E V O I C E O F T E H A M A C O U NTY S I N C E 1 8 8 5 Greg Stevens, Publisher gstevens@redbluffdailynews.com Chip Thompson, Editor editor@redbluffdailynews.com Editorial policy The Daily News opinion is expressed in the editorial. The opinions expressed in columns, letters and cartoons are those of the authors and artists. Letter policy The Daily News welcomes letters from its readers on timely topics of public interest. All letters must be signed and provide the writer's home street address and home phone number. Anonymous letters, open letters to others, pen names and petition-style letters will not be allowed. Letters should be typed and cannot exceed two double-spaced pages or 500 words. When several letters address the same issue, a cross section of those submitted will be considered for publication. Letters will be edited. 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How to reach us Main office: 527-2151 Classified: 527-2151 Circulation: 527-2151 News tips: 527-2153 Sports: 527-2153 Obituaries: 527-2151 Photo: 527-2153 On the Web www.redbluffdailynews.com Fax Newsroom: 527-9251 Classified: 527-5774 Retail Adv.: 527-5774 Legal Adv.: 527-5774 Business Office: 527-3719 Address 545 Diamond Ave. Red Bluff, CA 96080, or P.O. Box 220 Red Bluff, CA 96080 When I was barely into the double numbers of my life, I would get my .410 shotgun, my hand-me-down hunting vest and box of 25 shells, then hop on my bicycle and head for the rice fields and canal banks just south of Willows. My companion or companions varied, but I remember John Goulart, Harmon Smith, Bruce Mulderick, probably Bruce Hegwer and Russell Moore as being other 11- and 12-year-olds who toted shotguns across the handlebars and shells in their pockets, riding through town with nary an adult head turned in concern. Sometimes we'd come back with a mallard, widgeon, sprig or teal (Mulderick or Goulart once downed a snow goose! Wow!), but usually it was back home with only one, or two, or no shots being fired. An adult might see us pedaling back and ask how we did, but not with concern … only curiosity. During my high school years, a very nice, rather strange guy was a classmate. Bobby Thun. Bob was caught up with guns and other weapons of our country's past. Also the wearing apparel. He often wore a buckskin fringe jacket, leather pants and either a cowboy or coonskin cap. There'd be a Bowie knife or hunting knife in a sheath on his belt. And, of course, western boots. He dressed that way for school. And he showed up a time or two with an old, fully serviceable and loaded, Henry rifle and would tote it through the high school hallways as he went to classes. It was probably discomforting to some, but most of us gave it little thought. (He was called into to the office the third or fourth time he brought it to school and told it would be better to leave the rifle at home. He did.) Bob would later serve in the National Guard and be a reserve Glenn County deputy sheriff. Those days of innocence are but dim memories now. For better – or worse – we've become fiercely protective of our children, or at least paid lip service to it. Today's kids have far fewer restrictions and constraints than did those of us who grew up in the 1940s and 1950s. We honored our fathers and mothers a lot more than kids do today. We still screwed up and were rebellious, but we had rules we mostly had to follow. And we weren't spoiled … not like kids are today. Is that good? Or bad? I haven't figured it out. That's not the point of this ramble. Since the events in midDecember when that screwed-up kid went into a grade school and executed 20 little girls and boys, and a half-dozen adults, the hue and cry has been raised to come up with new/more laws to control who can own or use the deadly weapons. Other than pass a law requiring registration of assault rifles, and banning large magazines, I can't see anything being offered up that is going to stop or even hinder even one of the nut cases out there who most surely will soon shoot up another school, shopping mall, post office or business. The National Rifle Association's loony idea to make schools safe is mind boggling. Let's teach teachers how to shoot! Let them tote 9 millimeters or .357 magnums and when the bad guys barge in with shotguns, rifles and pistols, good old Mr. Doofus the math teacher can drop his blackboard pointer and grab his Police Special and drop the perp or perps in the doorway. Or times a week when a student or petite Miss Fizzle, the second two were unruly. Give them guns? grade teacher who graduated from It makes me shudder. Or Bill Field, the fat, easily college a few months flustered language ago, can reach into her desk drawer, whip out Guest View teacher? How about Minnie Lou Davis, the her double-barreled Cliff home ec teacher? The derringer and put two weasel-like William tiny slugs between the Slade? The befuddled eyes of the guy who's Edgar Barkley? Lotta spraying the room with help they'd have been. hundreds of rounds Yep, there were others who I from his assault rifle. think would have acquitted Oh My Gawd! If ever I've heard a good reason themselves admirably, bloodyto home school your child, giving ing the bad guys without losing educators any weapon deadlier more than a few C and D stuthan a report card would be the dents to friendly fire. Comes to mind Carl Hoberg, Charles Culone. Looking back to my days in bertson, Rock McClellan, Vick school – and a lot of you reading Kronberg, Bill Hooper, Mac, this were in school with me – try and Howard Allard, Ed Cerf and to imagine a second-grade teacher Lou Franz from grade school who would have been capable of days. Looking back to the days of shooting at, let alone out shooting, Truman and Ike, they were not a crazed gunman or gunboy. Katherine Earhart immediately necessarily simpler times. I do comes to my mind. The lovely think the values were easier to diswoman was the best teacher I (and cern and far less skewed than they quite a few of you) ever had. Firm. are today. I know I'd hate to be starting And fair. And a shaper of hundreds of lives. But Mrs. Earhart over. I'd have to worry about all was not put on earth to be a class- the things I did back then, plus room Calamity Jane. Would she wondering whether I'd get out of have given her life for her stu- the second grade or die trying. I don't have a solution and I dents? She did give a lifetime to them, and I've little doubt she think the NRA is looking pretty would have put herself between stupid right now. But I also know, and this is a them and a shooter. But to even suggest that the Mrs. Earharts of sad fact, when guns are outlawed, the world should have to be quick everyone will still have guns. I know I'll have mine. on the draw as well as the blackboard? Absurd. Cliff Larimer, Willows High I've thought about other teachers in whose care I was for at least Class of '55, is a career journalist. 50 minutes a day in grades K He served in the Marine Corps. through 12. You can conjure up His wife Betsy, Red Bluff High Class of '52, is a former police your own list. I think of Margaret Schriner officer who spent 11 years with and Peggy Lou Geis. Both scatter- the Red Bluff Police Department. brains who went to pieces several They reside in Tehama County. Larimer Your officials STATE ASSEMBLYMAN — Dan Logue, 1550 Humboldt Road, Ste. 4, Chico, CA 95928, 530-895-4217 STATE SENATOR — Awaiting results of special election GOVERNOR — Jerry Brown, State Capitol Bldg., Sacramento, CA 95814; (916) 445-2841; Fax (916) 558-3160; E-mail: governor@governor.ca.gov. U.S. REPRESENTATIVE — Doug LaMalfa 506 Cannon House Office Building, Washington, DC 20515, 202-225-3076. U.S. SENATORS — Dianne Feinstein (D), One Post Street, Suite 2450, San Francisco, CA 94104; (415) 393-0707. Fax (415) 393-0710. Barbara Boxer (D), 1700 Montgomery St., Suite 240, San Francisco, CA 94111; (510) 286-8537. Fax (202) 224-0454. Commentary Friends we have yet to meet I was sleeping on the couch, for once not because I said something stupid or needed quiet from the wife's snoring, but rather because we both agreed I should avoid whatever germs she had recently picked up. Laura was passed out, her blood stream filled with a cocktail of Mucinex, Sudasleep, Alka-Seltzer and helter skelter. It must have been around 7:30 in the morning, because I woke up to my two dogs' daily ritual of trying to sound like humans in an effort to be let out and relieve their bladders. Usually Laura handles this, but trying to be the considerate husband to a sick spouse I reluctantly got up. I walked past the bedroom to find out the animal sounds were actually coming from my wife — Laura's snoring made all the worse from the hamburger throat she was suffering through. Since I was up anyway I called for Marley and Hobbes and escorted them outside. I took care of my own midmorning business and went to the back door to let them in. Bounding in came the first dog, then the second, then the third. Wait, the third? That's one too many. "Back outside," I said loud enough to finally wake Laura. "What's going on," she said. "There's an extra dog in the house," I said, more to question myself whether or not I was still dreaming. "That doesn't make sense," Laura replied, not helping my thought process. It did make sense once I found the hole in the fence and connected it to the bark I heard the night before that sounded as though it was coming from my porch, yet I disregarded because my two dogs were at my feet. The neighbor's dog had come over, apparently invited in by Marley and Hobbes to share breakfast. After all they were having the good stuff, "no Ole' Roy here," they must have told him. He was neighborly enough, stopping at the end of the mat when I yelled at him to go back outside, keeping his muddy paws from making a mess on the tile. Either Marley or Hobbes, at that point I was too groggy and confused to tell, escorted their friend back outside to make things more comical. "No not you outside, you inside, you outside," I tried to reason with a pair of man's best friends. The four-legged creatures and So wrapped up in our social my superior human brain finally figured it out and everyone went networking sites are we now, there's no reason to meet back to where they were new people. supposed to be. Old friends no longer While I can rationally become old acquainpiece together which tances. We're updated mutt belongs in which daily on when their baby house, one thing I can't is due, new job offers, do anymore is have the even what they made for social acceptance those dinner. dogs do. There's simply no Where I see strangers, room in our lives to add my dogs see a friend new people. No reason they haven't met yet. to ask a stranger how I've matured though their day is going when an age where an eye subRich our eyes and thumbs are consciously keeps a focused on the digital watch out for a fidgety device in front of us. person on an airplane or I feel bad about this a latecomer to a movie but I probably would have a hard theater. Last month I even had to ask time picking out all of my neighmyself if I believed guns belonged bors in a line at a grocery store. Yet I could perfectly describe the in schools. This is our world now and it has avatars my friends are currently using. changed us. To my dogs' disappointment, When my doorbell rings, my wife peeps through the blinds before I left for work that morning before opening the door as though I went and repaired the fence. To my own disappointment, I a would-be-robber would be dressed in one of those Old School didn't even bother to include my black-and-white striped prison neighbor in the work. Plus I got sick anyway. shirts complete with a bandana mask. Rich Greene can be reached at But it's not just tragedies that are eroding the social aspects of 527-2151, Ext. 109 or by email at rgreene@redbluffdailynews.com. our communities. Greene