The "Is It Just A Matter Of Time Before It Happens In Your School? I Hope Not!" Story

It was an ordinary day.  Reading an article in my local newspaper that was titled "We All Have Concerns."  It was a story telling how Texas trains its teachers to carry guns into the classroom to prevent shootings.  Made me think back quite a few years to when I taught high school at Manheim Township High School in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.  Not only did I teach school, I was the coach for the high school rifle team.  Yes...we had REAL .22mm rifles on the rifle range inside the school.  If you happened to have a key to the rifle range, you could access the rifles that were lined along the wall of the range which was located under the stage of our auditorium.  I kept the live ammunition locked in a six foot tall metal cabinet, but with the right tools, anyone could open the metal cabinet and have access to the ammunition.  Yes...the guns were only .22mm rifles, but they could kill you just as easily as any other gun could kill you.  At one end of the rifle range was a wall that could hold targets.  Almost every school day from October until the end of the rifle season in February, my rifle team would practice shooting the targets.  Not once did I think about what could have happened if someone entered the range and grabbed a rifle and a handful of ammunition and walked out of the rifle range.  Back then, in the 1970s,  there weren't school shootings as there are today.  We would practice most every weekday after school and when the rifle season began, we would travel to other schools or have rifle meets at our school.  I had about 20 members on my team, both boys and girls, who all handled rifles almost every day of the week for a few months during the season.  Not once did I think about what could have happened.  We went through hundreds of rounds of ammunition during the five years I was coach.  One year we traveled to State College, Pennsylvania and shot against teams from all over the state and won the State Championship.  All those teenagers throughout the state of Pennsylvania were equipped with rifles and ammunition day after day and never once did any of us think about what could have happened if just one of them went off the edge!  Why didn't we?  I don't know!  We just didn't think about what could have happened!  Life has changed!!  Today teachers are the ones who are trained to shoot the guns just in case!!  I just read a story about a school in Texas who trains their teachers to carry guns into the classroom to prevent shootings.  The story began with...Pacing along chest-high bookcases, a man in a black hoodie and carrying a long gun charged into Walsh Middle School's library.  He fired rounds into the carpet--loud booms and eruptions of smoke punctuating each shot.  Within seconds, two armed educators pursued the gunman, shooting him with fake ammunition, forcing him to the ground and securing his gun.  A school police officer arrived a moment later and yelled at all three to raise their hands in the air.  "School marshal, school marshal" the two educators yelled.  This event is an example of the scenario-based training Texas uses to prepare educators to carry firearms on campus.  Scary...so it is!  But, I never thought for one minute while I was the rifle coach, that something like that could or would happen.  Why?  I don't have an answer I can type to end my story!  I just never felt like something like that could have happened even though we had .22 long rifles and plenty of ammunition in the rifle range that anyone could access if they tried hard enough.  I guess I was just lucky.  Today they still have a rifle team, but they use air rifles.  They can still be dangerous, but in most all cases they are never deadly.  After reading about the programs they have in Texas, can it be long before they have programs in all states to combat gun violence in schools.  I never wished I was old, but after reading about all the school violence over the past years, I'm glad I no longer teach school.  I do admire all the teachers who put their life on the line each and every time they go to work in today's school environment.  May God help them if something would ever happen in their schools.  Until then, I guess more and more training is the only preventative measure that might help.  But, you just know that it is only a matter of time before it will happen.  Training is the only way to help prepare for it when it does happen again!  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.