THREE! TWO! ONE! CLANG!

There's been a lot of discussion around my school about Trump's proposal to arm teachers so they can prevent classroom massacres and everyone I know with any kind of brain thinks this is a lunatic proposition; for those who don't think that, I have a metaphor that might explain why this gun-lover's fantasy is so preposterous . . . at every basketball practice, at least once a session, there's a kid who counts down  THREE! TWO! ONE! and chucks a half-court shot at the rim; he's imagining the ultimate scenario, of course-- his team is down by two points with .6 seconds left in regulation and he hurls a shot from sixty feet and swishes it, winning the game; while this is a compelling fantasy, in reality the shot inevitably hits someone in the head; ruins the transition from one drill to the next; and sets everyone else off their game . . . while this scenario does occasionally happen in an actual game, it is very very rare, and not something that necessarily warrants practice, and the collateral damage when a kid does this at practice is usually fairly ugly, so coaches discourage it; of course, I empathize with the kids, it's fun to pretend . . . but I don't empathize with adults who indulge in such fantasies: they obviously imagine some perfectly romanticized school shooter scenario where they spot a mad gunman in the distance, lining up innocent school girls in his sights, and this shooter doesn't notice the heroic marksman, the good guy with a concealed weapon, who takes careful aim with his well-maintained, carefully oiled piece, calmly fires, and drops the shooter in his tracks . . . THREE! TWO! ONE! . . . just before the shooter does any damage; I'm not sure if this scenario has ever happened, but I do know for certain that the more guns are the present, the more deaths happen, whether by suicide, accident, or collateral damage, and the chance that even an armed and trained person would come the the rescue is pretty slim . . . so let's leave the fantasizing to the children and recognize that the answer to gun violence is not more guns; there are good people and there are bad people, and-- as Neil Postman reminds us: there are good technologies and bad technologies . . . it took a while to recognize cigarettes as a bad technology, and as much as the 2nd Amendment folks hate to hear it, it's time to admit that guns are not a technology to embrace and worship either