[Jeff Higgins]

I have actually spent time hunting with a couple of Amish guys outside of Eau Claire, Wisconsin. They have guns and they are pretty damn good with them. To think they would not own them demonstrates a little bit of a miss-understanding of what they are all about. Remember, self-defense is no sin. Allowing criminals to harm you and your loved ones is.

Jim, I'm at an equal loss as to what to do. I'm not for teachers being armed unless the individual teachers want to be, and legally can be, under their states' CCW's. In other words, they should not be asked to give up their right to self defense just because they are at work teaching our children. The whole "gun-free school zone" thing is merely another foot in the door for the anti-gun crowd.

Take a look at any big city map that has these zones. They extend for some distance off of school property, creating a gun-free "buffer" around the school. Put a disc of that radius centered over every school in the city and, if it's like Seattle, there are effectively no legal carry zones anywhere in the city. Funny how that worked out.

Years ago there was a local to-do about children getting nabbed from rural bus stops. Parents started manning those stops, visibly armed. And legally so. No kids got nabbed from those stops. The county sheriff, in his infinite wisdom, put the pressure on these parents to stop, calling it "vigilantism". Not that he would (or could) provide a deputy at every stop, but it was clearly not, in his mind, the lowly citizens' place to provide for their own protection.

Hogwash. It is up to each and every one of us, the good and honest citizens, to provide for our own security and that of our loved ones. Chipping away at that right, in our schools or wherever else, merely gives the "goblins" safer playgrounds. We should not stand for that.