OUR VIEW: Gun fight

Having been through the years between Columbine and Virginia Tech, the news that a gun was brought to a school campus sends a shock through parents and school administrators. Fears for the worst are at the top of everyone’s mind.
Thankfully, though the rumor was true, two students at Patrick Henry High School did exchange a firearm, there was no danger to lives. (Note to rabid gun haters: the mere presence of a firearm is not life threatening. As bad as you might hate to admit it the old cliché of guns not killing people does hold some water).
We are even more thankful for a school system that reacted with a pitch perfect response. School leaders did enough to neutralize the problem, inform parents and ensure that they are working to keep any other guns from finding their way to school property. What they didn’t do was overreact. It would have been easy to do and it would have understandable, some might argue even appropriate. We’re proud that they didn’t overreact. It would have achieved nothing except to make a bad situation worse.
Happily no one was hurt. If someone had been, we’d probably be excoriating the School Board and Superintendent Dr. Alan Lee right about now. So Lee and the board deserve any praise we can send their way. They did the right thing in the right way. It’s a tough job balancing educating our children, keeping them safe and teaching them to make good decisions. Coming down too hard on a bad decision has the effect of taking away the ability to make any decision, good or bad. That is more a threat to our society than anything else we could imagine.
Guns shouldn’t be brought to school. For starters, it’s illegal. Times have changed since the 1950s, when shooting clubs were integral parts of many rural schools. Times have changed since even the early 1990s, when it wasn’t uncommon or a cause for concern to see a hunting rifle in the window of a pickup behind the head of a just-out-of-class teenager. But times haven’t changed so much that school leaders don’t need to use a little understanding and context when meeting challenges. Washington County is lucky to have leaders who do just that.