Mr. Lock

Who is Mr. Lock? Mr. Lock is a term used by school personnel to warn and set into motion defensive measures to thwart a shooter coming into a school. A simple name designed to start a drill without frightening young children. How sad that our society has dissolved to such depths that school children are being taught life skills for survival.

When I was a young child in grade school it was the height of the cold war and there were two types of “drills” that we learned in school. The first was the innocuous standard regularly scheduled fire drill  and viewed as a lucky diversion from our ordinary school routines. The other “drill” was much more ominous. We each had to take a defensive position under our desks putting one hand behind our neck and hiding our eyes into the other folded arm. How silly these doomsday drills were for how could this position under a wooden desk possible protect us from a nuclear blast or radiation fallout. But we were required to practice these on a regular basis. We were too young to understand the ineptitude of this drill and too uninterested to question the why of it all.

Unfortunately for todays’ children, they are all too aware, and experience on a regular basis, all kinds of survival drills. They go by different names though…intruder drills, lock down drills or for the very young children…hide and seek or the silent game. Other survivalist ideas are to shelter in place and the video I recently had to watch at work was titled Run, Hide, Fight.  The running part is obvious as is the hiding part but fight? What am I suppose to use to fight? A stethoscope, a syringe? What is a second grader to use…pencils, crayons, erasers? No innocent schoolhouse tool can stop an intruder armed with a semi-automatic AR15 from mowing through humans like a threshing machine through a field of wheat. Carnage is certain.

It is time to stop the killing. Time to pass  reasonable gun laws that allow the gun people to have their handguns and rifles but removes killing machines from the hands of would be assassins. No one’s second amendment rights outweigh the life of one human being. No way, no how, on any planet is that right.  On Saturday, March 24th hundreds of thousands of like-minded Americans will be marching. Marching for life. Fueled by young adults whose lives have forever been changed when they ran, hid and died trying to escape a flurry of gunfire that killed seventeen of their fellow classmates and forever traumatized and changed the course of their young lives. They have harnessed their grief and anger launching it into a nation wide movement seeking to turn the tide on senseless loss of human life. If you are moved by their fervor, walk with them. It will make you feel so whole, so hopeful, so “right”. Just walk.

Never Again!!!