Guns in the classroom, &c.

[Valin]

National Review:

Jay Nordlinger

Feb. 11 2015

 

Teachers in Peshawar undergo weapons training

 

For years, America has been enmeshed in a “gun debate.” The right to bear arms is a ticklish, vexing subject. I don’t intend to get into it today — except maybe indirectly. Mainly, I’d like to say that I found this Associated Press report out of Pakistan quite moving.

 

Let me quote the opening:

 

When Pakistani Taliban militants stormed a Peshawar school and massacred 150 children and teachers, nobody could fight back. Shabnam Tabinda and some of her fellow teachers want to change that — and are practicing how to shoot terrorists.

 

There are teachers and others who are appalled by this, of course. They think teachers have no business packing heat. But

 

for teachers like 37-year-old Tabinda, going to work unarmed no longer feels like an option. She and 10 other female teachers at the Frontier College for Women are taking pride in their newfound marksmanship with handguns, and plan to carry them to help protect their students aged 16 to 21.

 

Asked whether she felt confident of killing a terrorist at her school, Tabinda was emphatic in reply: “Yes. Whoever kills innocents, God willing I will shoot them.”

 

You might argue that the job of protecting students and teachers should be left to the police, or the military. But listen to this:

 

(Snip)

 

The AP report ends this way:

 

 

When she fired her first shot at a paper target, Tabinda said her police instructor was impressed that she hit the bull’s-eye, depicting the chest of a human target. Tabinda said she was visualizing the Taliban killers behind December’s school slaughter as she fired.

 

“I hit them right in their hearts,” she said.

When I started to read this article, I figured it was just another news report, but then I found I was reading something very moving, with a direct bearing on gun debates everywhere.

(Snip)