Paradise spoiled yet again.

Schools Should Not Be Afraid of Armed Guards

In 2008, I moved back to Texas after living some 20 years on the East Coast. Eager to contrast the two cultures, I did not always find the differences I expected, but on the matter of guns I was not disappointed. Apart from occasional references to hunting, my East Coast conversations had rarely revolved around guns. I didn’t know of anyone in my neighborhood just outside Philadelphia who even owned a gun, much less wanted to talk about firearms. Doubtless the story was different in Philadelphia proper, but even there the dominant urban Democratic culture had long since embraced gun control, and educated opinion, for what it was worth, took the same side. Here in Houston, by contrast, guns seem to be an almost daily topic of conversation, among all classes. I have brought little more than Yankee ignorance to these discussions. “I used to be a native Texan,” I recently told my gun-owning neighbor, apologetically. Continue reading →