Children with Backpacks, Adults with Guns

Before I had time to fully inundate myself with details about the massive shooting in Odessa on Saturday – I was overtaken by the announcement that my beloved State of Texas has loosened gun laws.

Hours after more innocent people perished at the hands of a maniac; hours after another city was terrorized – gun laws were loosened.

The new laws loosen restrictions on gun ownership and use in schools, foster homes, apartment buildings and houses of worship.

Before the gun-toting Texans lash out at me, let me be very clear: I understand that proponents of the laws will argue that carrying in the aforementioned places will offer people the opportunity to defend themselves from threats. I understand wanting to protect your person, your respective family and your belongings.

Allow me to paint a picture for you where schools are concerned.

Sometimes a fiery email can shake an entire department. Meetings that should be an email can change the dynamic of the midweek. Students who need to be homeschooled by the parents who think they can do no wrong can disrupt the entire learning environment. Racial slurs and rolled eyes can end a planning meeting early. And of course a school shooter can end all of the bickering in the most final of fashions.

But teachers and school staff can now keep firearms in the parking lot. As long as we can exercise our rights to carry, as we are entitled - all will be well. Right?

Wrong.

Some of the most racist and mean-spirited people in the world work with children. It’s not always blatant, but many harbor resentment about changing societies and upward growth of particular cultures so much that the disgust pains their faces more than it penetrates their words.

Do you want them to allow their weekend conversations about ICE and government assistance to ride to work with them, with a gun under the seat? Do you want men and women still married to the idea of things needing to “return to the way they used to be” to legally be a parking lot away from a firearm?

At my very first campus a colleague called my students “wetbacks” while they were in his classroom. They knew that it was wrong. They told me and I reported him to the office. I was told to “stop being messy.”

That man has since moved on to another district, which happens to once again be my district. He still snarls at the sight of my brown skin. Can’t imagine how he’s dealing with being in another majority-minority school district.

While I’m certain this man, and many like him have a heavy arsenal of weaponry in their homes – I don’t like the idea of him legally being able to stow a weapon in his vehicle while on campus.

House Bill 1143 says a school district cannot prohibit licensed gun owners, including school employees from storing a firearm or ammunition in a locked vehicle on a school parking lot – provided they are not in plain view. 

I know how to fire a gun. I feel comfortable with a gun on my person; however, I do not carry a gun. More importantly, I've never worked in any school setting where I'd want my colleagues to carry guns.

We no longer live in a world where people think to talk out discrepancies or fight it out with fists. Anger looks different. To think that adults in a school are equipped with some special restraint that would completely stop them from running to their vehicles in a moment of rage is nothing short of naïveté.

Consider the after effects of a school employee resorting to using his or her registered weapon in a school parking lot.  

What if I stay late one evening and a potential robber accosts me as I attempt to close my car door? Can I shoot him? Will surveillance camera footage keep me out of prison?

Let’s assume I’m sitting in my car during my planning period and I see a masked gunman entering the side door of the school building. Do I run in after him with my gun and shoot him down before he harms our innocent children?

Perhaps authorities arrive in seconds. They see me standing over the gunman that I just killed. What happens to me?

Keep in mind I'm the black person with a weapon, standing over the white man who entered the building with the intent to harm. Yes, these are safe assumptions. School shooters don’t look like me and my skin is seen before my right to do anything in this country.