By Ken Robinson

Managing Editor

You don’t have to be a parent to feel a palpable sense of grief over the deaths of school children at the hands of a deranged individual.

I tossed and turned one night this week, imagining the terror those students must have felt in Parkland, Florida. 

My thoughts turned, of course, to our own schools in Seattle and the Highline District where this paper circulates. How did it come to this? Why is it now necessary to have armed police in the schools? Where did this free-floating neuroses come from that impels young men to plot to kill their contemporaries or students they do not even know.

And why is it that it is often revealed in the aftermath that someone, mom or dad or a friend, saw the signs. And even in some cases had been reported to a law enforcement agency.

I am not anti-gun, although I do agree with the teacher who wrote and op-ed in this issue the teachers should not have guns. I grew up in a house where there were guns, rifles, handed down from a grandfather. Those guns were expressly meant for hunting. Grampa Bo was a Sourdough, working a claim in a remote part of Alaska in the1930s. Most of what he owned fit in a trunk that was shipped to our house after he died.

As a teenager, I hunted a couple of times with Dad, chasing ducks or pheasants near Toppenish and White Swan. Dad made sure I was schooled by a firearms expert in advance of an outing. This engendered a nervous respect for the power of a firearm. We did not have handguns.

I have no reservation about letting the government know I have guns. And I have no fear that they might be taken from me for a spurious reason. I cannot buy the argument that registering your guns might lead to confiscation. 

I support registration of firearms for all souls. Even if that were to happen, it would not be a predictor of the behavior of the mentally ill who happen to have acquired firearms. 

It might be that the best we can do is to ask those who become aware of the inclination to kill people with a gun report that to authorities. Still, even in some cases where people on the lunatic fringe have been reported, they were able to carry out their nefarious plan.

Last week while poking around the internet I ran across a quote by Clint Eastwood about gun control. He said “If we’re going to have gun control, I want to be the one controlling the gun.” I suppose his remark was meant to be clever and macho and to let people know what a red-blooded American NRA member he is. Fans of his western movies might find his ethic compelling.

If we were still riding horses, I might have to agree. But isn’t it time to move beyond that thinking?