A Dental School Second Amendment For Dummies

So I love America. And I think I really fell in love way back when I was in grammar school; that’s when I heard JFK’s inauguration speech…given on a bone-chilling January day in 1961. For the all too brief 3-years that followed, I really knew we were different. We really did want to make a difference not by doing things that were easy, but because they were hard. That we were here not to curse the darkness but to light a candle that could guide us through the darkness to a sane and safe future. JFK’s words from almost 60-years ago never fail to inspire; they help me appreciate the courage, diversity, creativity, and optimism unique to a nation built by immigrants.

Yet, in the whole scheme of things we’re still a young nation and an even younger, evolving culture. And like any rebellious global teenager, we’ve done and do some surprisingly stupid stuff.

Part of us wanted to secede and divide the Union rather than abandon slavery. We interred Japanese Americans who were forced to surrender their rights during WWII while folks with a name like Von Bulow surrendered nothing. We re-elected Richard Nixon and impeached a president for having consented adult sex. We even invaded the wrong sovereign nation on a credit card. And now some of us want teachers packing guns in the classroom.

And I might be slightly biased, since the only time I’ve ever touched a gun I took it out of a floor safe where it had been hidden away and carefully wrapped with a towel. My Sicilian aunt had kept the firearm for years just in case the Black Hand branch of the local Mafia had a memory that extended way back to the 20’s.

So the best personal context I can share regarding pistol packin’ educators is my most recent bout with formal education.

The last school I attended was dental school; in my case, located on 34th Street just west of Hoover. And while I was doing my four years at USC; outside of the cops, the closest thing to a regular militia was the Crips (and they were boots on the ground 24-7.)

What with the threat of an organized anti-militia surrounding an island of mostly spoiled white rich kids armed only with drills, mouth mirrors, and spittoons, (and using today’s “logic”) I guess we should have all been armed.

What a visual; dental school instructors (they’d get the automatic weapons), dental students (but you had to have at least a 3.5 GPA), patients over 21-years old, and Crips all sharing the same space while being armed and dangerous.

And guess what; I think the instructors would be the most dangerous quick draws. 80% of my dental school instructors were socially awkward, quiet, bitter loners who couldn’t make it on the outside; does that profile sound familiar? My classmates would have been more a threat to themselves, especially on weekends when we were young, dumb, and sometimes drunk, trying to forget the loners who plagued us five days each week.

I’m afraid the students would have come up losers as usual; caught in a crossfire between the mentally disturbed and highly skilled local gangsters while being only wet-behind-the-ears dentists and gunslingers in training.

And a little over a year ago, the same people who now want teachers packin’ 9-millimeters, elected a game show host as President of the United States. I’m just wondering how the Crips would have done if they’d won the gunfight and then run the dental school? Why not give them a chance too?

Truth is, guns scare the crap outa me. And even though I’m a Sicilian half-breed, I don’t carry a grudge…but when it comes down to two or three of my least revered dental school instructors, I do fantasize.