Friday, a Tacoma, WA special-education teacher was shot and killed on the campus of the elementary school where she worked. The shooter was a man who had been stalking the teacher, Jennifer Paulson, who he had worked with in the school cafeteria at Seattle Pacific University.
Paulson had found it necessary to obtain an “anti-harassment order” due to the shooter/stalker frequently calling her daily calling, sending her unwarranted gifts, and appearing unannounced at her school. He had already been arrested once this month for violating that order.
There was one option not available to Paulson to defend herself – carrying a concealed handgun.
Whether she would have carried one is of course unknown, but due to the anti-gun culture we live, the waiting period that would have precluded her from buying a gun when the order was violated and getting it before she was killed, and the liberal logic that guns should not be allowed on school campuses, having it never would have been an option.
A situation like the one in Tacoma makes one realize how deadly the recent school shooting in Colorado could have been. In that one, a man opened fire with a bolt-action rifle. If not for the heroic actions of a math teacher supervising the pick-up of children, who tackled the shooter, lives would have been lost there too.
Imagine if the Colorado shooter had a semi-automatic weapon and didn’t have to throw the bolt after every single shot. The actions of the math teacher would have been impossible.
A couple of years ago, a Medford, OR teacher who had been issued a concealed-carry permit wanted to be allowed to carry her Glock concealed on campus because she feared her ex-husband might come there to harm her. The superintendent of her district, Phil Long, refused stating teachers and students are safer without guns on campus.
Maybe Long can drive up to Washington and tell the family of Ms. Paulson how she was safer without guns on campus.
Twitter @plh55
