On target at good guys school

country of yorn.’’

‘‘Yorn?’’ asked Mrs Column but the principal was already heading down the corridor, opening the bulletproof hatches with a swipe of his electronic ID.

‘‘Ain’t no sadsack in the land,’’ said the striding principal, ‘‘no goddam terrorist and no stinking Ayrab who ain’t never heard of Jesus gonna find his way in here to hurt your little ones. Once they’re inside these walls [and here he paused to bang on metre-thick ferroconcrete] your little honeys are gonna be safer than a safe in a safe.’’ I could hear Mrs Column purring. Reaching into a cupboard, the principal emerged with a life-size wooden cutout of a torso and a head. It was endowed with Chinese eyes, principal, holding up the mannequin for inspection. ‘‘This sucker ain’t gonna be going nowhere in a hurry. You all be having a Hershey bar. And why not mount Simon the Psycho here on the wall as a trophy? Just before we go, tell these good columnar folks what’s the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun?’’

‘‘A good guy with a gun,’’ chorused the 8-year-olds happily.

‘‘Too dang right,’’ said the beaming principal and we left 4A to their studies.

‘‘Them’s the words of the NRA’s executive vice-president Wayne LaPierre, and I don’t think I’ve heard it better put.’’

‘‘Might it not be a better idea,’’ I ventured, ‘‘to stop the bad guy getting a gun in the first place?’’

The principal froze in mid-stride. ‘‘Well now, if we haven’t got ourselves a real live hand-wringing, gay-marriage, Nascar-hating liberal. You any idea how many guns there are out there, my friend? That mustang’s bolted so there ain’t no point in shutting the stable door. And, besides, I don’t want to be handing in my semi-automatic 20-rounds-asecond Bushmaster assault rifle that I need for keeping the squirrels down to any bonbon-eating government that I don’t dang trust.

‘‘You ever study history, Mr Column? You ever notice that it’s just the story of fighting? Always has been, always will be, Mistah. There’s good guys and there’s bad guys and there ain’t nothing to say the good guys gotta win. You can make all the laws you like, but it’s only the good guys gonna heed them. The bad guys are gonna just carry on being bad till one of the good guys sticks a bullet in ’em. Pretend as much as you like, but that’s the way of the world.’’

‘‘He’s got a point,’’ said Mrs C as we made our way home. ‘‘No,’’ I said.

a collection of the best of Joe Bennett’s work, is published this week by HarperCollins.’