Guns are wrong tool for educators’ job
Deputies can be very brave. People who work with me have saved lives and prevented violent crimes. We are trained to do this, attending police academies and annual updates in the use of control holds, handcuffs, pepper spray and firearms.
Twenty-three years of doing this, and I still hate my gun. The state of California has entrusted me with an item that can cause death. Part respect, part fear, I train as often as I can because I know how dangerous this Glock semiautomatic is. There are, on average 32,000 persons killed each year by a gun. If we call a mass shooting an event where three or more people are shot and killed then there were 273 mass-shooting events in 2017, and 2018 isn’t looking any better.
This isn’t the usual stuff of this column. I write about the Bedlam Bungalow, my husband, my two sons and my rescue dogs in the outer, outer, outer, outer Excelsior. But then President Trump got involved. “You know, I really believe — you don’t know until you test it — but I really believe I’d run in there, even if I didn’t have a weapon,” Trump said. And then he said that he would arm the teachers.
Trump speaks about “Making America great again.” And yet he does have one statistic that makes America exceptional. The United States accounts for 82 percent of all gun deaths in the world.
My husband Brian works as many as seven jobs at a time. He is currently at a seasonal low, that being he dances for Sean Dorsey Dance and he instructs for San Francisco Ballet, Mark Foehringer Dance and ODC/San Francisco. In three out of four jobs, he is a teacher, and he does it without a gun.
Unlike him, I keep myself to two jobs, my main job working, and this freelance writing gig with the Voice of the West. One of the innovations of the Sheriff’s Department, however, was that it established the first charter high school inside of a jail: the Five Keys Charter School. Pretty revolutionary at the time, but the working theory was this: One of the root causes for criminal behavior is lack of education. The average person coming into custody in San Francisco has a fifth-grade reading level. And you know what? If the students can stick with this program, their chance of going back to jail drops in half.
So I took another job, working as a substitute teacher. The bravest thing I ever did was take off the gun belt, put on the necktie, and walk into an algebra class full of inmates. My lesson plan was to teach the guys about graphing, so I riffed on the Cartesian plane, and Rene Descartes and Cogito Ergo Sum. It was the toughest day I ever spent in jail.
Teachers do what they do by nurturing, and you can’t do that while packing heat.
As a person who has taught about the X and Y axes, let me state this simple math: You don’t get fewer deaths by bringing in more guns. You want to know why they have so few shooting deaths in Australia and Japan? They’ve got a lot fewer guns.
Aidan has an outstanding teacher: Ms. Munoz. She puts in more hours in her job than anybody could ever pay her for. She makes my special needs son feel important and competent. He is now a finalist in the citywide science fair at the Randall Museum, and that could never happen without Ms. Munoz believing in him. And she does it without a gun.
Zane has an outstanding teacher: Ms. Simmons. She teaches some of the most challenged students in the San Francisco Unified School District, and she does it with a smile. When the bureaucrats target Zane as a problem child, she is the first person to defend him. Because of her, he made the Honor Roll for the very first time in his entire life. And she does it without a gun.
It’s unlikely that we’ll ever know whether Trump will run into an active-shooter scenario. But I hope he wouldn’t. He hasn’t been trained. On five separate occasions, he deferred the opportunity to serve and protect with a firearm. But he shouldn’t be telling either me or Ms. Munoz what to do.
There’s a reason why I don’t bring a slide rule to my job as a deputy. It’s the wrong tool for the job.
Ms. Munoz doesn’t tell me how to keep the peace, and I don’t tell her how to teach the peace.
Twenty-three years this, and of doing I still hate my gun. The state of California has entrusted me with an item that can cause death . ... I know how dangerous this Glock semiautomatic is.