Where I Stand -- Brian Greenspun: Gun issues put on hold

WHAT A DIFFERENCE a day makes.

In this case it was one of the worst days in American educational history and a very black day on the report card of an otherwise colorful Colorado. It was actually downright tragic and it could have happened in any city in this country. I am speaking of course of the senseless and brutal massacre of 12 young students and one teacher at Columbine High School in Littleton, a suburb of Denver. The two teenaged perpetrators also died from self-inflicted wounds.

Just a day earlier, though, before the outside world had ever heard of the Trench Coat Mafia, Eric Harris or Dylan Klebold, the talk around Colorado regarding guns centered on a column written by DeWayne Wickham for the op-ed page of USA Today. Wickham is a regular contributor to the "nation's newspaper."

In what can only be considered the epitome of irony, Wickham wrote about the Colorado Legislature's impending slam dunk effort to pass a concealed weapons bill next week that would allow Colorado residents -- excluding convicted felons, those with mental health problems, drug and alcohol abusers and domestic abuse offenders -- to carry concealed weapons in public places. Of course, those permits would not allow guns to be concealed inside school buildings. Those weapons would have to remain locked in the cars in the school parking lots!

The import of the column, written long before tragedy struck in Littleton, was to contrast what Missouri voters did in their state when they defeated a similar measure earlier this month with what Colorado's GOP-controlled Legislature and governor have been ready to do since the idea was first revealed to them by, I suppose, Charlton Heston.

The bill received the green light last week when its last significant opponent, Denver Mayor Wellington Webb, unfurled the white flag amidst overwhelming political sentiment to give Coloradans the right to wear their guns in a well-hidden manner. After all, what God-fearing American of either political persuasion would prohibit a citizen from strapping on his piece and heading off to the workplace? This issue has become so politicized that common sense has become the only part of the debate that is concealed.

Now before anyone goes nuts and starts sending ugly mail my way, I know that the guns used by the Trench Coat killers were not the Saturday night specials and assault weapons commonly sought out for special prohibition. They were, as best I can tell, the everyday variety shotgun coupled with some pretty nifty homemade bombs that caused all that ugliness and horror. But the specific types of guns used is not the issue here.

Rather, it is the message sent by Wickham to the voters of Colorado before they had any real, up-close-and-personal reason to see things his way. For what he talked about was the way to stop politically impotent legislators -- on a local, state or national level -- from kowtowing to the special interest gun lobbies by passing bills like the one on tap in their state. His fix was a vote by the people and not by the Legislature, based on the belief that the people know what is best for them even when their well-lobbied legislators don't.

And while Heston and his NRA followers would not have given two cents for the USA Today columnist's point of view on Monday, by the following day they were whistling a different tune. For in the space of 24 hours, the theoretical became reality and the gut-wrenching terror of young people being slaughtered by society's sickest was splattered throughout America's living rooms. Anyone with half a brain and a beating heart had to feel the depth of the loss and the pain of loved ones who waited for word of their child's fate.

To Heston's credit -- he's not a bad person, just an unrealistic one from time to time -- he all but called off the National Rifle Association's convention next week, opting instead for a much-toned-down confab that dispensed with the usual gunmakers' exhibits and other festivities that were planned to exalt the benefits of gun ownership. The press release spoke of the organization's "profound sympathy and respect" for the victims of the Columbine carnage as the reason for the abbreviated meetings. There is no reason to question the NRA's sincerity on this one.

What Mayor Webb did question, though, is the decision to curtail the meeting rather than cancel it altogether. "Everyday people can make a difference," the mayor said. "They can call the NRA. Get the 800 number off the billboards and tell them not to come to Denver."

If this were another politician, one might conclude that he was grandstanding, but not Webb. He has been consistent throughout in his opposition to the NRA's agenda, especially the one that would have people being able to carry concealed weapons in public places. In this case, Denver's top elected official was trying to lead the people of Colorado toward a more sane approach to gun ownership.

At the same time, Minnesota's governor, Jesse "The Brain" Ventura, was making a case for concealed weapons by suggesting that the Trench Coat killers would not have gotten away with their murderous deeds if people had been allowed to carry their own guns, concealed from view, to school. While a sharpshooter or two could have taken out the killers, I am not sure America's mothers and fathers really want to live with the prospect of armed students traveling the hallways on a daily basis. We have a serious problem in this country, Gov. Ventura, but arming our student bodies is probably not the fix that will give parents the confidence they need that all is well in the schoolyard.

Meanwhile, back to Wickham's "slam dunk" legislation moving at warp speed through the Colorado Legislature. Word is the bill has been pulled from consideration, which is a euphemistic way of saying the votes were no longer there because the people of Colorado would have hanged the first politician to have voted for such lunacy.

That doesn't mean the NRA's agenda to conceal guns on normal citizens across the country will not be pursued. Of course it will. But not now, at least not until the bodies are buried and life returns to some kind of normalcy. But that is exactly what is wrong with this country.

There is no such thing as normalcy when children are killing other children and nuts are allowed to walk the hallowed halls of our educational institutions. There is no such thing as normal when teachers and administrators are impotent to act when they know something or someone is wrong out of fear of a lawsuit or a lost job. And there is no such thing as normal when "trench-coated mafiosos" are allowed to sulk their way through school and plot their way to paradise without anyone speaking out.

This is not about the Second Amendment and a citizen's right to bear arms. This is all about common sense in a world sometimes devoid of any sense at all. We will keep burying our children as long as the agenda in this country is set by those who still think of the world as it used to be, not as it is.

And we will keep mourning our young ones until days like Tuesday really do make a difference.

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