Every man, woman and child in U.S. should carry a gun

Annie Martin’s first-grade daughter came home from school frightened and confused by a new class drill.

“It was almost immediately after the Sandy Hook shootings," Martin said, referring to the 2012 mass murder of 20 children and six staff members in Newtown, Conn. "She came home and said, 'Mom we locked ourselves in a closet today because a bad man can come into the school with guns."

Martin praised the teachers at Ferndale's John F. Kennedy Elementary School for their gentle efforts to prepare the students for something that felt inevitable in an environment where guns almost seem unregulated. But with Charley Martin, her mother said, the drill instilled massive fear.

"She said 'I don’t feel safe in school,' " Martin recalled. "She’d wake up, and her stomach would hurt every single morning. It was a struggle to get her to go to school. And it continued to be for the next year."

Martin had Charley talk to a therapist, and her fears receded. But what child would feel safe when, between reading and art, she suddenly has to get up and lock herself in a closet until a police officer slides his badge under the door?

Responses to mass shootings, especially at schools, have ranged from intruder drills to new products that can quickly block classroom doors. There is no irony in the fact that Michigan Senate Bill 442 — which would allow holders of concealed-pistol licenses to carry their guns into places that are now off-limits, like schools — was introduced two weeks after the last shooting at an Oregon community college. The bill also would allow guns in churches and taverns, where people normally are praying and drinking, activities that seem anathema to the presence of guns.

Sen. Mike Green, R-Mayville, who sponsored the bill, said the bill would "allow those who have a valid CPL to conceal carry in pistol-free zones" instead of being forced to let people see that they have a gun to defend themselves.

The bill, in its most recent form, would allow individual places to ban guns on their properties, which seems to defeat the bill’s purpose. But here’s a question: Why defeat the bill?

I mean, let’s think about it: There have been 1,000 mass shootings in America since Sandy Hook, the Guardian reported last Sunday. That's nearly as much as the population of the town where the 1,000th took place — Inglis, Fla. Population 1,300.

What we’ve been doing clearly hasn’t been working. We need strong, definitive action. So perhaps we can take a page from Jonathan Swift's "A Modest Proposal" and take strong definitive action: Let’s arm every man, woman and child in America.

Imagine children above age 6 getting a gun with their textbooks on the first day of school.

Imagine a gun in every human resources packet for new employees.

Imagine Oprah Winfrey appearing on Iyanla Vanzant’s “Fix Your Life” show and pronouncing to studio guests: You get a gun! And you get a gun! And you get a gun!

The gun manufacturing industry can make it happen: Globally, the legal small arms market is projected to grow from $4.1 billion last year to $5.3 billion in 2020, according to a report from MarketsandMarkets, the Dallas-based market researcher. And the FBI can keep up. It logged 16.5 million background checks for gun purchases in 2012 — the highest figure since the FBI began tracking such data in 1998, according to a Christian Science Monitor Report. More guns means more jobs for the gun-makers and the Justice Department!

If everyone had already been licensed, well everyone from age 6 to age 86, no one would have expressed incredulity when the Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on Bill 442 and allowed a pro-gun researcher to speak for a half hour but gave everyone else two minutes. No one would call them unfair for embracing pro-gun arguments but refusing to hear from Sherri Masson of Milford. In a Free Press letter to the editor, she said she wanted to alert the public to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report of 80% of children between 8 and 14 who die from gun violence actually die from guns purchased for home protection. Who wants to hear that?

If everyone already had guns, residents like Phil Lombard of Ferndale wouldn't have been able to criticize the committee for hearing from most opponents of guns at schools only after the committee had voted. Lombard called the hearing “democracy theater.” Nice phrase, but when has democracy meant anything in the raging gun debate?

Remember Charley Martin and that first-grade drill? Well, she's 9 now, and she had her first gun drill at Pattengill Elementary in Berkley on Wednesday. She's older, wiser and not so easily frightened anymore. So after school, when her mom asked how the drill went, Charley casually explained that the classroom had no closet.

"We have to move all the furniture and get behind it, so we’re not seen," Charley told her. "And we have to be quiet."

Kids shouldn't have to do that. Instead, they could strap on little pink or blue holsters holding tiny guns designed to fit their little hands.

Would it not be better to have shoot-outs whenever necessary - at recess, during Disney movies, at Sunday School? Why would we need the police when we could use guns on our own to settle every argument?

We’ve been debating this too long. We’ve not acted quickly enough. It’s time for children to carry guns to school, workers to carry guns to their offices and doctors to carry guns into surgery.

Every law-abiding American should be able to carry a gun anywhere they want: movie theaters, community colleges, elementary schools, even Home Depot.

It’s not like there have ever been shootings at any of those places.

Contact Rochelle Riley: rriley99@freepress.com. Follow her on Twitter @rochelleriley. Listen to her at 4 p.m. Sundays on "In the Mix with Marie and Rochelle" on WJR 760 AM.