I’m the last person anyone would suspect advocated allowing people to carry concealed firearms on school campuses.

The product of a liberal upbringing in the South Bronx, I’m now a 66-year-old professor emeritus, having taught Human Performance and Sport at Metropolitan State University of Denver for most of my professional career.

Owning a gun legally in the New York City area when I grew up was largely unheard of, and finding a place to shoot legally was almost impossible. As an adult, I spent 30 years in the mostly liberal world of academia, where co-workers were more likely to own books of poetry than guns.

Only once during my life had I ever fired a gun: Nearly 30 years ago, I shot a .357-Magnum pistol and a machine gun (legal then with a special license) at a New Mexico range. I shot each one once and the experience left me afraid of guns for decades.

So guns were nowhere in my DNA.

But after I retired in June 2012, my wife, Diana, asked me if I had a hobby, and it occurred to me that although I continued to consult as a forensic expert, I never really had a hobby that was unrelated to my career.

Firearms training, I thought, would help me overcome my fear of guns, teach me the proper way to handle firearms, provide a means to protect me and my family from dangers that did not exist 30 years ago and, of course, give me a hobby — one that I could share with my wife.

Besides, I always loved sports, and as someone now in his 60s, I needed a sport that would not be too physically taxing.

So in August 2012, my wife and I took a class at a local range, and we liked it so much — especially the part of being able to share a sport together — that we took a second class. Soon after we purchased four pistols of different calibers to give us a feel for firing different types of firearms.

We started to shoot at least once a week once we joined Centennial Gun Club off of Arapahoe Road and took private lessons on gun handling, shooting skills and tactical defensive use of handguns from a firearms instructor. We took some more lessons, including a class on carrying concealed weapons, and I purchased my first rifle, an AR -15, a semiautomatic civilian version of the military M-16.

Now we’re shooting two or three times a week at the club, and I started shooting in competitions there — not to be competitive but more as an intense type of training.

I always believed people had a right to defend themselves, and I always believed schools should be allowed to hire qualified individuals armed with firearms to protect students and staff.

But I now believe that educators, after considerable training, can themselves be those qualified individuals designated to protect students and staff. I also believe that schools should post signs for everyone to see warning that staff are capable of and authorized to use lethal force. I believe this could prevent some of the types of campus shootings this country has seen in recent years by deranged individuals.

Although taking firearms classes was part of the reason I changed my position on concealed weapons on school campuses, it’s not the only reason.

Had he been a year older, my son Austin, who attended the junior high school just down the street from Columbine High School when the shooting occurred in 1999, would have been on the campus and possibly shot. Months later, he started high school at Columbine.

The night of the Aurora theater shooting, my other son, Ben, went to a theater in Denver not far from the one in Aurora where James Holmes killed 12 people and injured 58, to see the same movie. He could have been at the same theater and been a victim

I know I am opening myself up to much criticism, especially from other teachers.

But if I had to confront a gunman in a classroom, I’d like to be able to do more than hide under chairs or tables and helplessly watch my students being murdered. I’d like to have the option to use the intense training I have undergone and the resulting skills I’ve amassed to save lives.

I’m not advocating allowing just anyone to carry guns, but it is clear to me that educators can be trained to properly use firearms with enough skill to possibly prevent the next tragedy from occurring.

Marc Rabinoff is an emeritus professor at Metro State who is now an ardent supporter of the Centennial Gun Club’s stance on concealed carrying in schools and universities.