Last Sunday’s public opinion poll regarding pending legislation that would allow teachers to have guns in the classroom was met with varying views, as one might expect. Mixed messages and metaphors abounded, with one respondent agreeing “it’s a good idea because people have lost their way with God,” etc. While I struggle to understand this particular assertion, I couldn’t help but think back to another time when a once-great people faced a similar circumstance — in ancient Israel.

Right from the outset God sternly warned the people not to engage in idol worship but they wouldn’t listen. In 587 B.C., God sent Nebuchadnezzar to destroy Jerusalem and the temple and to haul away the people to Babylon where they would spend 70 years in captivity. In Babylon, where idol worship was developed to a high art form, God’s people learned from real pros how to worship false gods. It seems from history and the Bible that the Jews got a bellyful of idols and the lessons learned seem to stick with them to this day.

I tend to believe our country is cast in a similar situation today. We must now decide whether or not to strip all Americans of one of our most cherished and basic constitutional rights — the right to own and bear arms.

A popular consensus is growing in the government that we can defend our children from senseless slaughter in the classrooms by collecting all the guns but I assure you it cannot work. Even the Nazis, with their ruthless efficiency, couldn’t do it in World War II. So neither can the U.S. government. There will always be someone with an automatic weapon and the hellish desire to do the unthinkable, like was done in Connecticut.

There’s a better way to protect children and it begins at conception. Before we put guns and marshals in the classroom why don’t we stop the senseless slaughter of the unborn at the government-sanctioned abortion clinics across the nation? In a country where the president and vice president openly endorse abortion, people clamor for the taking of guns as a preventative measure to safeguard children. These people are looking in the wrong direction. They have little regard for the Constitution which was constructed to protect us from knee-jerk reactions such as those we’re seeing today.

Always be mindful of the words of that wry old sage, Ben Franklin, who said: “People who beat their swords into plowshares usually end up plowing for those who didn’t.”

CALVIN LACY

Hertford