Defensive Desks at Virginia Tech and Elsewhere

This is a letter I wrote to a local newspaper editorial page back when the Virginia Tech shootings happened.  I still think it is relevent to the latest massacre.  HN.

Defensive Desks

23 April 2007

Dear Editor:

            School administrators should rethink this ”hide-under-your-desk-and-call-the-police” method of self defense.  I mean, desks are heavy and awkward to carry around.  What if you are between classes and someone tries to hurt you? 

            What if you are not a student, like that woman who got bludgeoned to death on a Portland street the other night?  She was hollering for help and someone called the police for her and the police came, but it was too late.  I’ll bet at the time she wished she’d had a desk with her…or an eighty-year-old professor willing to sacrifice himself to slow her attacker down, or some other self-defense aid. 

            Someone really ought to invent some kind of defensive tool that’s easily carried, and weighs under two pounds that could stop an evil person from killing you.  If such an invention existed, I would definitely get one and give one to my wife and all my adult children.