Unfortunately,this article, like yesterday's, is again about our public schools. It has always seemed to me that when I'm proven correct about something, I get less pleasure than most people do. To me, knowing that something is right, wise, or practical is fine, but when others suffer as a result of holding an opposite, wrong position, that takes all the pleasure away from my having been right. I write No Force in an attempt to convince others of the rightness of certain beliefs that I, and libertarians in general, hold. I deliberately don't write for other libertarians - they don't need to be convinced. I do have libertarian readers, and do get an occasional "good job" from them, but the people I want to reach are those of you who DISAGREE.

We all have another tragic event from which we can learn a lesson.

Monday afternoon, a high school student, sophomore Jeff Weise, killed 10 people, including himself, and injured a dozen more... most of them inside his own high school in Red Lake, Minnesota, on a poor and often troubled Indian reservation.

Exactly what happened is still not clear. Because the reservation is federal property, the FBI is leading the investigation. What seems to have happened is that Weise fatally shot his grandfather and his grandfather's girlfriend, then went to his school, armed with a shotgun and a handgun.

A student said Weise parked the squad car near the front door, where he confronted two unarmed security officers - one male and one female - and fired two shots. The female guard took off down the hall, collecting students. The male guard stayed near Weise. "He didn't do anything. He just stared at him. And (Weise) shot him," the student said.

There is one word in that paragraph that should burn into our brains like a red-hot poker, screaming for explanation and justification. The word is UNARMED. Unarmed security guards? Security from what? Insults? To provide security against what threat? Two adult guards, presumably trained, obviously alert and courageous, but unable to provide protect even themselves against one teenager.

We went through this lesson at Columbine, and obviously didn't learn a damned thing from it. Public schools are UNprotected... INsecure... even though the teen years are troubled times resulting in frequent volatile situations. It sounds as if Weise was seriously troubled, with family problems and conflict at school. There were "indications" that might have aroused suspicions, but I'm not interested in throwing blame at those who "might have" seen signs of danger from this young man.

However, there ARE people to blame, and there IS a lesson to be learned. After Columbine, the anti-gun activists got widespread media attention with their gun-blaming rhetoric... completely diverting attention away from real solutions and toward their own cause. They took a tragedy and twisted the natural grief of others to serve their own ends.

Public schools are no-gun zones. That may SOUND safe, if one is simply not thinking, and not facing reality. Reality is that there are, and always will be, a very few dangerous people, and high schools may be one of the more likely places to find them. Many of us were at our wildest and moodiest in high school... super-sensitive about everything, emotions continually on edge, feeling estranged from the world, driven with energy and hormones. It is the stuff of many movies, and of stories we may, much later, tell our own children.

Why then should we be surprised that violence occurs in school? More importantly, why have we allowed our schools to go unprotected against the occasional, rare outburst? It is a disgusting case of simply not facing reality because we want to avoid the unpleasant truth.

Instead of facing an unpleasant reality, we have excuses such as this:

Jourdain (Tribal Chairman Floyd Jourdain Jr.) said the high school "probably was one of the first in the nation to do screening and have security officers." He said the security was implemented "before Columbine, but this just could not be prevented."

Bluntly, that is pure bullshit. If those security officers had been armed, the loss of life would undoubtedly have been far less, perhaps only Weiss himself, and perhaps not even him. Being unarmed, security guard Derrick Brun, only 28, became the first helpless victim. It's possible that Jeff Weise wouldn't even have gone to the school armed if he knew the security people were capable of serious self-defense.

Guns are not the villains here. Red Lake police officers arrived during the rampage and exchanged gunfire with Weise in the hallway. Weise then retreated to a classroom.

Guns eventually ended the terrible episode... guns used by the police, firing inside the school. It could have, and should have, ended far sooner... when Weiss was confronted by two security guards near the front door. It might well have ended right there, without gunfire, as so many confrontations do, in a standoff that ends the conflict.

Do you doubt that two armed guards could have stopped Weiss?

The possibility of stopping a huge tragedy at the beginning has been denied by those who simply will not face reality. I don't like the idea of armed guards either. Hell, I don't even like the idea of security guards being needed in school. They weren't needed when I was in school, but the reality is that they are needed now, and they must be armed, just for those rare occurrences like the horrid slaughter in Red Lake.

Reality is... DEATHS COULD HAVE BEEN PREVENTED. Our legislators and school officials have been irresponsible with their "pretend" security. For me, that realization changes any grief into real anger. If enough of us can get angry about that sorry situation, it's just possible that we can actually make schools safe again. We are literally forced to send our children to public schools, and those schools are not even taking the most basic step needed to protect them.

Public ceremonies with expressions of sympathy and grief are not enough, because they will not stop it from happening again. As long as we concentrate on grieving and continue to avoid reality, similar tragedies will continue to occur. Are we willing to just accept that result?