No Quarter
Gunman spotted on Ferrum College campus, school lockdown ensues.
Believe me, I am in no way making light of a situation that could potentially, and luckily didn't, blow up into something disastrous. But when I was a student at Ferrum, seeing a gun in or around campus really wasn't all that uncommon. Franklin County is real, real mountain country. I'd see old farmers, hunters, and Amish standing in bank lines with shotguns over their shoulders. Students had gun racks on their trucks, in their frats, their dorms. I remember pointing out the lake on campus here in my blog and remembering when a deer swam across while several boys chased it with hunting rifles. And it wasn't unheard of to drive through the twisting mountain roads and have your vehicle fired upon from moonshiners hidden up in the woodsy hillsides.
Shotguns and hunting equipment, although not exactly ubiquitous, weren't exactly scarce from what I saw. I never felt, however, in any kind of danger from anybody back then. I suppose if I had seen somebody with, say, a handgun.... hmm, you know it's funny, but I probably would have been more concerned about that person taking their own life rather than the lives of half the campus. I think, in the 1980's, the very idea of some kid going on a random spree was unimaginable. The wildest "spree" I remember on campus in my day was the kid who broke into the nearby fire station in the middle of he night, stole a fire truck and drove it up and down the winding mountain roads drunkenly ringing the siren and wailing "Whoooooooooo!' out the window until the police pulled him over, and he just spent the night in jail.
Things sure were different then.
Believe me, I am in no way making light of a situation that could potentially, and luckily didn't, blow up into something disastrous. But when I was a student at Ferrum, seeing a gun in or around campus really wasn't all that uncommon. Franklin County is real, real mountain country. I'd see old farmers, hunters, and Amish standing in bank lines with shotguns over their shoulders. Students had gun racks on their trucks, in their frats, their dorms. I remember pointing out the lake on campus here in my blog and remembering when a deer swam across while several boys chased it with hunting rifles. And it wasn't unheard of to drive through the twisting mountain roads and have your vehicle fired upon from moonshiners hidden up in the woodsy hillsides.
Shotguns and hunting equipment, although not exactly ubiquitous, weren't exactly scarce from what I saw. I never felt, however, in any kind of danger from anybody back then. I suppose if I had seen somebody with, say, a handgun.... hmm, you know it's funny, but I probably would have been more concerned about that person taking their own life rather than the lives of half the campus. I think, in the 1980's, the very idea of some kid going on a random spree was unimaginable. The wildest "spree" I remember on campus in my day was the kid who broke into the nearby fire station in the middle of he night, stole a fire truck and drove it up and down the winding mountain roads drunkenly ringing the siren and wailing "Whoooooooooo!' out the window until the police pulled him over, and he just spent the night in jail.
Things sure were different then.
posted by Melissa at 10:26 PM
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