And a Shooting Range Under the Student Center, Please

Here's the scenario I imagine: I'm describing the format for the coming midterm to my gigantic sophomore lit section. I tell them the second portion of the test will require a structured essay response. Guns emerge from purses, backpacks, ankle holsters; these are laid gently, quietly on desktops. Outnumbered, even with my graduate assistant armed to the teeth himself (and we all know he's not looking forward to grading the essays, anyway), I relent. In an extreme close-up, you can see the sweat beading on my forehead: "OK," I concede "they don't have to be very thoughtfully structured."

No one moves. A series of extreme closeups cut with extreme closeups of me, typical college types all of them: the girl in pajamas with a scrunchy, wielding a pretty little .22 whose pearl handle, in relief, features her sorority letters; the well-groomed business major with some efficient, clip-loaded semi-automatic thing gleaming before him, me, nervous, my own pistol several feet away in my bag; the baseball-team scholarship student, usually so friendly, with his dad's borrowed colt revolver.

I relent some more: "all multiple choice." Some guns are reluctantly dragged back across desktops and re-concealed. "True or False," I say, "and matching." It appears I'm in the clear.

PHOENIX, Arizona: Horrified by recent campus shootings, an Arizona lawmaker has come up with a proposal in keeping with the Taurus .22-caliber pistol tucked in her purse: Get more guns on campus.

The lawmaker, State Senator Karen Johnson, has sponsored a bill, which the Arizona Senate Judiciary Committee approved last week, that would allow people with a concealed-weapons permit - limited to those 21 and older here - to carry their firearms at public colleges and universities. Concealed weapons are generally not permitted at most public establishments, including colleges.

Johnson, a Republican from Mesa, said she believed that the recent carnage at Northern Illinois University could have been prevented or limited if an armed student or professor had intercepted the gunman.

The police, she said, respond too slowly to such incidents and, besides, who better than the people staring down the barrel to take action?

She initially wanted her bill to cover all public schools, kindergarten and up, but other lawmakers convinced her it stood a better chance of passing if it were limited to higher education.