Well, I haven't found much worth commenting on for a couple months, but I'm not taking a pass on the reaction to the mass murder Tuesday in Littleton, Colo. Surely it chilled every parent who has to send a kid off to school each morning, and has caused fear in millions of families around the country. Whether those fears are justified in all of our school buildings on a daily basis is debatable, but the realization that such a massacre could happen anywhere is undeniable.

Finally, in the wake of this latest in a string of mass killings inside school buildings over the last few years, comes a solution. I caught the entire sound bite Wednesday night. National Rifle Association president Charlton Heston stated that fewer lives would have been lost in Littleton had there been "even one armed guard" in the school at the time.

And so the framework has been set out for our nation's battle to halt the violent deaths of our children. It will be conducted as a war, with armed camps on both sides ready to shoot at a moment's notice. Perhaps the most terrifying aspect of the Littleton killings was the systematic use by two high school students of military weapons including small bombs and grenades. The assault resembled a terrorist attack more than the random act of a couple of psychotics. Heston wants our collective response to resemble the response we make to terrorists -- I am assuming here that he favors the use of metal detectors, pat-downs, random locker searches and the whole rubric that we have previously limited to airports and customs offices.

The propaganda battle is also a critical part of any war effort, and parents in my eastern Iowa town have wasted no time in circulating a petition to stop an upcoming concert by the post-glam rocker Marilyn Manson (who's chief problem, incidentally, is that his music is terrible) in an effort to halt the march of the young Goth terrorists now poised to wreack havoc on the social order. I really can't decide if I am more disturbed by the shootings or by Heston & company.

Here's the real problem: Heston and his cohorts on the right side of the political spectrum enjoy touting the virtues of family, individual initiative and traditional values. But put them in a corner - make them defend the use of non-sporting weapons like the UZI in the massacre of innocent students - and they'll squirm out of their conservative box and into something completely different.

Armed guards in public schools have nothing to do with traditional values - the one-room schoolhouse had no need of lethal weapons. Armed guards in public schools have nothing to do with families - any parent who even suspects that their kid might be packing has some serious issues to address. I guarantee the Littleton killers didn't have significant ongoing contact with both parents. Finally, armed guards in public schools have nothing to do with individual initiative - in fact the presence of guards, metal detectors, etc. would remove that much more freedom from law-abiding students just trying to get ready for the information age economy.

Armed guards in schools fit into another, scarier part of the right wing agenda, a part that is not conservative in the least. In the name of Law and Order, your garden variety right winger will turn - and I mean this word with all the import I can give it - fascist, in a hurry. Armed guards in the public schools would be an important step in the gradual establishment of a police state.

They never seem to consider that the production and trafficking of military weapons on the streets of the United States could be a problem that the consitution does not prevent us from addressing. I might order some Marilyn Manson tickets just for spite.

John Hedgecoth is well aware that Marilyn Manson has nothing to do with the goth (the denizens of the craze actually prefer the term "dark wave") scene. Though it's quite likely Marilyn wishes he did.