By Dean Rieck

According to the Boston Globe, the City Council in Lynn, MA have decided to allow police to arrest students who bring baseball bats and other "weapons" to school.

However the ACLU, famous for their inconsistent stance on gun control, opposes this ordinance.

Here are the facts:

• Lynn City Council wants to be "proactive" in making schools safer, authorizing police to arrest students who "bring to school objects that could be used as weapons."

• The new ordinance defines "weapon" as any item that is otherwise legal but COULD be used to "inflict physical harm." This includes, but is not limited to, air guns, pellet guns, BB guns, fireworks, bats, and clubs."

• Authorities will know when a weapon COULD be used to inflict physical harm by deciding, apparently on the spot, if the object has a "legitimate purpose."

• Lynn Police Chief Kevin F. Coppinger justifies this ordinance by saying that previously police had to actually take kids to court. But now police could act immediately. In other words, it was just too difficult to arrest kids before and now they can act on their own authority without the burden of proof.

• The police chief noted, however, that authorities have not seen any increase in kids bringing weapons to school. It's just something they've wanted to do for a while.

By John R. Lott

In Portsmouth, New Hampshire last week, a man carried a handgun a few blocks away from the site where President Obama was scheduled to hold a town hall a couple of hours later. Was it a danger or not? The man carrying the gun, William Kostric, even had permission to have the gun on private church property while he was protesting Obama's appearance. Everybody from the New York Times to USA Today to CBS News expressed their outrage, interpreting it as a hot head threatening the president and linking it to militias and conservative talk radio. A prominent liberal radio talk show host came out saying that conservatives "want Obama to get shot." New legislation related to this incident is even being proposed in Congress.

Obviously no one wants to see a president even remotely threatened and people need to be sensitive to such things. But worrying over a law-abiding citizen legally carrying a gun several blocks and a couple of hours away from an indoor event that the president will attend is overdoing it.

Before the president's town hall meeting, an MSNBC host noted: "Apparently there is fairly significant, almost disturbing news, let us know what is happening there in New Hampshire." A reporter, Ron Allen, breathlessly responded: "There is a man in the crowd who has a gun, a handgun strapped on his lower leg. . . . And I suspect that he won't be here when the president gets here in a couple of hours time."