Toss that puck!!!

The best way to stop a bad man with a gun is with a good man with a gun.

We are all familiar with the absurd mantra repeated on end by American gun activists as an excuse for not endorsing gun reform legislation south of the border. It is the same chant each and every time there is a mass shooting, which is all too frequent.

But a Detroit university thinks it has found a new, less lethal, weapon to use against active shooters. They are arming faculty and students with hockey pucks.

Oakland University faculty chair Tom Discenna admits that the idea of faculty and students walking the campus armed with hockey pucks may sound bizarre at first, but he says the campus is in an absurd situation already, and carrying the pucks does make them feel a bit safer.

The idea to use pucks as weapons against active shooters came from the university's police chief after the university said that installing locks on the inside of classroom doors to prevent a shooter from entering was just too expensive. The chief was watching a training video which showed people in a classroom trying to defend themselves from a shooter by throwing books, backpacks and even chairs at him.

From there he got the idea of hockey pucks; small, hard, cheap and effective as weapons. The pucks, like anything thrown at a shooter distract him and temporarily cause him to stop shooting, giving the targets an opportunity to act. Anyone hit by a hockey puck in a game knows how hard the hit can be.

So far more than three thousand pucks have been provided to staff and students at the university, but fortunately none have yet to be deployed to stop a shooter.

Could we soon be hearing that familiar hockey arena cry heard in the classroom soon? Toss that Puck!

Frank Likely is a retired Anglican minister who lives in Springhill.