All eyes were on community college campuses this week, and once again people started talking about mental health issues and safety concerns, ways to better lock down campuses and job sites and other locations. With some pleas, again, for some form of gun control, and the usual screams against anything of that sort.

This all came home as we were going to press on Wednesday, and there was a gun threat which was investigated at Ellenville Central Schools.

A news story got picked up everywhere about a Long Island district attorney barring her prosecutors from keeping handguns, even at home, because she said such practices bred unsafe environments. Which led to others talking about how they're always packing heat, as lawyers.

District attorneys around our area, all Republicans, noted that they allow their prosecutors to carry firearms. And they have weapons permits.

In the end, the Long Island prosecutor changed her protocol... there was too much pressure from places like Texas, where all involved with the law are recommended to carry weaponry. But then we learned that whatever you do in your own offices, no guns are allowed in court rooms... unless carried by officers. End of story.

Except we're also hearing, now, more calls for teachers to start packing. Which had my eighty-five year old lifetime professor of a father reply, "I'm so glad I never had a gun in the classroom. Talk about a job hazard."

Think about it. But also think about the fact that laws have been passed by our Congress banning research into the actual facts surrounding any of this. Why's that? If they are all so certain that they're right that might makes right, and the best defense against someone who's armed is another person equally armed, why should they thwart any research into such assertions?

Oh my.

Meanwhile, we're stepping into hunting season and my wife sent me an e-blast from a local college's security director, noting that "you will hear the sound of guns in the nearby woods. That sound is an alert and a warning that it is not a good day to hike." Furthermore, he adds, "For those with strong opinions concerning hunting, it is not good thinking to confront an armed man/woman in the woods with the altruistic goal of explaining your heartfelt belief about shooting Bambi. Letters to the editor of local newspapers are more effective and less... problematic."

On a much happier, and safer front, we urge everyone out there to take a look at the new 133 page long-range transportation plan from the Ulster County Transportation Council, which calls for about $150 million in improvements over the coming 25 years. Scintillating reading? Not at all (we'll summarize it for you in the coming weeks). But it does look into what's happening as our roads and bridge deteriorate, versus a shift in viewpoint towards "protection of investments." Moreover, it looks at how more public transportation can help us all out. A lot.

The council last adopted long-range goals in 2010, prior to Tropical Storms Irene and Lee in 2011 and Superstorm Sandy in 2012. And the report states very clearly that among 385 bridges in Ulster County, 21 percent are considered functionally obsolete, which refers to a bridge's inability to meet current standards for managing the volume of traffic it carries, while another 18 percent are structurally deficient, meaning they require corrective measures.

The talk, while dry, ends up being about economic vitality... but also real everyday safety concerns.

Just as any talk, or real research, into the real results of our gun culture would also be about real everyday safety concerns, and probably economic vitality as well, were we to be able to listen to it as something beyond a simple assault on one of our constitution's amendments.

Strong nations can discuss strong problems, and the possibility of strong antidotes and solutions, with delicacy... and a shared concern. Those that can't, I hate to say, are at risk of allowing dogma, fear, and intransigence defeat them.

As we've said many times before, we can and must do better.