An adjunct professor at Emmanuel College was fired last week after he mimed a classroom shooting while discussing the massacre at Virginia Tech with students in his financial-accounting class. Nicholas Winset, the professor, used a marker pen to represent a gun and pointed it at several students, saying “bang” repeatedly until one of the students, whom he had prepared beforehand, “shot” the professor with another marker, according to The Boston Globe.

In a four-part video that he later posted on YouTube, Mr. Winset says that he was trying to suggest to his students that “fighting when you are confronted with violence is probably a good idea,” and that “gun control is probably not a panacea.” In the online video, the professor defends his actions and decries what he calls the “prissiness” in American culture, a state of mind that he says led to his dismissal.

Emmanuel College released a statement after Ms. Winset’s dismissal, saying that the Boston college prohibits “any behavior or action which makes light of or mimics the terrible tragedy at Virginia Tech.” —John Gravois