Posted on 04/18/2007 10:25:55 PM PDT by grundle
On Monday, as the news of the Virginia Tech shootings was unfolding, I went into my advanced constitutional law seminar to find one of my students upset. My student, Tara Wyllie, has a permit to carry a gun in Tennessee, but she isn't allowed to have a weapon on campus. That left her feeling unsafe. "Why couldn't we meet off campus today?" she asked.
Virginia Tech graduate student Bradford Wiles also has a permit to carry a gun, in Virginia. But on the day of the shootings, he would have been unarmed for the same reason: Like the University of Tennessee, where I teach, Virginia Tech bans guns on campus.
In The Roanoke Times last year - after another campus incident, when a dangerous escaped inmate was roaming the campus - Wiles wrote that, when his class was evacuated, "Of all of the emotions and thoughts that were running through my head that morning, the most overwhelming one was of helplessness. That feeling of helplessness has been difficult to reconcile because I knew I would have been safer with a proper means to defend myself."
Wiles reported that when he told a professor how he felt, the professor responded that she would have felt safer if he had had a gun, too.
What's more, she would have been safer. That's how I feel about my student (one of a few I know who have gun carry permits), as well. She's a responsible adult; I trust her not to use her gun improperly, and if something bad happened, I'd want her to be armed because I trust her to respond appropriately, making the rest of us safer.
Virginia Tech doesn't have that kind of trust in its students (or its faculty, for that matter). Neither does the University of Tennessee. Both think that by making their campuses "gun-free," they'll make people safer, when in fact they're only disarming the people who follow rules, law-abiding people who are no danger at all.
This merely ensures that the murderers have a free hand. If there were more responsible, armed people on campuses, mass murder would be harder.
In fact, some mass shootings have been stopped by armed citizens. Though press accounts downplayed it, the 2002 shooting at Appalachian Law School was stopped when a student retrieved a gun from his car and confronted the shooter. Likewise, Pearl, Miss., school shooter Luke Woodham was stopped when the school's vice principal took a .45 fromhis truck and ran to the scene. In February's Utah mall shooting, it was an off-duty police officer who happened to be on the scene and carrying a gun.
Police can't be everywhere, and as incidents from Columbine to Virginia Tech demonstrate, by the time they show up at a mass shooting, it's usually too late. On the other hand, one group of people is, by definition, always on the scene: the victims. Only if they're armed, they may wind up not being victims at all.
"Gun-free zones" are premised on a fantasy: That murderers will follow rules, and that people like my student, or Bradford Wiles, are a greater danger to those around them than crazed killers like Cho Seung-hui. That's an insult. Sometimes, it's a deadly one.
Reynolds is Beauchamp Brogan distinguished professor of law at the University of Tennessee. He is the author of the book "An Army of Davids" and blogs at instapundit.com.
Ever notice that there a lots of mass-killings in “gun-free zones”, aka “criminal safety zones” but there aren’t any at police stations or military bases?
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
Bookmark, Bump, BTTT
We had a mall shooting and it was an armed citizen that brought it to an end. Guns aren’t bad, people are.
If the gun-grabbers are successful, I hope the libs have enough adoration to go around when we all become felons.
On second thought, I don't think I want to get hugged by a lib.
Glenn Reynolds aka Instapundit. The number one blog on the internet. It’s the first site I go to every morning. www.instapundit.com
This needs to be repeated over and over and over. Cho Seung-hui didn't give a flying you-know-what Virginia Tech was a gun free zone, and neither will other nutjobs, terrorists or plain old criminals.
I don’t encourage anyone to do anything illegal, but I have a permit, and when I feel like I need to carry, I carry, and I mean everywhere.
I remember seeing his uniform on display. He was small of stature but big otherwise.
I would if she was young cute and impessionable:-)
Many of the more “aggressive” kids (i.e., those who don’t follow the liberal surrender mantra) play violent video games that desensitize them to the initial shock of a situation. Of course, they then have to have an idea of what to do next, but that’s easily corrected.
See the numerous studies of late about how video games affect kids’ reaction times. Or talk to a current/recent drill instructor. That part of military training has actually gotten easier to get across with the advent of superrealistic combat simulation games. Remember, the Army is now using the same games kids play at home (”America’s Army”) to train the troops.
Now, if the boyfriend had been with her, and had his gun with him then this would have ended there, wouldn't it have.
Ping
bump
ping
He wasn't amused, and I told him that I wasn't either. And I assured him that anytime I was carrying a concealed weapon, if I needed something at the bank, I'd only use the drive through. After all, it's not like they could trust me... Everyone at the bank knows me, and I've been a customer at that branch for more than 15 years, without even a bounced check.
I'd have threatened to take my business to another bank, but there simply aren't any banks that DON'T have a similar sign posted.
Mark
Apples and oranges comparison -- air marshals are federal employees with a specific duty. The discussion is about the abrogation of the right of self-defense that exists in every person as a God-given right, not one that requires "screening and combat training". The comparison you were reaching for was the armed pilot program which is a morass of bureaucracy and bovine scatology. I'll pass, thanks.
It’s those ‘impessioned’ ones you gotta watch out for. ;>
You have got to be joking.
Anybody carrying a gun must be prepared to use it competently if the necessity arises. Otherwise, you're going to get yourself killed. Nobody permit holder needs additional training to understand this obvious fact.
Gun stores also appear to be relatively free of workplace violence incidents.
It’s almost always an armed citizen that ends these things. Sometimes it’s a police officer who is armed, sometimes a security guard. Sometimes a military man, sometimes a reservist, or national guard. Sometimes a hunter, or a sportsman.
And sometimes it is just an ordinary person with no special need to have a gun, just the belief that having a gun makes you responsible for others around you who do not.
It’s the big hole in the argument of the gun-grabbers. EVERY one of them wanted a gun in the building on Monday. Even the most rabid anti-2nd-amendment people wanted a gun in that building. They simply wanted that gun to be in the hands of what they think are the “right” people, like a trained law enforcement officer or a security guard.
Ignoring that police sometimes kill people out of rage, that security guards are human and sometimes go nuts, and that million of us are capable of being trained sufficiently to defend ourselves.
Someone at my office is preparing a training session on workplace security. I’m on record stating that a locked glass door and a phone is not security. I told them that if we were serious, the company would choose two employees, send them to a serious defensive weapons school and provide a shotgun and pistol which could be carried or secured at their desk.
Sadly, I doubt that my idea will be well received. Instead, they will come up with some other inane idea like banning pocketknives even though we have razor knives used in the course of business laying around in all the labs.
I just tell them that my pocketknife isn’t a weapon, it’s a tool. (The Gerber spring assist serrated blade model just barely qualifies)
Spot on!
Leftist nonsense like “gun free zones”, “gun bans” make leftists feel good but endanger innocent people.
To sum it up, PC KILLS!
Why did’t the shooter start for the campus, realize there was a gun ban in effect, and call the whole thing off? Gun ban laws are supposed to keep guns off campus!
I think we both agree on this. A CC permit holder doesn’t need any government training to understand that if he pulls it out he had better hit what he is aiming at.
At the college I attended in Oregon, this nut job would have only gotten off a few rounds before half the male students ran out to their trucks and retreived their weapons, including myself. We would hunt before class, skip class to hunt or just to go target shooting in the afternoon... It was a well know fact and the college never said anything about it to any of us...
Since I believe that I am a creation of a Divine Creator (as acknowledged in the Declaration of Independence: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness), I have the right to self-defense in the interest of extending the gift of the Creator. If an action of the state interferes with the tools necessary to act to ensure that right then the state no longer has the moral standing to enforce its will upon my person in that regard.
All that said, I merely argued for the right of self-defense as the central point of the discussion at hand, not necessarily for the right to carry where I please. Each individual has to make choices concerning personal safety balanced with the knowledge of the law.
Someone should edit that into a tagline somehow.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.