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I'm a big supporter of the Second Amendment, but I'm a little concerned at the thought of students arming themselves to protect their "student rights" - against the campus police? I must have missed something; this doesn't sound right.

I'm a big supporter of the Second Amendment, but I'm a little concerned at the thought of students arming themselves to protect their "student rights" - against the campus police? I must have missed something; this doesn't sound right.

Unfortunately, it's hard to know what is right. In our modern context, the word militia is a bad word. Not so when the Founders wrote our constitution. They believed that every terrible tool of the soldier was a birthright of every American. They also disliked standing armies and in times of peace wished to defend the homeland primarily with the militia, which consisted of able bodied citizens, not under government authority. Also note that the National Guard most definitely does not qualify as the militia, as it is a government funded military force. Technically, it's not in the standing army but legally it is.

On the face of it, that's what we have here, but I also suspect that there may be more to this than meets the eye. Other factors also come in. Is New Paltz a private or public college?

When I went to school, a significant percentage of the students (significant being more than one in 1,000) were armed with gun or fighting knife. What saved my floor one night was aluminum baseball bats -- a band of armed robbers went to the next floor up when they walked by us as we were casually swinging them while hanging out in one room. Upstairs the robbers, at pistol-point, robbed one room and tied up the roomies in it -- afetr making them strip to scivvies. Luckily no one got shot.