Those who have arms can protect the rights of others to speak; they can also prevent others from speaking. It all depends on the quality of the wielder.
As it is, those with arms tend to be against The Constitution and free speech—in terms of the traitorous liberal idiots in Congress with their personal arms and body guards etc and their lobbying long and hard to remove guns from the rest of us.
I say, distribute the guns and see who wins.
There are still a lot of patriots in the US OF A.
It is inevitable that a tragedy like this will result in political maneuvering. One can argue that the response to 9/11 was political, in as much as war is defined as the extension of policy by other means. The question then becomes what side of that response one will support.
Experience, and common sense, shows that gun bans do not work. Furthermore, data suggests that the opposite is true- they make matters worse. In this case, it failed spectacularly.
It has often been said in regards to drug laws that prohibition doesn’t work, yet often the very same people who say that favor a prohibition on firearms. No one that I know of advocates that all citizens be armed at all times. Likewise no one favors mandatory guns for students at Virginia Tech. I know that if I was a student there I wouldn’t have carried one even if legal. However, one can argue that concealed weapons permits, properly administered and legally recorded, would create a situation where opposition to this shooting spree amy have saved lives, and created a climate of uncertainty regarding who is and is not armed and may have prevented this nut’s misadventure in the first place.