Posted on 04/18/2007 2:02:53 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
The question is posed incorrectly. The question should be “should SOME students be ....”.
Omitting the word SOME makes the question ambiguous.
My answer is, Sure. If they have a permit and training and they are identified by a uniform of some kind. Typically, this would be a law-enforcement person taking classes.
Given the impetuousity of youth and the frequency of beer parties, I would not allow just any student to carry.
They are already “allowed” by state law. It is Va Tech’s policy that prevents them from defending themselves on campus.
As I stated, *day-to-day* I think you’re risking more than the RARE exception like this.
It would have (likely) reduced the deaths, but not eliminated it. Noone is always on their toes ready to fire a gun.
Bottom line, I’m trying to weigh the likely costs vs. likely benefits.
Which is it?
And why would students start blasting each other? Why don’t young soldiers or police academy students? Or college pistol teams?
Should guns be carried in schools? No. A school should be a place of higher education.
What is wrong with happy, healthy, lawful, armed people peacefully interacting in all aspcets of life?
These liberals belong on in the same mental health facility as their murdering cousins....
How many on this thread have CCW, and regularly carry, and have never been discovered?
As a test at the outset, I carried daily for months without telling my wife, and she never noticed (and yes, we have a good marriage where we pay healthy attention to each other.)
It has become quite clear in some way shape or form a student will have to defend themselves before law enforcement gets there. These kids and they are still kids should be required to take defense classes, and have drills for disaster. Since 911 I thought the country especially the educated colleges had wised up. I guess I was wrong.If drills to prevent this from happening can save one more life or many more fine by me. Also a legal concealed carry permit for a gun is ok by me. I hope I never in my life time see the same thing happen at another college because they were too liberal to pay attention and learn a lesson.
I have pictures in my high school yearbook of students with guns in school. It was the hunting club. Nobody thought anything of it. They were sophomores, juniors and seniors (only a 3 year school). We were all taught gun safety from the times our parents allowed us to touch a gun. Are these kids mentally inferior to my generation? Or are they just not taught the importance of life and common sense (among other things)?
My high school's JROTC program had me receiving firearms training and marksmanship in my HS sophmore year
The debate on allowing CCW on campus is not about allowing 18 year old freshmen to carry. In just about every state, you have to be 21 to get a license, which leaves out most undergrads
If you allow CCW on campus, it will be limited to professors, grad students, and administrative staff. The talk about allowing undergrad students to carry is just to poison the debate
The average teen shooter probably is better in both respects than the average cop.
Of course, your point could be just as well used to ban arms from all civilian hands, so you can imagine what I think of it, Ma’am.
I still think about a criminal named Ferguson who shot and killed a number of people on a Long Island Commuter train. For No Reason, other than he was a loon.
If another person was armed and on the train we might have stopped the bloodshed and wouldn’t be feeding and housing this filthy Beast.
We , allowed this barbarian, to be his own Lawyer at his trial.
Doubling the hurt and Insult.
I’ll go with arming legitimate citizens everywhere in the U.S.A.
Not that any of this over-rides the 2nd amend. but they should be taken into account.
When I was in college I and a couple of roomies rented a house so I never experienced the dubious pleasures of dorm life. We all owned firearms of various types so ‘guns being discovered’ was a non-consideration.
Can you imagine the reaction of some anti-gun person getting up and saying, “I was reading on the conservative site, Free Republic, a call to arm all students...”
We just want to end the campus bans on carrying by those who are otherwise qualified to carry.
While you seem to think college drunkeness and idiocy is a bad thing, I happen to remember that time of my life very fondly :~)
You bring up a good point though, not that no kid can be trusted, but that the general security and lifestyle in dorm rooms would make safe storage and keeping of guns difficult. When I was in the dorms, dorm rooms were left standing wide open on Friday nights, students mingled and partied room to room... and had I owned a weapon, it's safe storage would have been a major problem.
And, not to be understated, most kids living on campus are under 21. This guy was an exception. I'd be curious how other state laws compare, but in my state, while it's legal for an 18 year old to own rifles and shotguns, they cannot own handguns or carry concealed weapons until they are 21. That's state law, not campus policy. When I turned 21 I was still in college, and I was given a handgun by my father, but I lived off campus by then. I'm proud to say I kept my weapon safe while in college, even during parties, none of my friends knew where it was kept, and it was never loaded if there was alcohol being poured. I was raised and trained to have very safe gun habits... and the presence of the gun does tend to mature most people, but not all. I remember college also as being the place I first wished I could be in charge of deciding ~who~ could be trusted with a loaded gun.
Just food for thought. There are students around and on campus who own weapons, but even if they could carry on campus, there's more reasons not to, than there are to carry. There's practical considerations for one, the same considerations that make it impractical for most of us to carry concealed at work. First, most kids don't wear clothing all the time that is layered and conducive to carrying concealed. Hard to carry concealed in shorts and a t-shirt, especially for women. And if you carry the weapon in a bag or purse, it becomes a safe storage liability if you set it down. When I chose to carry at work, the gun became a source of worry and hassle when I needed to move around the office more than it was a source of security, and I stopped carrying it very often for that reason. Guns in class would have the same practical issues.
As someone who has thought through the practicalities of carrying in a classroom and campus situation, it's not as easy as it sounds.
I agree that natural selection should be the order of the day on campuses.
Any college or university that publicly states that as fact, should be sued out of existence any time anything, and I do mean anything in the way of violence (and that does include assault, forcible rape, etc.)happens on campus.
The only one who can protect you ..... is YOU!
Absolutely no campus, no city, no suburb, no rural farm community, has enough police to "protect" it's citizens.
Should the police accidentally come across a violent act or crime in progress, they have the power to stop it but every other time, they come upon crime scenes after the fact has occurred.
The police simply cannot protect before hand, nor do the mere fact that they have a presence on campus, deter an individual armed and intent on harming another individual.
Most students have been taught such touchy-feely bs in public schools, that they have forgotten how to think and act in a self-preservation mode.
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If highly trained secret service officers accidentally shoot each other, a campus full of kids with guns would be ridiculous
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The problem with this statement is that even where CCW is unrestricted (like in Vermont), only a few percent ever choose to carry, and even fewer carry all the time.
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