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Virginia Tech's campus gun ban merits an 'S' - for sensible
The Roanoke Times ^ | April 19, 2005 | The Roanoke Times

Posted on 04/19/2005 6:11:32 PM PDT by Mulder

The long list of bad ideas whose time should never come grew by one last week, courtesy of the Virginia Citizens Defense League.

Members indicated they would turn to the General Assembly or courts to force colleges and universities to drop campus gun restrictions that exceed state law. The reason? At Virginia Tech, the Second Amendment purists learned, a student with a concealed-carry permit faces disciplinary action for taking a gun to class. Tech bans all firearms, regardless of permits, except for those carried by police.

The Defense League might be on solid legal ground regarding a university's power to override state law. Virginia gun restrictions, however, are few outside elementary and secondary school grounds.

In terms of public safety and common sense, the league stands in quicksand.

On its side is the often-tried but only rarely true argument that an armed population can defend the community in incidents such as the fatal Appalachian Law School shootings in 2002. In a crisis, untrained shooters may be as likely to take innocent lives as save them.

On the other side is the preponderance of knowledge about risk factors in dorms and fraternity houses, dining halls, classrooms and labs: young adults whose maturity, emotional stability and ability to handle newfound freedom are often uneven; drinking and drug use; a higher suicide rate; sometimes extreme tensions between students and faculty (as in the Appalachian Law School incident) as a result of academic pressures and failures.

Surely firearms should be kept far away from events such as the wild annual Quadfest party at Radford University, which resulted in more than 400 arrests over the weekend, most of them alcohol-related. Or from stadiums and tail-gate parties, where alcohol often fuels ugly fan behavior.

In almost any campus setting, the dangers associated with guns overwhelm any benefit. The Virginia Association of Chiefs of Police and Fraternal Order of Police of Virginia apparently agree. Both support universities' right to ban firearms.

The General Assembly should, too, if the Defense League follows through on its threat.


TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; US: Virginia
KEYWORDS: 2ndamendment; banglist; gun; vatech
The statist gun grabbers are at it again.
1 posted on 04/19/2005 6:11:39 PM PDT by Mulder
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To: Mulder

the whole no-guns deal at Red Lake worked pretty well.


2 posted on 04/19/2005 6:15:35 PM PDT by Rakkasan1 (The MRS wanted to go to an expensive place to eat so I took her to the gas station.)
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To: Mulder
Interesting that they would foolishly mention the Appalacian Law School incident.

It was ended by students who retrieved guns from their vehicles.

3 posted on 04/19/2005 6:17:47 PM PDT by yarddog
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To: yarddog

You might email the Times with that observation so that they understand that they don't pull the wool over that many eyes.


4 posted on 04/19/2005 6:21:35 PM PDT by Spirited (God, Bless America)
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To: yarddog
They're blinded by the sight of guns on campus.

The trick here is that in Virginia you are OK if you carry your weapon openly. You don't need a permit.

I'm surprised Virginia Tech gets away with discriminating against openly carried weapons yet it allows concealed weapons.

They have this thing backwards don't they?

5 posted on 04/19/2005 6:28:25 PM PDT by muawiyah
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To: AppyPappy
Hokie ping.
6 posted on 04/19/2005 6:56:50 PM PDT by Physicist
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To: muawiyah
In a crisis, untrained shooters may be as likely to take innocent lives as save them.

Or they may not be. Nobody knows.

7 posted on 04/19/2005 6:59:10 PM PDT by ReadyNow
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To: Mulder

>>n a crisis, untrained shooters may be as likely to take innocent lives as save them.

Because the Roanoke Times says so?

I love to see what passes for argumentation among so-called educated people these days.


8 posted on 04/19/2005 7:01:40 PM PDT by FreedomPoster (Official Ruling Class Oligarch Oppressor)
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To: Mulder
Surely firearms should be kept far away from events such as the wild annual Quadfest party at Radford University, which resulted in more than 400 arrests over the weekend, most of them alcohol-related. Or from stadiums and tail-gate parties, where alcohol often fuels ugly fan behavior.

Full speed ahead with the guns on campus. Then maybe college officials will have to get serious about cracking down on underage drinking, and public drunkenness regardless of age. Protecting "students'" (and I use the term loosely) nonexistent right to be drunk and disorderly, is a poor excuse for depriving them of their real and important right to bear arms. If colleges only admitted real students, events like the one described would never happen on a college campus.

9 posted on 04/19/2005 7:03:25 PM PDT by GovernmentShrinker
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To: Mulder

Or an 'S' for Stupid.


10 posted on 04/19/2005 7:04:25 PM PDT by flashbunny
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To: ReadyNow

Wrong guy.


11 posted on 04/19/2005 7:06:44 PM PDT by muawiyah
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To: Mulder
In a crisis, untrained shooters may be as likely to take innocent lives as save them.

Let's consider the record on this one.

In the Appalachian Law school incident, already discussed, "untrained" shooters saved lives rather than taking them.

Somewhere else a few years ago, "Pearl, Mississippi" if I recall correctly, an assistant principal got his weapon out of the glove compartment of his car, putting a stop to a shooting situation, without taking any lives at all, innocent or otherwise.

And then there's Columbine. "Trained shooters" all around, all of them wetting their pants. Lives saved - zero.

Do these folks have any examples of untrained shooters actually taking innocent lives?

12 posted on 04/19/2005 7:34:19 PM PDT by DuncanWaring (The Lord uses the good ones; the bad ones use the Lord.)
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To: DuncanWaring
And then there's Columbine. "Trained shooters" all around, all of them wetting their pants. Lives saved - zero.

Do these folks have any examples of untrained shooters actually taking innocent lives?

You correctly see that "Trained shooters" = government shooters in this article.

Many ordinary citizens are much better trained than many ordinary government shooters.

13 posted on 04/19/2005 8:06:37 PM PDT by marktwain
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To: Mulder
In a crisis, untrained shooters may be as likely to take innocent lives as save them.

When will these pontificating media blowhards ever bother to look at the evidence, instead of bleating and bloviating based on nothing more than their own Hollywood-fueled biases and fantasies?

It is well known to criminologists that a citizen who resists a direct criminal attack with a gun is much less likely to shoot an innocent bystander than a cop, who comes on the scene later, with no knowledge of who the good and bad guys really are.

Statistics quoted by Don Kates in his book "Restricting Handguns: The Liberal Skeptics Speak Out" indicate that 11% of police shootings involve innocent bystanders mistaken for criminals. For private citizens, the figure is 2%.

-ccm

14 posted on 04/19/2005 9:36:05 PM PDT by ccmay (Question Diversity)
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To: Physicist

Read this rebuttal. Good stuff

http://www.collegiatetimes.com/index.php?ID=5753


15 posted on 04/20/2005 4:41:27 AM PDT by AppyPappy (If You're Not A Part Of The Solution, There's Good Money To Be Made In Prolonging The Problem.)
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