Anyway, I'll say it again.
Michelle,
Posted on 04/18/2007 4:32:54 AM PDT by mborman
There's no polite way or time to say it: American colleges and universities have become coddle industries. Big Nanny administrators oversee speech codes, segregated dorms, politically correct academic departments and designated "safe spaces" to protect students selectively from hurtful (conservative) opinions -- while allowing mob rule for approved leftist positions (textbook case: Columbia University's anti-Minuteman Project protesters).
Instead of teaching students to defend their beliefs, American educators shield them from vigorous intellectual debate. Instead of encouraging autonomy, our higher institutions of learning stoke passivity and conflict-avoidance.
And as the erosion of intellectual self-defense goes, so goes the erosion of physical self-defense.
Yesterday morning, as news was breaking about the carnage at Virginia Tech, a reader e-mailed me a news story from last January. State legislators in Virginia had attempted to pass a bill that would have eased handgun restrictions on college campuses. Opposed by outspoken, anti-gun activists and Virginia Tech administrators, that bill failed.
Is it too early to ask: "What if?" What if that bill had passed? What if just one student in one of those classrooms had been in lawful possession of a concealed weapon for the purpose of self-defense?
If it wasn't too early for Keystone Katie Couric to be jumping all over campus security yesterday for what they woulda/coulda/shoulda done in the immediate aftermath of the shooting, and if it isn't too early for The New York Times editorial board to be publishing its knee-jerk call for more gun control, it darned well isn't too early for me to raise questions about how the unrepentant anti-gun lobbying of college officials may have put students at risk.
The back story: Virginia Tech had punished a student for bringing a handgun to class last spring -- despite the fact that the student had a valid concealed handgun permit. The bill would have barred public universities from making "rules or regulations limiting or abridging the ability of a student who possesses a valid concealed handgun permit . . . from lawfully carrying a concealed handgun." After the proposal died in subcommittee, the school's governing board reiterated its ban on students or employees carrying guns and prohibiting visitors from bringing them into campus buildings.
Late last summer, a shooting near campus prompted students to clamor again for loosening campus rules against armed self-defense. Virginia Tech officials turned up their noses. In response to student Bradford Wiles's campus newspaper op-ed piece in support of concealed carry on campus, Virginia Tech Associate Vice President Larry Hincker scoffed:
"[I]t is absolutely mind-boggling to see the opinions of Bradford Wiles. . . . The editors of this page must have printed this commentary if for no other reason than malicious compliance. Surely, they scratched their heads saying, 'I can't believe he really wants to say that.' Wiles tells us that he didn't feel safe with the hundreds of highly trained officers armed with high powered rifles encircling the building and protecting him. He even implies that he needed his sidearm to protect himself . . ."
The nerve!
Hincker continued: "The writer would have us believe that a university campus, with tens of thousands of young people, is safer with everyone packing heat. Imagine the continual fear of students in that scenario. We've seen that fear here, and we don't want to see it again. . . . Guns don't belong in classrooms. They never will. Virginia Tech has a very sound policy preventing same."
Who's scratching his head now, Mr. Hincker?
Some high-handed commentators insist it's premature or unseemly to examine the impact of school rules discouraging students from carrying arms on campus. Pundit Andrew Sullivan complained that it was "creepy" to highlight reader e-mails calling attention to Virginia Tech's restrictions on student self-defense -- even as the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence rushed to capitalize on the massacre to sign up new members and gather e-mail addresses for Million Mom March chapters. "We are outraged by the increase in gun violence in America, especially the recent shooting at Virginia Tech," reads the online petition. "Add your name to the growing list of people who are saying: 'Enough Is Enough!'"
Enough is enough, indeed. Enough of intellectual disarmament. Enough of physical disarmament. You want a safer campus? It begins with renewing a culture of self-defense -- mind, spirit and body. It begins with two words: Fight back.
M
Just lie down and take it!
If anyone else had had a gun, this monster couldn’t have enjoyed his leisurely killing spree of TWENTY-ONE minutes, as he strolled the classrooms and reloading when empty. Every one of these advocates of the “sitting duck” policy should be held to account, now that we see the carnage in its wake.
Better to be fined for carrying a concealed weapon on campus than to be killed for not having one.
Door opens, bang bang bang, you stand up clicking the safety off as you raise to aim - pop pop pop. Over, done with, damage control.
It’s been playing over and over in my head. *shrug*
Anyway, I'll say it again.
Michelle,
Bradford Wiles was 100% correct.
Associate Vice President Larry Hincker was 100% WRONG
The cost of the democrat liberal moonbat sheep farm, where otherwise intelligent human beings are lined up and slaughtered like cattle by a single gun toting little hateful wimp, IS WAY TOO HIGH.
No more foolin. The gloves are off on this one.
The administrators of VT need to be fired down to the last little ivory tower chicken hearted jerk, because they cannot and will not allow for the self protection of their own. They are bankrupt, immoral, and in need of re-education. Enough of this liberal claptrap and its culture war. Its costs are too high. We need to become Americans again, who stand tall, shoot straight, and take care of ourselves and each other.
No "security officers" can take the place of that, ever.
The fatc is that a rule that does not allow the carrying of a gun is only obeyed by those who obey the rule.
It does not in any way stop the carrying of a gun by a criminal or a person bent on destruction. It only takes away the right of Self-Defense.
Self defense is an issue that must be able to be acted on immediately. Not in 30 minutes later when a cop shows up.
If you wait for a cop for self-defense thenyou might as well call an ambulance at the same time,because you ar going to need one. Either that or the morgue wagon.
You are in bed and hear a burglar, you call the police.
15 minutes later they arrive if you are lucky,where I live its at least 30 minutes. All they can do is take notes. The burglar is gone with your possessions and maybe your life.
You are in college and a killer maniac arrives to shoot a woman he has been stalking, he fires on her and you call police. 15 minutes later you and 20 other kids are dead.
In order for the Left to take over America they must raise a generation of followers that will not resist it’s will, the will of the collective.
The root of not defending ourselves overseas is the basis for not defending ourseleves here on our own ground.
Learn to submit to the will of others, there is nothing worth dieing for, nothing worth fighting for, no moral absolutes, killing the unborn is transfered to killing the living.
Those alive that are viewed as a drain to the state, parasites if you will are sent to the ovens.
The very root of Socialism in the US is founded in the ashes of Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia, both Socialist country’s.
That "no guns" signs needs a label: sitting ducks
shezza, please post your picture here since they closed the duplicate
Great analogy! A keeper!
The only problem is that there weren't "hundreds of highly trained officers armed with high powered rifles encircling the building and protecting him".
Guns don't belong in classrooms. They never will. Virginia Tech has a very sound policy preventing same."
Apparently Mr. Cho didn't get the memo.
D'OH!!!
Any time a firearms-related thread is created on FreeRepublic, please be sure to add the "banglist" keyword to it so that interested FReepers don't miss it.
Let Freedom Ring,
Especially ones who hide behind cover until the shooting is over.
Michelle Malkin:There's no polite way or time to say it: American colleges and universities have become coddle industries. Big Nanny administrators oversee speech codes, segregated dorms, politically correct academic departments and designated "safe spaces" to protect students selectively from hurtful (conservative) opinions -- while allowing mob rule for approved leftist positions (textbook case: Columbia University's anti-Minuteman Project protesters).
Instead of teaching students to defend their beliefs, American educators shield them from vigorous intellectual debate. Instead of encouraging autonomy, our higher institutions of learning stoke passivity and conflict-avoidance.
And as the erosion of intellectual self-defense goes, so goes the erosion of physical self-defense.
...Enough is enough, indeed. Enough of intellectual disarmament. Enough of physical disarmament. You want a safer campus? It begins with renewing a culture of self-defense -- mind, spirit and body. It begins with two words: Fight back.
Nailed It!
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VT's "policy" did not keep guns out of the classroom in this case. Nor did the "hundreds of highly trained officers" prevent the massacre from taking place.
Hincker has blood on his hands.
The Law of Unintended Consequences is upheld once again.
The virtue of “concealed carry” is that the potential perp (in this case, young Cho) would perhaps have had the legal right to be carrying the weapons with which he was armed (small, easily hidden), but he would not have known if the next person before whom he pulled it out would not have been also armed. Or the person behind him. That alone tends to keep potential perps both quiet and polite.
Sure, three or four people may well have died before Cho himself was stopped or brought down. But in the grim arithmetic of that morning in Blacksburg, that number is a lot less than the final tally, and at this point, we are still not really sure, as there are those who remain critical, and could go either way. Plus the mass of injuries, both from the gunshots and from escape attempts, and the traumatization of the entire campus.
Laws that forbid the carrying of arms . . . disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes . . . Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man.”
—Thomas Jefferson, quoting Cesare Beccaria in On Crimes and Punishment (1764).
Respectfully, I think V-Tech is negligent in so that they barred the people (administrators and employees) on campus from exercising their civil rights and put them at risk. I hope someone sues the living s@#$ out of them for this offense!
A .22 caliber cannot penetrate a text book for sure and a 9mm is considered a bare minimum as a conceal carry firearm. (9mm is not that powerful of a weapon) As a matter of fact I highly doubt a 9mm would get through a one inch text book, lest a back pack filled with books. These kids had the tools to save their lives; they just did not know how to use them! This nut could have been easily disarmed had someone had the appropriate training.
To All: before any real discussion can take place one must acknowledge a few facts.
1. Evil does exist!
2. In an open society YOU must take responsibility for your own safety.Katrina and 911 has taught us the government is incapable of providing any amount of real personal protection.
3. The police are NOT legally bound to protect you. Go ahead and try to sue a police officer or municipality after you have been victimized. The speed at which that case will be thrown out of the judicial system will astonish you.
4. We live in an open society. This is going to become even more so if the ruling elite in this country have it their way by easing migration (their term) across our southern border. This brings me to my next point…
5. Has this country stemmed the flow of illegal drugs into this country? No, they have not. How many guns could enter this country through our porous southern border and find their way into criminal’s hands? Now, if we took away the right of law abiding citizens to arm themselves, what do you think we would then have?
Cute little ‘NO GUNS ALLOWED” stickers on doors will not stop evil!
Did anyone see the amount of firepower that showed up after the shooting stopped…my point exactly?
Its time we stopped cowering and started taking the gloves off. Enough of this foolish liberal moonbat culture war.
The cost is two high when 32 people can be executed like sheep to slaughter by one hateful little gun toting rat.
VT is guilty of a Civil Rights Violation.And they should either pay or close down.
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