Free Republic

Imagine what you can do with twelve minutes of your life. For some, the time is spent making a call to check on their mother, for others, it’s a quick smoke break while at work. One deranged murderer used his time to kill twenty people and wound twenty-one others. Just twelve minutes changed the life of at least one hundred people in the Killen, Texas Luby’s restaurant, and for some that same twelve minutes was a lifetime. They died during a hellish attack on the innocent. Gun advocates know how Suzanna Hupp lost her parents in the massacre and took...

A representative from Students for Concealed Carry on Campus argued for a more sensible policy for carrying concealed handguns on college and university campuses at Walter Hall last night. “It’s hypocritical to say you can bring a gun into a 300-person movie theatre but not a 300-person lecture hall,” said Stephen Feltoon, Midwest regional director of SCCC. Feltoon, a 2007 graduate of Miami University of Ohio, spoke for a 40-person group as part of the SCCC’s weeklong protest of concealed carry laws across the nation that forbid concealed handguns on college campuses. The OU Second Amendment club — comprising about...

State Bill Would Allow Guns on Campus By RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD, The New York Times PHOENIX (March 5) - Horrified by recent campus shootings, a state lawmaker here has come up with a proposal in keeping with the Taurus .22-caliber pistol tucked in her purse: Get more guns on campus. The lawmaker, State Senator Karen S. Johnson, has sponsored a bill, which the Senate Judiciary Committee approved last week, that would allow people with a concealed weapons permit — limited to those 21 and older here — to carry their firearms at public colleges and universities. Concealed weapons are generally...

Statement of National Gun Violence Prevention Organizations in Wake of Northern Illinois University Shooting Washington, DC--Following yesterday’s mass shooting at Northern Illinois University which left six dead, including the shooter, and 16 wounded, America’s leading national gun violence prevention organizations, the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, and the Violence Policy Center, issued the following joint statement: “Our sympathies go to all those affected by this terrible tragedy. America is in a gun crisis. Yesterday’s shooting at Northern Illinois University was the sixth mass shooting in less than two weeks. On college campuses,...

ELIZABETH CITY, N.C. — Elizabeth City State University is offering counseling to faculty and students after some became unknowing participants in an emergency response drill.The News & Observer of Raleigh reported in Wednesday's editions that an armed man burst into a classroom Friday, threatening to kill students. The drill came eight days after a gunman killed five people and himself in a classroom at Northern Illinois University.Anthony Brown, vice chancellor of student affairs, said ECSU was testing its response to such shootings. E-mail and text messages were sent five days before the drill, notifying students, staff and faculty, he said....

As Northern Illinois University restarts classes this week, one thing is clear: Six minutes proved too long. It took six minutes before the police were able to enter the classroom that horrible Thursday, and in that short time five people were murdered, 16 wounded. Six minutes is actually record-breaking speed for the police arriving at such an attack, but it was simply not fast enough. Still, the police were much faster than at the Virginia Tech attack last year. The previous Thursday, five people were killed in the city council chambers in Kirkwood, Mo. There was even a police officer...

Following a spate of campus attacks and threats, including the fatal shootings at Northern Illinois University and a chilling message scrawled in a boys' bathroom at a Levittown high school, federal lawmakers are renewing a push to beef up gun-control laws, fund safety procedures and study the link between college shootings and mental illness. Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), at a news conference yesterday in Manhattan, said he and congressional colleagues plan to step up efforts to close loopholes in gun-control measures and create a federal task force to come up with national school safety guidelines. They also plan to push...

In this fair country of ours, it would seem that the majority of the people consider some of our constitutional rights as more important or more sacred than others. For example, no one, except for the die-hard enemies of democracy, would challenge the first amendment rights of citizens to freedom of speech, religion, and the press. On the other hand, a great multitude of individuals and politicians seem to dismiss the Second Amendment, the right of all Americans to keep and bear arms. Compared to the general public today, our founding fathers felt much differently about this important issue. They...

In the wake of last week’s tragedy at Northern Illinois University and last April’s massacre at Virginia Tech, the seemingly endless series of school shootings has incited debate over the safety of college communities across the country. Yesterday, the Cornell College Republicans placed about 20 signs on the Arts Quad that publicized their stance on the increasingly polarizing issue of the concealed carry of weapons. They have joined the approximately 12,000 students nationwide who are part of a grassroots effort that is advocating for concealed weapons license holders to be able to carry their weapons on campuses. Although prevalent on...

'He would especially enjoy practicing his Arabic on me' WorldNetDaily A former Northern Illinois University newspaper reporter says the killer who gunned down five innocent students in an apparently unprovoked attack liked to study Arabic and the terror group Hamas. "'Assalamo alikum,' he [Steve Kazmierczak] would say to me, which means 'peace be with you' in Arabic," wrote Rasmieyh Abdelnabi in an essay published in the Chicago Sun-Times. "He would proceed to ask me how I was doing and what I was up to, all in Arabic with a thick accent and a huge, excited smile," she continued. She said...

Riots inspired by the Newsweek report have broken out elsewhere in the region. But at least 17 people have died in Afghanistan, where the worst violence erupted in the town of Ghazni, south of Kabul.The magazine said that notes from Marc Falkoff, who is representing 13 Yemenis held at Guantánamo, blamed a guard stomping on a Koran for an incident in August 2003 when 23 detainees tried to kill themselves. One of the 13 told Mr. Falkoff, according to his notes, that another detainee had attempted suicide "after the guard took his Koran and threw it in the toilet." A...

CHICAGO - Police think the graduate student who shot and killed five students last week at Northern Illinois University took steps to thwart investigators trying to figure out why he did it. In addition to removing the hard drive from his laptop computer, Steven Kazmierczak also removed the SIM card - a key computer chip - from his cell phone, a police source said. Police also said his former girlfriend gave a different account to police than she did in an interview with CNN about Kazmierczak's final weeks. The result is police still do not have a theory as to...

The front page news of young college students being shot and murdered on campuses across the nation has become sickeningly familiar. The latest mass murder at Northern Illinois University took five students, plus the shooter, most of whom were under the age of 21. We all agree that the senseless slaughter of young people at school needs to stop. On the other hand, the question of how to stop it and why it happens in the first place has seen less collectivity. Nevertheless, it's clear this nation needs to make changes in firearm regulation to try and curb these events...

Question 1: Why are murderers always counted in the victims tally? The day after the mass murder of students at Northern Illinois University (NIU), the headline in the closest major newspaper, the Chicago Tribune, was: "6 Dead in NIU Shooting." "6 dead" included the murderer. Why wasn't the headline "5 killed at NIU"? It is nothing less than moronic that the media routinely lump murderers and their victims in the same tally. This is something entirely new. Until the morally confused took over the universities and the news media, murderers were never counted along with their victims. To give a...

Steven Kazmierczak had been taking three drugs prescribed for him by his psychiatrist, the Northern Illinois University gunman's girlfriend told CNN. Jessica Baty said Steven Kazmierczak was irritable but not erratic before his shooting rampage. Jessica Baty said Tuesday that her boyfriend of two years had been taking Xanax, used to treat anxiety, and Ambien, a sleep agent, as well as the antidepressant Prozac. Baty said the psychiatrist prescribed the medications, a fact that made her so "nervous" that she tried to persuade Kazmierczak to stop taking one of the drugs.

Steven P. Kazmierczak stopped taking Prozac before he shot to death five Northern Illinois University students and himself, his girlfriend said Sunday in a remark likely to fuel the debate over the risks and benefits of drug treatment for emotional problems. A funeral on Monday in Cicero, Ill., for Catalina Garcia, 20, who was one of five students killed in a shooting Thursday in a lecture hall at Northern Illinois University. Over the years, the antidepressant Prozac and its cousins, including Paxil and Zoloft, have been linked to suicide and violence in hundreds of patients. Tens of millions of people...

I met Steve Kazmierczak in an introductory political science class in 2002 as a freshman in college. He was inquisitive, smart, respectful and nice. But now I find myself wondering if I ever knew Steve, the man who shot and killed five people and then himself in a lecture hall at my alma mater, Northern Illinois University. I found out about the shooting through a text message from a friend. A shiver went through my body when I called him for more details. As soon as I could, I ran to the nearest computer with Internet service and scoured the...

Moved by the shooting deaths of five students at Northern Illinois University, Mayor Daley today unveiled his annual package of gun control legislation, even as a state senate sponsor acknowledged that none of the bills could have prevented the tragedy. Once again, Daley wants to ban semiautomatic assault weapons and .50-caliber military-grade rifles, use the State Police to license gun dealers and limit handgun purchases to one a month per person.

It's become an all-too-familiar scenario: A seemingly normal young man unable to cope with life's stresses shoots up a college campus. The nation mourns the dead and calls on its leaders to do something to stop these random acts of terror. Policymakers and educators who sowed the seeds of massacre by making campuses gun-free eventually settle on a strategy of more bureaucracy and more restrictions on individual liberties, and declare the campuses safe again. Then, another "disturbed individual" goes on a rampage, and the cycle begins anew. Northern Illinois University's response to the Virginia Tech slayings last April was typical....

Gunman's Contradictions Confound Police By ASHLEY M. HEHER and CARYN ROUSSEAU – DEKALB, Ill. (AP) — Steven Kazmierczak had the look of a boyish graduate student — except for the disturbing tattoos that covered his arms. Professors and students knew him as a bright, helpful scholar, but his past included a stint in a mental health center. Many saw him as happy and stable, but he had developed a recent interest in guns and was involved in a troubled — possibly abusive — on-again, off-again relationship. What people initially told police about the Northern Illinois University shooter didn't add up,...