Free Republic

Photo by Thad Allender. Kansas University junior Eric Stein displays a gun holster that he wore to class Monday. Stein, a member of the national Students for Concealed Carry on Campus, is participating in a week-long protest aimed at promoting concealed carry on college campuses. If Eric Stein gets his way, students at Kansas University would be allowed to bring concealed weapons to campus — so long as they have the proper state permit. Stein, a Topeka junior, is the president of the local chapter of Students for Concealed Carry on Campus, which has organized a nationwide “Empty Holsters”...

In 1979 I carried a gun. I had a permit to do so. It was a 9 mm Browning automatic with 14 rounds in a clip. The reason I had a weapon was because I handled large sums of money, and my boss suggested that it might be a good idea. I carried my 9 mm every time I went out...

A committee of the Arizona Legislature is weighing arguments made today over a proposal to let people with permits to carry concealed weapons bring guns to K-12 schools, community colleges and universities. The Senate's Judiciary Committee listened to more than two hours of testimony about the proposal, but didn't take a vote. The testimony came four days after a gunman opened fire during a lecture at Northern Illinois University, killing five young people before turning a gun on himself. Supporters say the permit-holders should be allowed to carry guns at schools so they can defend themselves and others if a...

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...

Four months after Peter Hamm, spokesperson for The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, verbally attacked the college-based, grassroots organization Students for Concealed Carry on Campus, telling a Fox News reporter, "You don't like the fact that you can't have a gun on your college campus? Drop out of school," he is stepping up the rhetoric. Not content with encouraging college students to forgo their educations rather than fight for a cause in which they believe, Mr. Hamm has resorted to baseless conspiracy theories and slander. In a February 19, 2008, interview with Anna Hipsley of Australia’s ABC News radio,...

Legislators are holding up a proposed gun bill, and that's just fine with the University of Idaho administration. A provision in the bill would have forbid local governments and college administrators from banning guns on Idaho college campuses. UI President Tim White said Friday if the bill had passed as written, they'd have a potentially dangerous situation on their hands. "It would have allowed concealed weapons, loaded weapons, on the University of Idaho campus, and all the campuses in the state of Idaho," said White. "We just found that to be unacceptable." Senate Bill 1381 was officially pulled for revision....

In my column last week, I wrote about the shooting rampage at the Town Council meeting in Kirkwood, Missouri that took the lives of 5 people. Only a couple of days after the column appeared on the Thinker, another gun-related tragedy occurred; this time at Northern Illinois University and it claimed 5 more innocent lives. That's right: another maniac, with guns bristling all over him, walked into a "gun-free zone" and began picking off human beings as if they were ducks in a shooting gallery. There were only a few minutes left in the ocean sciences class being held in...

Or so it seems, now that our state Legislature considered the issue of allowing firearms on college campuses in South Dakota. Earlier this week, at least six people died at Northern Illinois University when a gunman opened fire in a classroom. Add that to a handful of other recent college shootings, plus the horrific loss of life at Virginia Tech last year, and the idea of letting students defend themselves against deranged gunmen by carrying weapons on campus seems to almost make sense. Almost, but not quite.