Free Republic

Link-only: Campus gun legislation merely clarifies gun rightsI wrote this regarding House Bill 5474 introduced by Rep. Schmidt. It's been heard in committee twice. Needs calls and letters of support to get heard on the floor!

Lynchburg, VA - Supporters of the Second Amendment gathered Friday afternoon at the Liberty University (web) School of Law for a gun rights symposium. The discussion of current legal cases turned into a cry for help from students at Virginia Tech. Some Virginia Tech students even skipped class to do it. Alyson Boyce with VT Students for Concealed Carry President said, "Two and a half years ago, if you would have asked me anything about gun rights, I would not have been able to tell you a thing. Now, Boyce is the president of the Hokie Chapter of Students for...

Officials reverse earlier decision Community College of Allegheny County will no longer require prior review of student handouts after complaints by a women who sought last spring to form a group advocating the right to carry concealed firearms on campus. The student, Christine "Christa" Brashier, attempted to organize a campus chapter of a national group, Students for Concealed Carry on Campus. In June, she said a CCAC employee told her the organizing amounted to "soliciting," ordered her to destroy fliers she created and warned she risked sanctions if she pursued the matter without the school's OK. Ms. Brashier said the...

GRAND VALLEY STATE UNIVERSITY -- Someone walks into your classroom with a gun and threatens to open fire. Your best defense is to try to escape the room or take out your cell phone and call for help, but under a proposed change to Michigan legislation, you may have another option. Sparked by the shooting at Virginia Tech in 2007, Michigan Sen. Randy Richardville, R-Monroe, has proposed a change to Michigan law to allow permit holders to carry concealed weapons on college campuses. Currently, the open carry of weapons is permitted anywhere, so long as the owner has a license...

Sen. Randy Richardville on Thursday (August 20th) introduced bipartisan legislation that would help make college campuses safer by allowing CCW permit holders to carry a weapon on college campuses. “Crimes occur on college campuses just like any other place,” said Richardville, a Monroe Republican. “Students, faculty and visitors, who have permits and have undergone the proper training and background checks, should have the right to carry a concealed weapon for their protection while on campus.” Senate Bill 747, sponsored by Richardville, would remove college campuses from the no-carry zones for concealed weapons. This would allow individuals with CCW permits to...

Guns are now legal for students on public university campuses in South Carolina. The signs say "guns prohibited" on the College of Charleston's campus, but according to bill 593 that's about to change. Lawmakers approved the bill last month. It says cars on public college campuses are now acceptable places for concealed weapons permit holders to store guns. But that makes some students feel uneasy. "Why makes guns more easily accessible after the violence we just saw at virginia tech and nationwide?" asked student Rachel Kutler. Kutler transferred to the College of Charleston after the Virginia Tech massacre. She doesn't...

WASHINGTON — The First Amendment guarantees Americans the right to free speech. The Second Amendment guarantees the right to possess firearms. ----------------------------cut------------------------- Many gun-rights advocates are arguing that college campuses, which are supposed to be open to diversity of thought, provocative dialogue, politics and protest, are hardly bastions of free speech when it comes to discussing firearms. "The fact is, the topic is so explosive," said Robert Shibley, spokesman for the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), which tracks discriminatory practices against students involved in conservative issues on campus. They've been dealing with "more and more" complaints about efforts...

PITTSBURGH (AP) - Colleges nationwide have unconstitutionally barred students from handing out literature, protesting and gathering in support of the right to carry weapons on campus, students and an advocacy group say. Christine Brashier, a freshman at the Community College of Allegheny County near Pittsburgh, said a dean recently told her she had to stop distributing fliers for the group Students for Concealed Carry on Campus, which has chapters at many colleges, and destroy the pamphlets she had designed. "I won't be forced into silence. I just wanted to start a student organization. I didn't think it was going to...

A Community College of Allegheny County student yesterday publicly accused the school of trying to stop her from organizing a group advocating the right to carry concealed firearms on campus. Christine "Christa" Brashier, 24, of Squirrel Hill, who is studying to be an elementary school teacher, said she feels unsafe on the school's Allegheny campus and would like the right to carry a gun while on school property. Ms. Brashier yesterday said she was trying to organize a CCAC chapter of the national group Students for Concealed Carry on Campus when she was summoned to a meeting April 24 with...

PITTSBURGH, May 27, 2009—A student who wants to form a gun-rights group at the Community College of Allegheny County (CCAC) has been threatened with disciplinary action for her efforts. Student Christine Brashier has turned to the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) for help after reporting that administrators banned her informational pamphlets, ordered her to destroy all copies of them, and told her that further "academic misconduct" would not be tolerated. "CCAC has demonstrated a shocking lack of respect for the rights of free speech and free association," FIRE President Greg Lukianoff said. "Across the country, students are increasingly...

College students and faculty members with a concealed handgun license would be able to pack their firearms on campus under a bill that the Senate tentatively approved on Tuesday. The measure, passed on a 20-10 vote, was offered by a state senator who said he wants to give Texas students protection against mass shootings such as occurred at Virginia Tech University in 2007. Sen. Jeff Wentworth, R-San Antonio, said the right-to-carry measure also would protect students from other life-threatening situations. "When I read about massacre in Virginia (in 2007), I felt I would feel personally guilty if it woke up...

One of the principle claims made in Diane Sawyer's rigged campus carry experiment, recently aired on ABC's 20/20, was that having a gun wouldn't protect a college student, that ordinary people like college students aren't trained to handle stress, that they might shoot innocent people, and that the bad guy might take their gun away. Apparently someone forgot to tell a student in College Park, GA that they were better off without having a gun ready at hand...and at least ten college students say they are alive today because of it. From Atlanta, Georgia's WSBTV: A group of college students...

I've written about Missouri House Bill 668 before (with more here). The bill has several pro-self-defense provisions, including lowering the age of eligibility for carry permits from 23 to 21, and expanding the circumstances in which the "Castle Doctrine" applies. The biggest part of HB 668, though, came in an amendment that would end the status of Missouri college and university campuses as self-defense-free zones. Students, faculty, and staff, in other words, who are licensed to carry a defensive firearm nearly everywhere else in the state of Missouri would now be able to do so on campus, as well. Such...

Re: "Students and guns: poor mixers," by Susan Sanders Wansbrough, Friday Letters. Wansbrough cites a Harvard School of Public Health study that indicates a high percentage of students are irresponsible, and then asks, "And our legislators want to let these people carry loaded firearms on campus?" No, what we, the electorate, have asked legislators to do is to change the rules so that responsible people who have obtained their concealed handgun licenses can avail themselves of their basic right to self-defense. CHL holders have been thoroughly investigated, and the dire predictions by many of blood in the streets after drunken...

JEFFERSON CITY - Only supporters made their voices heard at a Senate hearing on a bill that would allow guns on college campuses. Five people defended a measure which would allow for college students to carry and conceal firearms on the state's college campuses. Originally, House Bill 668 was a measure to lower the age for a gun permit to 21 from 23. But then the legislative process ran it course, which led to an additional amendment to allow for concealed handguns on college campuses. The University of Missouri System and Missouri State University each opposed the measure when the...

There have been two markedly different tales of violence and bloodshed from two different college towns that ended two different ways, reflecting the vast differences in culture and the gaping chasm that exists between the political correctness of the gun-free zone mentality and the common sense of being prepared. Story #1 comes from Middletown, CT, where 21-year-old Johanna Justin-Jinich will not see another birthday because a man identified by police as Stephen Morgan shot her dead on May 6 at an off-campus bookstore café. Morgan was caught by a surveillance camera with a gun in his hand. Alarming about this...

COLORADO SPRINGS - A judge in the Springs is throwing out a case which could have allowed concealed weapons on CU campuses. Judge G. David Miller's action means the University of Colorado can continue to ban the concealed weapons on their three campuses, including UCCS. The lawsuit had been filed last year by a student group. The three students behind it argued their constitutional rights were being violated.

Bailey said he thought it was the end of his life and the lives of the 10 people inside his apartment for a birthday party after two masked men with guns burst in through a patio door. “They just came in and separated the men from the women and said, ‘Give me your wallets and cell phones,’” said George Williams of the College Park Police Department. Bailey said the gunmen started counting bullets. “The other guy asked how many (bullets) he had. He said he had enough,” said Bailey. That’s when one student grabbed a gun out of a backpack...

FORT WORTH — An 18-year-old Fort Worth man killed Tuesday afternoon inside a north Fort Worth apartment had apparently forced his way inside, armed with an aluminum bat, when he was shot by one of the apartment’s residents, investigators said. Derek Splawn, a student in the Keller school district, had been upset with the apartment’s 18-year-old resident and had reportedly threatened in an earlier telephone conversation "that he was tired of this and he was going to come over there," homicide Detective Curt Brannan said. Around 4 p.m. Tuesday, police said, Splawn made good on his word and had a...

Courtesy Oleg Volk, A Human Right There's been a shooting at Hampton University in Virginia: A former Hampton University student armed with three guns followed a pizza delivery man into the student's former dorm early Sunday, shot the delivery man and a dorm monitor, then turned the gun on himself, university officials said. All three survived. Here's how the university protected its students and employees: Following university policy, students, faculty and staff were notified via text message and email about the situation. Here's what Hampton president Dr. William R. Harvey had to say: The Hampton University community is praying for...

Mass public shootings are a horrific feature of modern life. Many of the bloodiest examples of this scourge have occurred on college campuses. As professors, we are particularly sensitive to this danger. Despite this – no, because of this – we support a bill currently pending in the Texas Legislature that would permit the concealed carrying of firearms on college and university campuses in the state by holders of concealed-handgun permits. Any public policy involving matters of life and death should be decided only after weighing carefully the competing risks. Examining the relevant facts and data indicates that permitting Texas...

Empty holster demonstration protests state laws and school policies prohibiting concealed handgun permit-holders from carrying on college campuses Photo: Oleg Volk, www.olegvolk.netThe organization “Students for Concealed Carry on Campus” (SCCC) is holding its third Empty Holster Protest this week on college campuses across the country. Says an e-mail sent by SCCC late last week: Students for Concealed Carry on Campus will hold its third national collegiate Empty Holster Protest during the week of April 20-24, 2009. Thousands of college students throughout the United States, organized under the banner of Students for Concealed Carry on Campus (SCCC), will attend classes wearing...

'THE HOLSTER IS A STATEMENT,' says UConn sophomore Philip Axelrod, 20, of Meriden, who is organizing a weeklong campaign on the Storrs campus next week, in which he and about a dozen other UConn students will wear empty holsters to class to protest their inability to carry handguns on campus. (PATRICK RAYCRAFT / HARTFORD COURANT / April 16, 2009) Philip Axelrod and Sara Adler say they don't want to be defenseless targets. "There are people out there who are off-balance and who shoot up schools," Axelrod, 20, said. "I don't want to be caught up in a situation where I...

On this 10th anniversary of the Columbine massacre, it is outrageous that there is nothing in place to stop a repeat or worse except our wish that there won't be. It is outrageous that when, not if, the next school shooting happens, the predominant voices from our elected representatives and the media, and those gullible enough to believe them, will be to demand more citizen disarmament. Let me tell you about a research paper, written by the foremost expert on the Columbine shootings. From "Guns in Schools," my Nov. 2006 "Rights Watch" column for Guns Magazine: "Students who bring guns...

It seems as if every liberal in Texas is up in arms over the issue of concealed carry on campus. Liberals' reasons seem to be endless, but the one most often echoed by the masses is how dangerous it would be for students to be allowed to carry handguns. Apparently, once a student is in possession of a legal weapon he will become a crazed killer, out to shoot anyone who disagrees with him. A concealed carry law will mean the end of safe campuses and it is likely that colleges across Texas will turn into war zones between rival...

COLUMBIA — The Missouri House gave first-round approval Wednesday to a bill that would greatly expand gun owners' rights in Missouri, including a provision allowing students with permits to carry concealed weapons on college campuses. While some see this as a positive development, others, including university officials, object to the legislation. “Missouri’s college students should be allowed to learn and exchange ideas in an environment free from the threat of concealed guns,” University of Missouri System President Gary Forsee said in a news release Thursday. “It is hard to imagine that such a proposal could gain support given the magnitude...

AUSTIN — Legislation allowing state university students and employees to carry their concealed handguns on campus appears to have enough pledged support from lawmakers to pass the full Texas House. The bill would prohibit public universities across Texas from creating rules that forbid concealed handgun license holders from carrying their pistols into a classroom, but it would allow private institutions to exempt themselves. Chances for passage in the House — if it gets there — look strong, as 76 members have signed on to support the bill, authored by Rep. Joe Driver, R-Garland. The House Public Safety Committee already has...

A student group at Oregon State University plans to promote gun rights with activities next week, including a rally for the right of concealed handgun license holders to be armed on campus. The rally, featuring Portland radio commentator Lars Larson, is set for 5 p.m. April 16 in the quad on campus. If the license holders carry pistols, they will violate a university rule against guns on campus. “The idea would be to get the university to confront the issue,” said RJ Friedman, president of the College Republicans at OSU, the group organizing what it calls “Second Amendment Week.” Gun-rights...

Does New York massacre give new firepower to bills filed in Austin? By Anita Miller News Editor San Marcos — When police in Binghamton, N.Y. went looking for the gunman who killed 13 people before committing suicide on Friday, the Associated Press reported they led out “a number of men in plastic handcuffs” while they sorted out who was who. Had there been someone in that immigrant community center licensed to carry a concealed handgun who had drawn their weapon and ethnically resembled the shooter, police might have shot him by mistake. Tragic as it is, the New York case...

Holders of concealed handgun licenses could bring their weapons to college campuses if Rio Grande Valley lawmakers have their way. A proposal working its way through the state Legislature would lift a ban on handguns on campuses of both private and public institutions. Proponents of the bill view it as a way to preserve gun owners' rights while promoting safety on campus, arguing that if students or staff on campus had weapons, they would have a better chance defending themselves against a Virginia Tech-style shooting. Rep. Kino Flores, D-Palmview, one of the bill's co-authors, said he views the measure as...

A few weeks ago, I saw a petition that invited people to support the rights of those who are concealed carry permit holders to carry their concealed firearm on campus. Recently, there have been several mass shootings — all in gun-free zones. Obviously, some murderers do not care about the law and seem attracted to areas where citizens are stripped of the right to defend themselves, like colleges. This issue is a hot-button topic for the government, as well as individual citizens. The Texas legislature voted Monday on an updated campus carry law. The amendment, which would allow universities to...

-------------------cut--------------------------- A terrifying fantasy caused otherwise rational people to lose sight of reason and ignore the laws of probability. (You’re almost twice as likely to pick the winning Powerball numbers as to be killed by a shark in U.S. waters.) A similar epidemic of baseless paranoia now grips Texas. But the perceived threat isn’t sharks; it’s concealed handgun license holders. In response to Republican state Sen. Jeff Wentworth’s bill, which would allow holders of state-issued concealed-handgun licenses to carry concealed handguns on college campuses, opponents have dusted off their own terrifying fantasies — the same contrived, hypothetical scenarios they used...

Over the past couple of months, the issue of concealed carry on campus has come to the forefront of debate in both our Student Government and this newspaper. While I expected this issue to die in January after being overwhelmingly shot down in SG, it surfaced again this week as the House Public Safety Committee debated a bill Monday that would permit college students to carry firearms on campus. In this debate, more than 100 people, including UT faculty and students, voiced their opinions with relatively equal representation on each side of the issue. At times, I have been shocked...

In Kentucky, there is one last chance that we will see a bill passed that would extend some semblance of self-defense to students, faculty and staff on campus. The Senate Judiciary will meet one final time today during recess today to discuss one bill and it is critical that they attach our amendment to HB 419. Please contact Senate Leadership and Senate Judiciary Committee members immediately and ask them to attach this amendment to 419 and send it to the Senate. The NRA-backed amendment would strip HB 419 of its original language and would require Universities to comply with current...

College and university campuses are supposed to be bastions of learning and the expression of different ideas, but when it comes to the Second Amendment, the door to the ivory tower is evidently closed. Last October, Central Connecticut State University Prof. Paula Anderson reportedly assigned students in her communications class the task of presenting a discussion on a “relevant issue in the media.” When student John Walhberg and two other students suggested that the Virginia Tech massacre could have been mitigated or stopped altogether if students or professors had been armed, Wahlberg wound up being quizzed by police about firearms...

College students, faculty and employees who are licensed to carry concealed handguns should be able to tote them on their campuses, where they are now banned, according to a bill filed Monday by Rep. Ernest Wooton, R-Belle Chasse. The measure is identical to one Wooton abandoned on the House floor last year after getting the House committee he chairs to approve it 11-3. Wooton said last year he counted 46 votes of support, seven shy of what was needed, and withdrew the bill in the last stages of the session. Wooton served notice at that time he would bring the...

MONMOUTH, Ore. - Two Oregon legislators believe the state's college campuses are violating state law when it comes to concealed weapons. It is legal in Oregon to carry a licensed concealed weapon in a public place, which gun rights advocates insist includes colleges and universities. But campus officials have policies that state otherwise. The issue came to light again after Western Oregon University student Jeffrey L. Maxwell was cited last month for possession of a gun in a public building on the Monmouth campus. Rep. Bruce Hanna (R-Roseburg) and Rep. Kim Thatcher (R-Keizer) , as well as some students, believe...

The following dates and places all stand in wake of tragedy: April 20, 1999, Columbine High School; April 16, 2007, Virginia Tech; Feb. 14, 2008, Northern Illinois University. On each of these dates and campuses, a school shooting occurred that changed any parent, faculty or student associated with an institute for education. The outbreak of violence that many people associate with poor neighborhoods, or even third world countries, happened on what was generally perceived as a safe environment: a campus. Since these horrific events have transpired, an organization has surfaced to suggest its version of a solution. The Students for...

AUSTIN — Michael Guzman uses his concealed handgun license to carry a lightweight stainless steel .45-caliber pistol for self-defense. The 25-year-old Texas State University senior, a former Marine, takes his Kimber Ultra Carry II firearm just about everywhere — except school. State law prohibits him from bringing the firearm on campus. Guzman would like to see that change this year, and legislators appear to be listening. Lawmakers are drafting bills — one to authorize the ability to carry a gun on campus and another to allow licensed handgun owners to openly carry their weapons — that likely will be the...

One minute, Suzanne was eating lunch with her mother and father. The next, the happy hubbub of the restaurant was silenced when a pickup truck crashed through the brick, mortar, and glass. How could that happen? The driver emerged, but Suzanne noticed he wasn’t dazed or drunk; he was angry and purposeful. Then, she saw the guns. He stepped over the debris and began to shoot patrons. She must be dreaming. Her father leaped to his feet, charged the gunman, was shot, and fell to the floor. When the gunman turned his back to shoot others, she remembered: she had...

During the week of November 17-21, Students for Concealed Carry on Campus will hold its first national Pitch it to the People Week. The Pitch it to the People Week is intended to serve as an opportunity for all SCCC members to contribute to diminishing the negative preconceived notions that permeate most debates about concealed carry on college campuses. "SCCC's National Pitch it to the People Week is a great opportunity for college students, young and old alike, to join with parents, university faculty and concerned community members in making the case for lawful self defense on our nation's college...

SAN MARCOS, Texas -- Violence on college campuses is a growing concern among students, and some say it's time to take protection into their own hands -- by carrying guns. Mike Guzman, a senior at Texas State University-San Marcos, is among 30,000 members of Students For Concealed Carry on Campus, a group dedicated to a nationwide effort to make it legal for students to carry concealed handguns on campus, San Antonio television news station KSAT reported. "It's a tool that we're allowed to use across the street in larger society, so why not on campus?" Guzman said. Concealed handguns may...

A chapter of a national gun advocacy group that supports allowing students to carry weapons to class may open at Florida Atlantic University this fall. Students for Concealed Carry on Campus was created after the April 2007 shootings on the Virginia Tech University campus in Blacksburg, Va., where 32 people and gunman Cho Seung-Hui died. About the organization Students for Concealed Carry on Campus promotes its cause with several initiatives, including the 'empty holster protest,' where students, faculty and staff who support allowing guns on campus wear holsters to school. Group leaders said 3,800 students nationwide participated in April's event....

Cox Washington Bureau Washington —- The idea of giving college students the right to carry concealed weapons on campus may seem counterintuitive after last year's Virginia Tech massacre. But the proposal is deadly serious, said young men and women from colleges across the country who attended the first Students for Concealed Carry on Campus National Conference on Friday. Their movement was galvanized by the 2007 shootings, said Michael Guzman, president of the group and a senior at Texas State University. The issue is not keeping guns out of the hands of college students, he said, but whether properly licensed students...

The first convention of Students for Concealed Carry on Campus (SCCC) featured at least one speaker who said college students bearing arms on campus would not make anyone safer. Paul Helmke, president of the Brady Campaign, a gun control advocacy group, said studies show that college students are more likely to engage in risky behavior than the general population. “When I look back on my college days, maybe it was a different era in the late ‘60s, but most of my fraternity brothers didn’t have criminal records – not yet, most of them, even those who were in ROTC and...

On August 1, 2008, college students from throughout the United States will attend the first Students for Concealed Carry on Campus National Conference at the National Press Club in Washington D.C., funded by the Second Amendment Foundation. This noteworthy, one-day event will feature many distinguished speakers and guests. Among them will be Dr. John R. Lott, world reputed scholar and author of More Guns Less Crime: Understanding Crime and Gun Control Laws, and many more. SCCC and SAF will be providing students with one night free at The District Hotel and students traveling over 750 miles are eligible to receive...

READING, WRITING, WEAPONS Texas students join a nationwide movement for the right to bear arms while at college BLANCO — Cameron Schober, a 22-year-old Texas State University student, aimed his semi-automatic pistol at the outline of a man's torso just as a gust of wind blew down the target. "Everybody hold up!" hollered instructor Mike Cox. As six other shooters lowered their weapons, Schober scrambled to brace the cardboard target at a makeshift range on a deserted Hill Country ranch. Schober and fellow student Bill Downs were among 13 people who recently completed Cox's shooting proficiency and eight-hour classroom course,...

On May 27, Louisiana Representative Ernest Wooton recalled House Bill 199 to be heard on Wednesday, June 4. This bill would allow students (faculty, staff) who have the proper state-issued credentials to carry concealed weapons onto public Louisiana colleges. I need EVERY Louisiana freeper to please get on board with this. The first thing to do is very, very easy. Tell me the names of your area newspapers, and either include e-mail addresses or the website or something so I can get hold of them. If any of you have inside tracks or contacts, or even if you'd prefer to...

Link Only: David Burnett: Disarming citizens emboldens criminals - The Pro Guns on Campus ArgumentEven though I wrote the darn thing, I still have to link to it.

The holsters at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi are empty this week, but the symbolic call to action has highlighted campus security again, just one week after Texas A&M University-Kingsville was placed on lockdown after an armed suspect was reported to be on campus. Dozens of students from the A&M-Corpus Christi Chapter of Students for Concealed Carry on Campus have worn empty holsters this week as part of a national movement to allow the carrying of concealed handguns on college campuses. The idea is that having a handgun readily available in college classrooms could avert outbreaks of deadly violence on campus,...