Posted on 04/20/2007 9:48:58 AM PDT by archy
Unarmed and vulnerable
Bradford B. Wiles
Wiles, of New Castle, is a graduate student at Virginia Tech.
On Aug. 21 at about 9:20 a.m., my graduate-level class was evacuated from the Squires Student Center. We were interrupted in class and not informed of anything other than the following words: "You need to get out of the building."
Upon exiting the classroom, we were met at the doors leading outside by two armor-clad policemen with fully automatic weapons, plus their side arms. Once outside, there were several more officers with either fully automatic rifles and pump shotguns, and policemen running down the street, pistols drawn.
It was at this time that I realized that I had no viable means of protecting myself.
Please realize that I am licensed to carry a concealed handgun in the commonwealth of Virginia, and do so on a regular basis. However, because I am a Virginia Tech student, I am prohibited from carrying at school because of Virginia Tech's student policy, which makes possession of a handgun an expellable offense, but not a prosecutable crime.
I had entrusted my safety, and the safety of others to the police. In light of this, there are a few things I wish to point out.
First, I never want to have my safety fully in the hands of anyone else, including the police.
Second, I considered bringing my gun with me to campus, but did not due to the obvious risk of losing my graduate career, which is ridiculous because had I been shot and killed, there would have been no graduate career for me anyway.
Third, and most important, I am trained and able to carry a concealed handgun almost anywhere in Virginia and other states that have reciprocity with Virginia, but cannot carry where I spend more time than anywhere else because, somehow, I become a threat to others when I cross from the town of Blacksburg onto Virginia Tech's campus.
Of all of the emotions and thoughts that were running through my head that morning, the most overwhelming one was of helplessness.
That feeling of helplessness has been difficult to reconcile because I knew I would have been safer with a proper means to defend myself.
I would also like to point out that when I mentioned to a professor that I would feel safer with my gun, this is what she said to me, "I would feel safer if you had your gun."
The policy that forbids students who are legally licensed to carry in Virginia needs to be changed.
I am qualified and capable of carrying a concealed handgun and urge you to work with me to allow my most basic right of self-defense, and eliminate my entrusting my safety and the safety of my classmates to the government.
This incident makes it clear that it is time that Virginia Tech and the commonwealth of Virginia let me take responsibility for my safety.
Looks to me like that law is tailored for the occasion. Hope someone uses it.
This is an excellent op-ed piece..... thank the author for writing it at bwiles@vt.edu
Concur. *More* at FReeppost *here*.
My response was to ask him if he had heard about the incident in that gun store where this fellow walked past the patrol car parked out front, into the store and past a customer, to where the cop was talking to the owner at the counter, and then pull out a pistol and demand money... upon which the cop, the store owner, and the customer all pulled out their weapons and dropped him?
In other words, I might sympathize politely with him and would feel badly if a relative or someone I knew began wildly waving a weapon about and paid with their lives, but only a complete loon would think that that was an acceptable manner of behavior, and I might express sympathy with their demise -but inwardly I would know that the gene pool is better off when they can no longer affect it. There is a reason why most people find the "Darwin Awards" so apt and oftentimes so amusing.
You seem to be deferring to others to solve that.
Thanks for the reference, mate. Copied and saved.
“You make it sound like everyone would be running around wild-eyed waving handguns in the air, but that’s Hollyweird stuff.”
Since the incident I have been closely watching the DUmmie postings. When this subject of concealed carry is brought up this is EXACTLY what they think would have happened. People shooting wildly in all directions and a higher number of dead than the 32. In the past I have seen this mentioned multiple times over there. Poor saps really do not have a clue.
Link to original and *partner* statute text here:
18 US Code, § 241. Conspiracy against rights
18 US Code, § 242. Deprivation of rights under color of law
“The police would not have know who these kids were. There’s got to be another answer.”
leave it to the armed students as they are not as easilly confused as the cops apparently were.
Actually, that student should sue the school for reckless endangerment. Their decision to keep their students helpless resulted in death and injury.
The school removed the right to self defense while not providing adequate security.
Better to be judged by 12 than carried by 6.
Your post is filled with absurd assumptions.
No wonder you came to an irrational conclusion.
You suffer from a bad case of inability to be in another's shoes. Up against the wall with a crazy executing your friends by walking down the line while YOU cry? Maybe you need to be there.
Whats unsafe about "thousands" of trained individuals carrying hand guns? We have tens of thousands of young folks carrying weapons now in Iraq, How do they manage not to shoot each other?
Ones safety is ultimately ion one'sown hands. There is nothing you or anyone can do about that fact, but still we got people lookin' for Momma to protect us. Is there something inherently dangerous about one being able to use deadly force? Many can use their bare hands to generate deadly force, or a chair, or a lamp. Its not about guns, its about a culture war that conservatives are losing because they do not have very clear ideas.
“I know some will jump on me for this but I have a problem, again, with thousands of students carrying weapons on campus. Considering the original post, what do people think would have happened if these students had been armed and went running out of the building, weapons drawn, and met a bunch of heavly armed police? “
I’m not going to “jump” on you, simply point out the logical fallacy of your argument. In Virginia, there are roughly six million people, of whom just over 100,000 have concealed handgun permits. Add to that those who carry openly without a permit, which while legal in Virginia, is relatively uncommon. So for the sake argument let’s assume that of 6,000,000 people in Virginia, 150,000 people have the ability and the willingness to lawfully carry a handgun. I think that number is high, but let’s go with it.
Now, let’s consider how many at any given time are actually carrying. Those who don’t actually carry a gun assume that people with permits carry guns all the time. They don’t. Actually, I’d be surprised if the average CHP holder carries more than 25% of the time. The plain truth is that a gun is heavy and quite literally a pain in the hip to carry around with you all the time. Then there are the idiotic laws to contend with, such as Virginia’s restaurant ban which restricts where a gun can be carried and thus further reduces the likelihood of someone carrying at any given time. If you carry a gun, you must have a way to secure it when you go some place where you can’t carry.
Do the math, and it’s highly unlikely that you’re going to find more than 1-2% of the population actually carrying a gun in most social circumstances, with the obvious exception of events like gun shows that attract those who carry guns. The reason why you’re not going to have this mass shootout scenario that we keep hearing about is because you’re just not going to find a lot of people carrying guns at any one given time.
Even if students and faculty at Virginia Tech had been able to carry, it is doutful that more than a handful would have been carrying at the time and place that this murderer went on his rampage. But you see that’s the key. All that was really needed was one or two people with both the tools and willingness to resist.
Larry Hincker; VA Tech spokesman and Vice President.
2005 - "I think it's fair to say that we believe guns don't belong in the classroom. In an academic environment, we believe you should be free from fear." - Larry Hincker2006 - "I'm sure the university community is appreciative of the General Assembly's actions, because this will help parents, students, faculty and visitors feel safe on our campus." - Larry Hincker celebrating the defeat of the bill allowing guns on campus
Larry Hincker; VA Tech spokesman and Vice President
First, I want to see him lose his job. Then I want to see the civil suits by parents and family members break him financially.
And having him sentenced to prison would be fitting, but I don't expect it. However, if the father or brother of a murdered student kills Hincker, there'd be no problem about it if I was on the jury.
Hincker was Cho's accomplice, plain anbd simple.
“I know some will jump on me for this but I have a problem, again, with thousands of students carrying weapons on campus.”
Ridiculous assumption. Almost nobody under the age of 21 has a CCW permit. It is way more likely that a few professors and grad students could be armed, not thousands of students.
Unfortunately I expect that he won't be held personally responsible in any lawsuit the university will. I think it's right that the university be held accountable for negligence and irresponsible acts but on the other side of that coin the whole university community will suffer if they have to pay out tens of millions of dollars.
I'd like to see a strong community push to end the PC Gun Free Zone policy. Students getting very vocal about ending that and establishing firearms and self-defense classes and CCL prep classes in the school. Establish a shooting club and a range. Get hardcore 2nd Amendment on them. Let no liberal illogic go unchallenged in the harshest loudest terms.
Honestly, there shouldn’t be any publicly funded schools, because the concept of running a school is inconsistent with the concept of providing all Constitutional rights that a person would have on public property. But as long as there are, they should be free to set their own policies on guns just as a private school should be (though most private schools aren’t, due to state laws prohibiting guns at any school). There are different kinds of colleges. reasonably selective ones should reasonably be able to allow guns on campus IF they are allowed to kick out and decline to admit students based on mental illness (which is unfortunately not the case with the current ADA). On the other hand, a open-admissions or near open-admissions college in a crime infested area is by definition admitting a lot of sketchy people as students, and also has all sorts of random non-students roaming through some of its facilities. Prohibiting students (not faculty or staff) from carrying guns on that sort of campus makes a lot of sense, given that the student body may include gang members, professional drug dealers, etc. Needless to say, this latter sort of school also needs metal detectors for enforcement, to avoid the phenomenon of the criminals having guns while the law-abiding students don’t. And lockers in which to check guns at the entrance to campus must be available, to avoid infringing on students’ rights to carry elsewhere while going to and from the campus.
There should also be a federal law, or if necessary a Constitutional amendment, protecting any individual or institution, public or private, from liability for anything that happens as a result of (or arguably as a result of) a policy of permitting guns on their property. That fear of liability is what drives most prohibitions on guns at both public and private establishments, and this ends up being a huge threat to the Second Amendment, since it results in many people regarding carrying a gun as a very unusual and thus suspect activity. It makes no difference what the Second Amendment says now, if a sufficient percentage of the population is shifted to a belief that it needs to be repealed.
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