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Thoughts on arming faculty/students and 9/11
Instpundit has a post on a South Carolina move in this direction, and a link to an American Spectator article on the subject. I've seen in the weeks since Va Tech quite a few such articles.
I can't help but wonder about the impact of 9/11 on such perceptions. I rather suspect that, prior to that date, such logical suggestions would have been treated as idotiocy, extremism, or both (or, more likely, not been written for fear of the author being seen as such, or killed by an editor out of fear his journal would be so viewed). Perhaps on 9/11, we learned to fight back? Or perhaps, as my friend Gale Norton (formerly my boss, and then Sec. of Interior) pointed out, in the Cold War we knew that a gun was no defense against the menace of a nuclear attack, but in 9/11 had to reflect that if one person or pilot on each plane had had a pistol in their pocket, the only deaths would have been those of the terrorists?
Look at the response to Columbine. April 1999: calls for gun laws, denunciations of the NRA.
Response to Va Tech, April 2007: Calls for better reporting of mental adjudications, something like consensus that further gun laws would have not changed anything, calls for allowing faculty or students to be armed in self-defense.
I suppose there are other factors to be considered -- expansion of the internet and erosion of the power of the MSM, etc.. But I still think there is a sea-change in underlying world-views.
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Recently, Tempe was identified as having one of the highest crime rates in the Phoenix Metro area. As a graduate student at ASU, I regularly took night classes, and had to walk almost 2 miles between my class and my car as late as 9pm. If I had been an attractive younger female, this would have been a recipe for disaster. However, even still, I never felt more vulnerable than at those times. Never once, for over two years did I see a single campus police office during that walk home. How ironic that one of my night classes was in public policy analysis, and yet the school has shown so little understanding of the circumstance that enables victimization. In Arizona, there is no statute against having a firearm on a University campus, though there is a statute empowering the Universities to make their own rules and enforce them. Violation of the rule that prohibits firearms on campus is pretty much a misdemeanor trespass and suspension. While the effects of such a charge on a graduate student’s future career could be economically lethal, the decision to not arm ones self could be even worse still. Lucky for me, I graduated without incident, but not everybody is so lucky. Until, the Universities go on 24-hour lock-down, and enforce a sterile zone like an airport terminal, students will always be caught between the fantasyland mentality of University administrators and the reality that predators thrive and prosper from those delusions. But a lock-down is not the answer, nor is it in the spirit of higher education.
Sorry about the formating of the previous post...here it is again.
Recently, Tempe was identified as having one of the highest crime rates in the Phoenix Metro area. As a graduate student at ASU, I regularly took night classes, and had to walk almost 2 miles between my class and my car as late as 9pm. If I had been an attractive younger female, this would have been a recipe for disaster. However, even still, I never felt more vulnerable than at those times. Never once, for over two years did I see a single campus police office during that walk home.
How ironic that one of my night classes was in public policy analysis, and yet the school has shown so little understanding of the circumstance that enables victimization. In Arizona, there is no statute against having a firearm on a University campus, though there is a statute empowering the Universities to make their own rules and enforce them. Violation of the rule that prohibits firearms on campus is pretty much a misdemeanor trespass and suspension. While the effects of such a charge on a graduate student’s future career could be economically lethal, the decision to not arm ones self could be even worse still.
Lucky for me, I graduated without incident, but not everybody is so lucky. Until, the Universities go on 24-hour lock-down, and enforce a sterile zone like an airport terminal, students will always be caught between the fantasyland mentality of University administrators and the reality that predators thrive and prosper from those delusions. But a lock-down is not the answer, nor is it in the spirit of higher education.
Why is it that so few people have advocated allowing CCW holders to carry at VT? As CCW holders we surely have a sense that this may have mitigated the VT shooting as it already has for other incidents. But, I have seen/heard almost no advocacy for allowing CCW at VT or any other school. It has all the advantages of eliminating unopposed killing fields without validating the anti-gunners fear of "arming untrained impulsive kids". The status quo continues in promoting "gun-free zones" while I have this intense feeling that we should be promoting CCW on campus as the most practical and immediately do-able partial solution.
Spending a great deal of time studying the undercurrents of our society, I cautiously concur.
It's not a lock...yet. But getting pretty darned close.