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Virginia Tech victim's parents lay out the case for campus carry
"Speaking for myself, I would give anything if someone on campus; a professor, one of the trained military or guardsman taking classes or another student could have saved my daughter by shooting Cho before he killed our loved ones. Because professors, staff and students are precluded from protecting themselves on campus, Cho, a student at Virginia Tech himself, was able to simply walk on campus and go on a killing rampage with no worry that anyone would stop him.
I ask a simple question: Would the other parents of victims be forever thankful if a professor or student was allowed to carry a firearm and could have stopped Seung-Hui Cho before their loved one was injured or killed? I would be. I also suspect that the tragedy may not have occurred at all if Cho knew that either faculty members or students were permitted to carry their own weapons on campus. Cho took his own life before campus police were able to reach him and put a stop to his killing spree."
3 Comments | Leave a comment
Dave,
When society decides to start paying me a salary and, more importantly, providing bulletproof (pardon the pun) civil and criminal protections for any actions I may or may not take on its behalf, I'll be happy to start defending random strangers from harm. Until then, the risks and costs - imposed by that "civilization" you mention - are not worth it to me.
I carry to protect myself and my immediate family. Everyone else has the opportunity to do the same, it's not my fault if they don't avail themselves of it.
Time for the Virginia Citizens Defense League to get a new webpage. This article would be awesome to link to but for the fact that the page looks like it's stuck in the 1990s. Doesn't anyone there know about CSS?
...I was a cop for 32 years. Self defense, and the defense of others, is a DUTY. It's a civic duty, more important than the other civic duties of charity, recycling, public service in service clubs or on your own. Just as capitalism requires us to shop and get good value, our duty to ourselves and our citizen friends requires us to defend against the jerks and criminals who make a living out of preying on us. If you can do that, you should. You must. It is what makes civilization.