sometimes a picture is all you need

So here, have two:

conceal carry on campus

So, I'm a member of the Virginia Citizens Defense League (which is so much better than the NRA for defending gun rights in Virginia), and as part of that I get their weekly newsletters via email.

Well, this was in today's email:

VCDL member Dr. Jerry Coffey told me that he was at the Richmond gun
show last Saturday and VCDL member Alfred Mercer let him sit and rest
for a few minutes at the VCDL table. A young man in a Virginia Tech
t-shirt (I am withholding his name) came up with a concealed carry
question. After a few questions of our own we learned that he was a
current student at VT and held a concealed carry permit.

At the time of the Cho massacre, this young man was in an adjacent
classroom building where bloody escapees from the carnage sought
refuge.

He described the gaggle of PhDs at the front of the room who
apparently had no idea how to protect themselves or their students
from the wholesale murder going on next door. His first thought was
that (in compliance with VT policy) his pistol was far away in his
apartment where it could NOT do anybody any good.

So, if this student had been allowed to carry his firearm on campus as he is allowed to carry it just about everywhere else in the state, he could have stopped the massacre. Gun Free Zones are victim disarmament zones. They are criminal empowerment zones.

But they have Gun Control in the UK!

More reporting on the 'effectiveness' of the UK's gun controls can be found here:

http://www.city-journal.org/html/eon2007-04-09td.html

What is striking is that despite wall to wall coverage with Big Brother style Closed Circuit TV's and draconian gun & knife controls which prevent honest citizens from defending themselves in any way, violent crime has only gone up.

On the VT shootings: balancing gun rights & gun controls.

I wanted to take some time before posting about the shootings at Virginia Tech. For one, because I have a friend that goes there (he’s doing fine, thanks), and two, because people need a chance to grieve before calmly reflecting upon a tragedy and what can be done to prevent further tragedies.

That said, I would like to share my thoughts on the issue.

First, I think that the following people should not be able to buy or own weapons: 1) the mentally retarded (sorry, I hate the PC terms for them), 2) the insane, 3) convicted felons. To my understanding of the law, I know at least 2 & 3 are already banned from owning weapons. In the case of the VT shooter, he was insane, but the bureaucracy failed to inform the government system which provides the backbone of all background checks. This is a gross failure, and Virginia Governor Tim Kaine has taken steps to rectify this, as is necessary.

However, there is more than that. People who take the time to get the training and the license to carry a concealed weapon should be allowed to carry that weapon anywhere, with the possible exceptions of courthouses. In courthouses, I think that the only people who should have arms are Judges, Lawyers, and Cops (and all 3 groups should be armed), because by participating in the justice system, they are placing their lives in jeopardy whenever they deal with violent criminal offenders.

Virginia Tech blatantly refused to let law abiding citizens to carry weapons onto their campus for protection. They openly cheered a legislative victory that solidified their ‘gun free zones’ which were supposed to protect them. But as we see time and time again, gun free zones do not protect anybody but the offender. Criminals don’t bother to obey laws. Government should try to limit the ability of criminals to do harm, but Government should not limit the ability of honest citizens from defending themselves.

This issue is very personal for me, because I both hold a conceal carry permit and I work at a university. I do not carry while I am at work. I leave it in the car, as required by current law. But there isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t wonder what would happen, what I would do, if something like the VT shooting were to happen here. And it’s not like we don’t have our share of crazies or shootings either. One of my coworkers here had lived in some apartments near the campus for nearly a decade while he saved up for a home, and he described to me the various times he’s heard gunshots. Also, recently on campus a non-student was found in one of the computer labs with a concealed butcher’s knife on him. He was arrested, kicked out, and charged with trespassing. But what if he comes back with a gun now? He certainly has a score to settle now. So, I feel justified in my desire to carry, but am prevented only by my employer, who I do not feel can guarantee me adequate security.

I’ve also heard what the gun control groups have been saying about this. I’ve heard them say that perhaps a waiting period for gun purchases would have helped. Well, there already was one. Virginia has a ‘one handgun per month’ law, which is to prevent gun trafficking. I have no problem with this law. The times that I’ve wanted to buy more than one handgun, I’ve simply waited a month. And that’s exactly what the VT shooter did. He waited a month to buy his second handgun. So obviously a new waiting period would not have stopped him either.

Then there is the argument that, “well, the shooter must have used hi capacity magazines in his handgun, and those were banned under the Assault Weapons Ban which recently expired, so we should ban them again”. This is wrong on several counts. First of all the AWB only banned the production of new hi capacity magazines for civilian use in the US, it did not ban the sale of existing hi capacity magazines. So, the AWB basically just made the price of these items go up for the decade that it was in place. Now that the ban is gone, the price has gone back down. Some states have put actual bans on hi capacity magazines, limiting people to 10 or 20 rounds. Virginia is not one of those states.

But what if we did ban all magazines above 10 rounds? Would it have made a difference? Sometimes I wonder about this. I usually carry a revolver, because I’ve had too many random jams with semi-auto pistols. The magazine springs have to stretched periodically if you’re going to keep them loaded all the time, otherwise they loose their tension and won’t properly feed the round into the chamber. I have grown to distrust this. Revolvers will shoot every time. Call me old fashioned. My revolver holds 5 rounds, and is only good at close range (under 25 yards at the most). So in an actual gun fight, I wouldn’t want to go up against somebody with a long barreled Glock with a 33 round magazine. No, definitely not, as I would be at a tactical disadvantage.

But does that mean I think we should ban these magazines to improve my tactical advantage? Again, banning them will not make them disappear, it will only make the existing magazines worth more on the black market. It may have made the VT shooter’s task of obtaining the magazine more difficult, but somebody with enough determination would not have been stopped.

Furthermore, what difference does a 10 round vs. a 33 round magazine really make? I’ve seen videos of trained shooters swap out three 10 round magazines in the time it would take me to unload one 33 round one. So with practice, even 10 round magazines can be just as deadly.

More to the point, even somebody armed with just a 5 shot revolver like mine can put a stop to a shooting. In the case of the Utah Mall shooting, an off-duty officer who was carrying a concealed weapon (against mall rules, btw), was able to stop a man armed with a shotgun and a handgun.

Mass shooters are cowards; they are looking to kill unarmed people. Any armed response is enough to put them from an offensive to a defensive mode, and this defensive mode then gives the police enough time to move in and finish the job if necessary.

Another thing that bothered me about the shootings was the overall victim mentality. You will note that the classrooms with the highest number of dead and wounded were the ones that responded passively to Cho’s attack. Laying down and hiding underneath your desk is no way to save your life. In those classrooms where the students managed to barricade the doors, they managed to save lives. A man with a gun is not impervious to attack. Even if you don’t have a gun on you, you have objects near you that can be used as missiles. Books can be thrown, desks can be piled up, doors can be barricaded. The shooter himself could have been rushed while he was reloading.

Why did we not see more of this? I think this is because people have gotten used to the idea of somebody else being responsible for their own protection. This pacifist mentality must be dropped. In ancient China, pacifist Buddhist monks trained with arms, and bravely stood up to tyrants, pirates, and criminals of all types; yet they remained pacifist at heart. That is to say, it is possible to be a pacifist, to be a humanist, who loves his fellow man and would seek no harm to him, while at the same time preparing oneself for conflict with evil men, should the need arise.

No amount of gun control will stop evil men from doing harm to innocent people. Just look at the UK, where they have banned private handgun ownership. Criminals there have learned how to obtain weapons on the black market, while honest law abiding citizens must remain unarmed like sheep before wolves. Crime has soared there. This is madness.

Although I applaud the steps taken by Governor Tim Kaine to fix the bureaucracy that failed, I understand that even the best system fails now and then. One day a shooter with no mental health or criminal history will buy a gun, and go on another shooting spree. I don’t hold any illusions about preventing it. What I hope, is that his victims will have what they need to protect themselves.

“Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote.” Ben Franklin