I heard this guy on NPR at lunchtime. Interesting argument. As he put it, a mother legally can carry a handgun for protection all day long, but when she comes to campus for a night class, she can’t. After Virginia Tech, you have to wonder what would have happened there if students had been armed.
Va. Tech Killings Underscore Guns-on-Campus Campaign
Some college students are pushing for their schools to allow them to carry guns on campus.
They say they should have the right to protect themselves in the event of a shooting like the one that left 33 people dead at Virginia Tech.
Andrew Dysart, a George Mason University senior, has organized a chapter of Students for Concealed Carry on Campus.
The group hopes to convince legislators to overturn a Virginia law that allows universities to prohibit students, faculty and staff members with gun permits from carrying their weapons on campus.
Dysart says that the students at Tech should have had a chance to defend themselves.
Virginia law allows schools to decide whether to allow students with concealed-weapons permits to carry their guns on campus.
One state school, Blue Ridge Community College, does allow it. Schools cannot prohibit non-students or other outsiders from carrying weapons onto campuses if they have legal permits.
In my city, students get attacked often. They should be able to defend themselves.
#3 – Raff – Perhaps.. What was the conflict at VA tech again? Oh right, there really was no conflict.. just a nut with a gun. No argument to be solved with words. Just unbridled killing. If those 33 students were all carrying guns, I’ll bet more of them would be alive today.
What do you think creates anger? Conflicts? George W Bush was angry at Saddam Hussein because good ol’ Saddam was taunting the Americans and former president Bush (having doormats resembling his face isn’t nice, is it?) in particular after the first Gulf War… What to do? Crush Iraq and its leader. There was no conflict… yet he went ahead. Just a nut with an army.
So, what if those 33 students had been carrying a gun. Who says that some of them wouldn’t end up in an argument and blow away their opponent because they lacked debating skills? More guns is not the answer.
And btw… Cho had bought his guns legally. What IF the USA had European gun laws… perhaps it would never have happened?!
#6 – GigG – Can you find one case where two or more people who had concealed carry permits ever had a shoot out?
Can you prove that they didn’t? What I can prove is this.
#11 – Raff – An armed society is a polite society.
Nope, it’s a society full of fear.
Speaking as someone who lost a buddy (Jamie was a former co-worker) in the massacre at Virginia Tech, I honestly wish there had been someone else in the classroom who could have taken the guy out. At least give us a fighting chance.
I live in NC where I have a concealed carry permit. However, the permit doesn’t do me much good if half the places I want to go do not allow firearms: the local Chili’s to grab a burger and a Coke, a nearby Goodwill to drop off a clothing donation, to my place of employment (which is in a very rough area) or even to some of the local hardware stores.
Let’s face it: gun control laws only mop up the mess by attempting to punish people AFTER they violated the law. Not one “No Guns Allows” sign has ever prevented a crime.
Except maybe my favorite sign: “Protected by Smith & Wesson”
27,
concealed weapons..
Hmm, I wonder if MORe people would be in fights if weapons WERENT concealed??
I would think that 99.9% of all hand weapons ARE concealed, and any gun fight would be FROM such weapons. they may not be Licensed, but they ARE concealed.
31.
And what is the motivation to kill someone that is ALREADY passed out in front of you…NOT being able to see their reaction as the bullet Zips into them. NO SATISFACTION…
If it were up to me, I’d much prefer open carry. If you are a living breathing human being, you have a right to defend yourself. On the other hand, if you want to go to school at Virginia Tech (or fill in other school, business, etc.) you have to abide by their rules.
Interestingly enough, when my father went to USC in the late 1940s, there was a rifle range right across the street from (perhaps on, I forget) campus. Now, it is mostly crack houses.
This is a laugh. Those kids at VT were so terrified, they wouldn’t have been able to shoot back even if they had Uzis. It would have taken a few of them, even unarmed, to over power the shooter while he was reloading if they had worked up the balls. The only thing having armed students would have done was to create confusion for law enforcement.
“The Earps were in Tombstone, Arizona, moron.”
That’s where they ended up. They first “tamed” Dodge City.
Read some history. I’m too polite to call you
a dribbling idiot in return.
Stun device or mace, maybe. More guns is not the answer.
The angriest guys I know have carry permits.
WOOT NRA
The NRA was a moderately pro gun control organization. Clinton needed a villain to blame for the 1994 vote, and that’s who he selected. The NRA was taken by surprise by the number of people who joined, at Bill Clinton’s recommendation as an effective civil rights organization. They are slowly returning to their old ways, pushing moderate gun control on hand guns and semi auto rifles.
The Republicans were also taken by surprise, and the movers and shakers in the party were also pro gun control. They still have not gotten up to speed on this issue.
People under 21 cannot get CCWs, and that means only about a third can even apply, and they have to pass a background check. Most of the fools who spend their college years in an alcoholic haze are under 21, and those over 21 have had enough time to do stupid things that make them ineligible to get a CCW.
Most of the gun control fantasies about all that can go wrong come from the absurd violent movies out of Hollywood, a tradition that goes right back to the penny dreadfulls about how “wild” the west was, even though people were moving West to the frontier because the frontier was less violent than the eastern seaboard. (Look up “5 Corners” and “Hell’s Kitchen” some time.) Part of Samual Colt’s motivation for developing a six gun was the violence of the seaports of the US, where gangs were robbing and murdering seamen on liberty from their ships. Also look up the actual motivation of the first gun control laws in NYC, and the link the politicians had with organized crime. (Gun control is usually a means to disarm minorities. In NYC, gun control was to make robbery safer for the criminals.)
I’ve owned guns for over 40 years, and have been near blind with rage with a gun on my hip, yet I did not shoot the person I was mad at. There’s plenty of people with that much self control. Again, those that don’t have that much control almost always have a police record. It’s not 100%, nothing to do with humans is, but the odds are a lot better than the paranoid and delusional fools that claim anyone with a gun is a potential berserk murderer want to think, not that they want to think.
I am very happy that those who support gun control say they would not carry. If those who have posted here are typical, they are bubble brained fools who should not even have a driver’s licensce as they might decide to run over pedestrians who annoy them.
What truly killed the students at Virginia Tech? Bureaucracy & Incompetence.. Oh, and unrestricted access to guns.
While the NRA does tend to go overboard, the sole reason Cho was able to go as far as he did was because no one, even if they were licensed CCW holders by state law, was able to stop him because the school was “gun free”.
As for the legality of how he bought the weapons, that falls into a gray area, as while he did buy from legal sellers, they didn’t run the background checks they were supposed to.
He had enough ammunition and spare magazines to kill far more than what he did, and the response he got when he entered was exactly what he wanted: for everyone to huddle together in a corner in fear, defenseless, and easier to shoot en masse. He knew that the cops would take forever to respond, and that he would have ample time to mow down unarmed, defenseless students who had been taught to simply lie down and wait to be shot. Had 1 student who could legally carry decided not to follow the rule in that building that day, he may have been stopped long before it started. Instead, the 33 who died were failed by a policy meant to make people feel safe, without actually making them safer.
Rather than just pretending what happens with concealed carry, why not just look to actual practice.
Concealed carry permit holders are among the most responsible and law abiding groups in the nation – with a better history with gun safety and use than the far smaller number of the nation’s police. Blood does NOT run in the street. If anything, criminals look to gun-free zones for terror – witness the murderous racist in California who a few years ago passed up shooting up a Jewish preschool for a public one as he was not certain the Jewish school staff wasn’t armed and he was guaranteed gun-free victims otherwise.
Criminals ALWAYS have unrestricted access to concealed guns, all you can do is argue over if the victims can be armed or not.
Isn’t there a direct, albeit not perfect, positive correlation between number of guns in a society and death by guns?
Case closed.
I was thinking that I’d get slammed a lot more for taking an anti-gun stance. Odd. Still, I prefer to live here where guns are not important and not needed to go with one to the grocery store. The thinking that we need to be armed is so alien to us.
As I said before, it’s quite a nice way to live.
>>Isn’t there a direct, albeit not perfect, positive correlation
>>between number of guns in a society and death by guns?
Bobbo, you’d really be doing mankind a favor if you would step out of your self-imposed Plato mode for a moment, and break down that correlation by the PERPETRATORS who have guns vs the VICTIMS who have them.
Granted, the total worldwide eradication of guns would bring gun violence down to nothing. It’s somewhat less clear that assuring criminals an unlimited population of unarmed, defenseless, law-abiding victims would have the same effect.
I grew up in a southern county in a southern state where we did have firearms at school. It was a non issue, just a matter of fact. We didn’t have gangs, not too many fights, and no shootings.
Another way to look at the question is: Would you rather be in a classroom of 30 people where one person has a firearm or in a classroom where 30 people have a firearm? The school shootings are always a case where it’s a classroom with person with a firearm and 29 without. There have been several cases where citizens with firearms have stopped shootings, 1997’s Pearl Mississisppi shooting is a prime example. http://tinyurl.com/ys8vwz
Another thing to consider is that in all school shootings the criminal doing the shooting has ignored the ban on firearms at school further illustrating that a ban on firearms at schools in VERY effective at stopping gun violence.
47–MM==yep. and you know, every single time you have an airplane crash into your house releasing a cargo load of piranha fish into your swimming pool, wont you be happy you bought that specific coverage?
bobbo, before you close that case take a good look at Canada, more guns less crime. Don’t blame the guns, blame the idiots that own them.
You can make it legal or illegal, the problem is the bad people are gonna carry anyway. Ideally nobody would have a gun. If anyone can say with a straight face that they think it is realistic to disarm the entire country and protect guns from coming in at the borders, I’ll shut up right now. However, since that is very unlikely, I don’t think there is anything wrong with letting people carry as long as their are not idiots. So instead of a blanket nobody carrys except for the bad guys policy, maybe we should look at making sure less morons get their hands on guns. A gun in the hand of an intelligent, responsible person, trained in using it would have saved lives.
If the other 32 people had been plain clothed police officers carrying concealed weapons would there have been fewer deaths? I think everyone would agree that the answeer is certainly yes. If that is the case, then argument against students carrying concealed weapons is only an issue of training.
#47
> Granted, the total worldwide
> eradication of guns would bring gun
> violence down to nothing.
AHAHAHAHA…Riiiiight. Because, you see there was no violence before the invention of the gun ;-> People couldn’t possible make weapons from other materials.
I tell all you gun control guys the same thing: If you can get ALL the criminals and potential criminals to give up their guns, legal or black market, then I’ll give up my right to concealed carry. Until then, I want the right to defend myself from those who don’t follow the laws.
#45
Right. There is also a direct, albeit not perfect coorelation between automobiles and death by automobiles. Similarly, there is a direct, albeit not perfect coorelation between any object and death by that object.
49–JMB==better yet, lets look at Switzerland where gun ownership and (gun training) are mandatory.
But there is a positive correlation between number of guns and death by guns. To ignore this basic casual relationship you really should do more than simply ignore it?
A thought experiment for all you pro-gun types: “If making guns illegal would (eventually) lower the death rate from guns, would you outlaw them?” If not, then stop arguing “facts” and understand your own love of guns.
50–now M Mustard was quite careful to say GUN violence would go down. Did you type too fast, not understand his point, or consciously try to confuse it? Very few people have ever been killed at 200AM in the morning in their beds from drive by knifings.
52–and likewise, you are twisting what was clearly posted into a strawman misstatement of the issues. Twice in a row cant be by accident?? Arguments of mass confusion, or is this a knee jerk product of your environment?
Read it and post again if you think your pants aren’t down around your ankles.—-Not a pretty sight.
42 – Angel, if there was “unrestricted access to guns”, why were none of the other students armed? Maybe Cho was the only one ready to risk expulsion?
45 – Correlation gun numbers and gun deaths: Is there something special about getting shot that makes it different from being clubbed to death as the Hutus and Tutsis did to each other?
46 – You made it clear that you were not in the US, and you did not try to tell us how we are supposed to live. However, you might do a google for Democide and Hawaii, the Democide site is an eye openner. You live in a peaceful country? Laos, Cambodia, and Bali were peaceful, once. Good luck.
BTW, I don’t think the gun laws are as much the problem in England (with it’s increasing violence) so much as the stupid legal system they are saddled with, basically refusing to prosecute or incarcerate violent criminals.
48 – Bobo, let us know when you are ready to talk like an adult instead of a scared child.
Isn’t there a direct, albeit not perfect, positive correlation between number of guns in a society and death by guns?
Case closed.
Cars are pretty dangerous too. In fact I bet theres 1000 x more vehicle deaths per year then fatal shootings. Not only that, but think about the global warming and pollution that cars cause. Its because of cars that we destroy the environment and dig up OIL..
For the greater good of mankind we should all stop driving and turn in our cars.
#11 – Raff – An armed society is a polite society.
Nope, it’s a society full of fear.
Comment by Jägermeister — 8/20/2007
Isn’t that what we’re living in now? Been to the airport lately?
Lets see if I can help a few of you out ((just show me the way you came in?==old joke.))
Yes–death by guns are correlated to guns as death by cars are related to cars. Thats so irrelevant, its laughable and throws your intellect and book learning into question.
Whats relevant is the amount of gun ownership correlated to the number of murder by guns? Now I know this is difficult because the word “guns” appears in both sentences, but do you see the difference AND do you see what the relevant correlation is about?
I hope so. Do we NEED more guns than other societies because of buffalo stampedes or indian attacks? or perhaps because our judicial system is too lax on criminals?? ((another correlation–GOUSA has more people in jail than any other society on the face of the earth!!)).
I don’t even care if you want to make love to your guns or not—but you should atleast be able to follow a thought?
#53
> A thought experiment for all you pro-gun types: “If making
> guns illegal would (eventually) lower the death rate from
> guns, would you outlaw them?” If not, then stop arguing
> “facts” and understand your own love of guns.
Do I need to really point out the hilarity in your flawed argument? Truly education standards have slipped in this country. You are using a tautology to make your argument. Let’s read your response in #53 with slight modification
I can fill-in any item. Snow cones, shoes, bubble gum, knives, baseballs, anything. Of COURSE there is a correlation between an object and death by that object. The statement itself requires it! Your entire line of thinking is circular.
58–So, answer the question.
>>every single time you have an airplane crash into your house
>>releasing a cargo load of piranha fish into your swimming
>>pool, wont you be happy you bought that specific coverage?
Jeez, bobbo, let me know when the ecstasy wears off, won’t you?