Legislation is being passed to allow concealed carry on campus. I don’t understand this, though:
The bill would allow the governing boards of the colleges to designate where the weapons would be stored while the carrier is on campus.
If they can carry, why would they have to store them?
Also, note the usual idiocy and illogic in comments opposed to this:
So, a faculty or staff member who wants to intimidate a student or colleague can use their concealed weapon. Sure makes rape easier, huh?
Yes, because people who have passed the background check for concealed carry are such notorious rapists, and no one commits rape without a gun, and in the absence of this law, no rapist would even think about carrying a gun on campus, because, you know, it’s against the law.
This is exactly what we need, wannabe macho 18-year-olds who have watched too much TV – where shots never miss intended targets – trying to be a heroes. Be prepared to hear the words “innocent bystanders shot” much more often.
Ignoring the fact that you have to be twenty-one to get a permit.
Having a permit to carry a concealed weapon does NOT indicate 24/7 mental stability.
It’s actually a pretty good surrogate for it.
It’s funny how none of the dire predictions of the hoplophobes ever come to pass. I haven’t noticed the blood running in the streets in Michigan for the past few years when they went to “shall issue,” despite all of the predictions of Wolverine exsanguination, and there has been no noticeable increase in innocent deaths in Florida since they passed the castle law down here. This is hysteria, and completely irrational.
where shots never miss intended targets
This guy ever watch TV? The TV shows that most glorify guns as examples of macho manhood are the ones where rounds never find targets.
A-Team?
It’s curious that he thinks shots have to be fired for an 18-year-old to be a hero. As I understand it, most of the time one has only to point the gun to get results. Actual firing is a rare worst-case scenario, inasmuch as most assailants are not actually batshit crazy on coke.
Maybe he’s been watching too many TV shows, where the hero, on being confronted with a gun, does some clever little dodge and roll, avoiding the shots. ha ha, and kayoing the bad guy with a karate chop.
Or maybe he’s just a brainless fool, or an astroturf Perl script. I’m leaning to the latter viewpoint.
Sounds like projection to me. The guy is admittedly clueless about weapons and believes everyone else is also. Consider this little tidbit, how many college students are military (even combat) veterans who have had extensive firearms training? We have 18 year olds in the Army and Marines (and to a lessor extent the Navy and Air Force) carrying automatic weapons as a matter of course and most of the time (yesterday’s terrible incident is an extremely rare exception), carnage rarely ensures. Imagine that.
Actually, Larry J, that’s not true. Carnage regularly ensues, among, for example, Islamic terrorist scum. Those young men have good aim these days.
There’s nothing wrong with carnage, I say. Herd-thinning. A little weeding keeps the species healthy. It’s just important that the right people get weeded, that’s all. Got to point those guns in the right direction.
In the case of this commenter, he may be feeling like he’s uncomfortably close to the class that needs to get weeded. He may be right, too.
Good point. I should’ve been more specific as to who makes up the carnage. When I joined the Army at age 18, they had rigorous training in handling weapons ranging from M-16s and hand grenades through machine guns and anti-tank rockets. Somehow, we managed to handle these weapons without killing each other. The author of the original article is a moron about weapons (and probably most other things) and must believe everyone else is equally ignorant.
I love the one nugget of wisdom I heard when they were discussing firearms at UT. One student said something like, “School shootings really don’t happen all that often and so allowing everyone to carry a gun isn’t necessary. I mean, Virginia Tech was bad, but really, how often does that happen?” I just love it when they hand wave aside little inconvenient events like, mass murder. Or, that assault of any kind isn’t even worth consideration. ‘You want a gun to keep someone from raping you? pssh, who do you think you are? Don’t even flatter yourself.’
Josh. Folks like that should be required to wear “Not Armed” stickers on their foreheads.
Credit, so to speak, where credit is due.
Josh,
Of course you could reply “How often do rapes, attempted rapes, muggings, robberies, assaults, etc occur?”
As if the only reason to conceal carry is to prevent mass shootings. You might as well say “Why should we have police? How often do mass riots occur?”
To give the policy-writers the benefit of the doubt, I suppose they are concerned where the permit-holders will store their weapon when on campus. It could be a legal liability to allow students to store their weapon in their unsecured dorm room when they are sleeping or showering or just decide not carry while playing frisbee, etc. Gun safes in every dorm room? Every dorm? In a central storage facility? It’s a fair question.
I don’t know if it’s what they mean, but storage would matter for things like dressing for sports, or even ROTC.
Also, I regularly read nola.com and the level of commenting there is normally very low. Like youtube comment low.
“I just love it when they hand wave aside little inconvenient events like, mass murder.”
The best succinct response to this:
It’s not the odds, it’s the stakes.
Followups:
Really, Triangle Shirtwaist was bad, but how often does that happen?
Well, you’ll want to store your firearm during swim class.
“Common Sense In Louisiana” – this must be a sign that the end of the world is at hand. Repent!
I have a concealed carry license. I regularly carry a concealed handgun. I have given considerable thought (and invested considerable effort and time) into ensuring that the place I store my firearms when I’m NOT carrying them is a) safe, and b) secure.
If you own firearms and you haven’t thought through storage issues and made arrangements for convenient and safe storage, you’re not being responsible.
Reminds me of the reaction of the old lady after witnessing a licensed-to-carry women shoot the knife-wielding attacker of a Walmart cashier in Florida a few years back: paraphrasing, “I can’t believe they would let someone carry a gun in their purse. That scares me!” Here’s your card…
My colleagues are always shocked that my undergrad school in Texas let us store our hunting rifles at the campus police station.
I’m in the Northeast, and I always carry during finals week, especially when stressed out students come to bargain and whine for grades. Sure, it’s against the law, but given all the shootings over the past 20 years, I’d rather be fired than dead.
I recall reading about the sniper at the University of Texas some years ago, he was in the tower and what kept the number of killings down were the number of good ol’ Texas boys who went to their trucks grabbed their hunting rifles and kept the sniper pinned down until the police got there and took over.
I’m in favor of concealed carry because when the potential criminal does not know who may or may not shoot if attacked the potential criminal is less likely to move from potential to actual.
I’ve been on too many campus’ where predators were being sought and were still committing crimes and escaping and where law abiding students were not permitted to defend themselves. Let those who qualify for concealed carry do it everywhere.
This lowlife commenter isn’t scared that he’ll be shot. He’s scared that there will be a shooting prevented by someone else, and that he’ll be revealed as the coward he is.
Thankfully gun control creeps like him are a small minority.
If you’re going to preempt my Constitutional right to defend myself, you damned well better be prepared to protect me. As VA Tech showed, universities simply can’t do it. As ever, taking rights from those who don’t abuse them never solves the problem of misuse. Let people carry and punish the ones who misuse the privilege. Greater carry numbers would make lots of things in our society better. As Robert Heinlein said, an armed society is a polite society.
As if the only reason to conceal carry is to prevent mass shootings. You might as well say “Why should we have police? How often do mass riots occur?”
As Glenn Reynolds has written on InstaPundit, “When seconds count, the police are only minutes away.”
Most of you are forgetting what happened at the Virginia School of Law (IIRC) about 6 years ago, when a foreign student, about to flunk out, went berserk and shot a couple of professors and a student or two. A couple of other students pulled their guns from their parked cars, forced him to drop his gun, whereupon they tackled him.
What’s significant, though, is how the national media (NYT, Wash Post, Chi Tribune) edited the story. No mention was made of the other student’s guns; they merely reported “that other students tackled him”. (The local papers presented the whole story.)
I mean, God forbid any inconvenient facts should get in the way of the narrative the mainstream media is working so hard to maintain.
It really is best to just avoid the comments on articles like this- they make you really doubt the fate of humanity. Our state discussed carry for professors a while back, and I went through the comments on the local paper (http://lyssalovelyredhead.wordpress.com/2009/03/31/amazing-lack-of-reading-comphrehension/).
Just about all of the negative ones went straight to the idea of senseless baby 18 year olds who would immediently turn into violent street thugs- regardless of the fact that the proposal was to allow PROFESSORS (like, for example, Prof. Reynolds, who taught one of my classes at the time), carry, not students. Sad, sad, sad.
These liberal bottom feeders really do think that they have the last word. Hell, most of them have never had an original idea or emotion. They are leeches with crap for brains.