Eugene Volokh (who I’m given to understand has a pretty tight pattern at the range) asks “why not at least arm the professors who want to be“? The argument is, as usual, comprehensive.

[Update a few minutes later]

Best comment so far: “You really want to arm Ward Churchill?”

[Update at 3:45 PM EDT]

Another amusing comment:

In order to reflect the hierarchy of faculty, there would have to be stratification:

Assistant Professors get muzzle-loaders

Associate Professors get semi-automatics

Full Professors get automatics

Adjuncts get a sharp letter-opener

Chaired Professors are irrelevant, since they never come to campus

One in which a rich tort lawyer pontificates on “two Americas” but gets $400 haircuts, and one in which that’s like a bad joke.

With idiot gun grabbers reenergized by this week’s tragedy, Eugene Volokh and Donald Sensing ask, “what law would have prevented this?”

Here’s the kind of question that a supposedly objective press would ask:

The quote from Senator Reid that Kathryn quotes below is especially peculiar given that Reid himself voted in favor of the bill the Court upheld today. So he wishes O’Connor could have still been there to overturn the law he supported?

Sounds almost like George Bush on campaign finance.

[Update at 8 PM EDT]

Jacob Sullum has more thoughts on “gun-free zones:”

Cho used two handguns, a .22 and a 9mm, neither of them especially powerful or exotic. Contrary to the false promises of gun controllers, firearms cannot be neatly sorted into “good” and “evil” categories; any weapon that can be used for self-defense (or for hunting) also can be used to murder people. A gun’s specific features matter even less if the victims are unarmed.

“We can’t have an armed guard in front of every classroom every day of the year,” Virginia Tech campus police chief Wendell Flinchum said after the shootings. Given the reality that police cannot be everywhere, it is unconscionable to disarm people who want to defend themselves.

On Monday, I wrote:

Here it comes. Now they’re going on about “the children, won’t someone think of the children“? Someone on Cavuto is demanding to know what they’re doing for “the kids.” Are they being kept warm, are they being fed, are they getting the grief counseling they need?

These “kids” are college students. Almost all of them are of the age of majority. They’re the same age as the “kids” who are off fighting for us overseas, who are seeing things just as horrific, or more so, every day. Yes, one doesn’t go off to an idyllic campus in the western Virginia mountains with the expectation that they’ll have to deal with something like this, but they’re not kids. In every society up until this one, they would have been considered adults, and many of them would have already been married (or not) and raising families. The notion that we should treat them like grade schoolers, for whom we are responsible for feeding, and heating them, is ludicrous. Yes, they’re upset, but I’m pretty sure that they’re still capable of feeding themselves, and finding a blanket, if shooting people somehow caused the heating systems on campus to break down. If I were one of them, I’d be insulted and appalled at this kind of stupid, stupid commentary.

Today, Mark Steyn expands much more eloquently on that theme, and on our culture of passivity:

The students at Virginia Tech were grown women and

Can the US trust the BBC? The folks at BritainAndAmerica.com don’t think so.

As we saw on Monday, there is no such thing–the only people no allowed guns in such places are the law abiding. Dave Kopel and Glenn Reynolds have thoughts.

As we saw on Monday, there is no such thing–the only people no allowed guns in such places are the law abiding. Dave Kopel and Glenn Reynolds have thoughts.

As we saw on Monday, there is no such thing–the only people no allowed guns in such places are the law abiding. Dave Kopel and Glenn Reynolds have thoughts.

I’d like to see a class-action lawsuit against the university by parents of the injured and murdered students, particularly if any of them had CCW. That would discourage not just VPI, but other universities from arbitrarily disarming their community and leaving them exposed to nightmares like yesterday’s.

[Late morning update]

Some in comments here have some weird fantasies about gunfights at the OK Corral if those with permits are allowed to carry on campus, and that even more would die in the confusion if there had been multiple people with guns. First, I would point out that a campus like that probably has a very high percentage of ROTC, with weapons training. I think that the notion that, had they been allowed to carry, many more would have died is ludicrous. We now have empirical evidence of what happens at Virginia school shootings when people are allowed weapons, and when they are not. It’s pretty overwhelming in favor of the former at this point. I think that in the face of both theory and experience, it is criminally negligent for a university to make itself a “gun-free zone.” Particularly if it is warned of the potential consequences ahead of time.

But apparently, to people like this, making people “feel” safe is more important than actually making them safe. In the modern “liberal” mind, feelings trump all.