Safe Streets was written for the non-gun owner in America, not to understand the so-called gun culture, but to understand the Liberty Culture as Gun Control profoundly affects all institutions adversely.
Excerpt
BEING FORCED TO CHOOSE BETWEEN FELONY AND FUNERAL
Adult students and adult parents of minors are barred from carrying a concealed weapon on many campuses for armed self-defense. Even raising the question results in a memo advising them to drop the issue, where administrators have power over a student. All must comply or face discipline, a morbid insistence on the student’s getting “counseling”, expulsion for some, arrest for others.
[ST. PAUL, Minn., October 10, 2007] Hamline University suspended student Troy Scheffler following his written suggestion that the Virginia Tech shooting could have been stopped if students had been allowed to carry concealed weapons on campus. Scheffler is ordered to undergo a mandatory “mental health evaluation” before being allowed to return. Scheffler was suspended without due process two days after dispatching the e-mail. [Internet Search Term Troy Scheffler, Hamline University.]
Adult college students who are licensed to carry their weapon statewide must choose between self-defense in personal sovereign authority and surviving an attack (and there seem to be plenty around the nation), or answering a difference of opinion in the administration’s policy, which policy is backed by Force, and perhaps not surviving an attack. Expulsion, counseling and a black mark on one’s record (or worse) loom as a threat for choosing self-defense or even defense of another. It’s a gamble. It’s a choice between felony and funeral.
Understand that the concept of banning weapons on campus is not universal. Where state law affirms right-to-carry on campuses, as in Virginia, the domestic state of Virginia Tech, the campus seems to have prevailed upon the Legislature to defy or interfere with state law. Compare this policy with policies of administrations which affirm concealed carry of handguns: Utah’s nine state colleges, Colorado State University at Fort Collins, Colorado, Blue Ridge Community College (Weyer’s Cave, Virginia, by the way) and those other campuses presently examining the issue.
Meanwhile, on the gun ban campus, the adult student is facing a defamation in the administration’s presumption of student anger or other psychological defect, judging by their official public remarks on the record to compound those uttered by elected officials posted above. It reveals just what these Potomac Fever-infected servants think of their constituents:
Within the text of the Virginia Tech Review Panel Report is this excerpt . . . [Internet URL www.vtreviewpanel.org]:
["Section VI-5 The Virginia General Assembly should adopt legislation in the 2008 session clearly establishing the right of every institution of higher education in the Commonwealth to regulate the possession of firearms on campus if it so desires. The panel recommends that guns be banned on campus grounds and in buildings unless mandated by law."]
This may sound friendly at first, but it is hostile. One does not need a mandate to observe the rights of others already secured by law, (Virginia state law, in this case) and it is a bad faith dealing even to suggest it.
Where many colleges do in fact join forty-eight states in affirming citizen authority to act and to be armed, it is some administrations who are out of step with the law whenthey force their adult students to choose between felony and funeral.
….When it came to Funeral for those Virginia Tech students, a lawsuit followed. April 10th, 2008, MSNBC reported that Virginia Tech settled its case of 21 families of students murdered there for a cool $11 Million.
But here is where justice might not have been served. Virginia Tech is a public trust, and it is obligated to serve not only students, but alumni, faculty, surrounding area, and future students, including the state law. Perhaps the best interests of these persons is not in penalizing the university, but in educating the Trustees and in compelling some positive change.
In obtaining a settlement of $11 Million, the university may have felt that it could afford it better than it could afford to admit it was wrong about the entire gun ban policy over time and then choose to affirm armed students on campus. The issue was instead over a “watered down” response in alerting students over its in-place system: who knows how effective an Alert is? What would have been much more effective is if students had been able to stop Cho with their own authority, something not recognized by the College. {If you think the cost of a good education is expensive, try ignorance!]
I am utterly convinced that the payment approved by the court was a purchase or even a new lease for the university to continue its gun ban policy rather than to save the cash and simply cooperate with the law of the state of Virginia.
Copyright 2008 John Longenecker. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author.
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