Sebastian – Page 1467 – Shall Not Be Questioned

College Kids Packing Heat?

SayUncle says things are going to change.Â I think he’s right, and hopefully for the better.Â I just don’t want to see it go overboard, and have colleges and universities turned into prisons like we’ve done with primary and secondary schools.

I also agree with him that most college kids can’t and shouldn’t carry firearms, but I do believe that people who are licensed by the state to do so ought to be permitted to do so on campuses of colleges and universities.Â There are many states that prohibit this by law, and I do favor changing those laws.

Virginia, and also Pennsylvania, do it through university policy, rather than law.Â While I don’t think those policies are sound, as applied to license holders, I don’t expect college and universities will change those policies any time soon.Â I know people don’t want to risk being expelled, but I can promise you, if I go back to school, they can kiss my ass in regards to their policy.Â Keep it concealed and keep your mouth shut.Â If a student isn’t mature enough to keep other people from finding out, they are probably not mature enough to carry a firearm, and I won’t cry too hard if they get booted.Â There is no good reason, with proper holster, attire, and attitude, that anyone ever needs to know that you’re carrying. Sure, if a deranged lunatic comes and starts shooting up campus, or an armed robber decides to prey on a few students, you might get caught. Â But being expelled beats being dead or seriously injured, doesn’t it?

The Blogophere Weighs In

Two MSM editorials by some of our fellow bloggers:

Prof. Glenn Reynolds in the New York Daily News.
David Kopel inÂ The Wall Street Journal.

Also, be sure to check out Dave Kopel’s debate last night on the
Canadian show The Verdict.Â I always love it when the anchor gets into the debate.Â Â That’s objective reporting right there!Â And of course, Canada’s gun controls work, just ask the poor souls who died at Dawson College.

Dealing With the Mentally Disturbed

Reading through some of the comments on a post at Dr. Helen’s, it got me thinking about whether the university dropped the ball here. I certainly think they did. But there’s always going to be difficulty in dealing with mentally disturbed people who are exhibiting warning signs.

We live in a free society that values a presumption of innocence; the idea that we cannot deprive people of their liberties without due process. To have someone committed against their will should require the state to meet a difficult burden. If you look at totalitarian systems, many of them used mental health as an instrument of oppression; institutionalizing dissidents and the like as mentally incompetent. There are good reasons to restrain the state in this area.

It seems, though, that this guy crossed into behavior that should have been taken seriously be school officials and reported to law enforcement. At the very least, he should have been expelled. Lighting fires, stalking, harassing, and vandalism are all crimes, and all serious matters. Arson is a felony, especially to occupied dwellings. Why did university officials sweep this under the rug?

But I’m reluctant to go so far as to say it should be easier to commit someone, or suggest that universities need to adopt “zero tolerance” policies akin to what primary and secondary schools have done. That would just be compounding on the tragedy. I think there were general law enforcement options that could have been taken here, and weren’t. The system failed, and tragedy struck.

And people wonder why I don’t want to relay on the same system for my own personal safety.

Creative Writings of a Killer

The Smoking Gun has the VA Tech killer’s one act play.Â Â Check it out.Â It’s a look inside a warped mind.Â Â He thought this stuff was OK to share with people?Â Â It’s horribly written and highly disturbing stuff.

Mayor of Nagasaki Gunned Down

Apparently there was a mob hit on the Mayor of Nagasaki, in Japan:

The shooting was rare in a country where handguns are strictly banned and only four politicians are known to have been killed since the Second World War.
Mayor Iccho Ito, 61, was shot twice in the back at point-blank range outside a train station Tuesday evening, Nagasaki police official Rumi Tsujimoto said.

One of the bullets struck the mayorâ€™s heart and he went into cardiac arrest, according to Nagasaki University Hospital spokesman Kenzo Kusano. Kyodo News agency and national broadcaster NHK said Ito died of his wounds early Wednesday.

Firearms are effectively are illegal in Japan, with few exceptions. Yet we can see that criminals are still able to obtain them. Japan’s violent crime rate is very low, but that is more a reflection of Japanese culture than of Japanese law.Â One can find cultures with more ubiquitous ownership of small arms that have similar rates of violent crime.Â This example would seem to indicate, that criminals in Japan who desire guns can still get them.

Be sure to check out Dave Kopel’s article on gun control in Japan.

Common Pistols

The deranged killer at Virginia Tech, it turns out, had a Glock 9mm, no mention on whether it was the Model 17 or 19, but the 19 is a bit more common on the civilian market. I shoot and carry a Glock 19. The other was a Walther P22, which Ahab carries.

No doubt the media will be parroting VPC and Brady material touting these weapons as high powered killing machines, too dangerous to be used safely by ordinary schlobs like myself and Ahab. But really, the Glock 19 and 17 are probably the most ubiquitous police pistol around, and they are damned popular on the civilian market too. They aren’t particularly powerful or lethal, no pistol is. And the P22? Please. It’s a common target pistol.

UPDATE: Check outÂ Ahab’s coverage on the P22 and it’s capabilities at his blog, What Would John Wayne Do?

Must Read

This editorial in the Roanoke Times:

Please realize that I am licensed to carry a concealed handgun in the commonwealth of Virginia, and do so on a regular basis. However, because I am a Virginia Tech student, I am prohibited from carrying at school because of Virginia Tech’s student policy, which makes possession of a handgun an expellable offense, but not a prosecutable crime.

I had entrusted my safety, and the safety of others to the police. In light of this, there are a few things I wish to point out.

First, I never want to have my safety fully in the hands of anyone else, including the police.

Second, I considered bringing my gun with me to campus, but did not due to the obvious risk of losing my graduate career, which is ridiculous because had I been shot and killed, there would have been no graduate career for me anyway.

Third, and most important, I am trained and able to carry a concealed handgun almost anywhere in Virginia and other states that have reciprocity with Virginia, but cannot carry where I spend more time than anywhere else because, somehow, I become a threat to others when I cross from the town of Blacksburg onto Virginia Tech’s campus.

Read the whole thing.Â We all have to weigh the cost of dealing with rules written in ignorance by others. Â My advise to folks is to pay no attention to them, when they have no force of law.Â If your attire, attitude and holster is proper, you should never have a problem.Â I will not advocate that anyone break the law, but there’s also the notion out there that it’s better judged by 12 than carried by six.Â I’ll leave it at that.

HatTip to Dave Hardy, for the original article.

Mass Shooters and Armed Citizens

SayUncle has the roundup.

Woo Bum-Kon, ROK Police Officer

Dr. Helen relays to us the story of Woo Bum-Kon, a mass killer in Korea, who happened to be a police officer:

Bum-Kon had an argument with his live-in girlfriend in the afternoon of April 26, 1982. Enraged, he left the house and went to the police armory, where he began consuming large amounts of whiskey. He became moderately drunk, raided the police armory of its weapons and built a personal arsenal. Bum-Kon then stole a single high-powered rifle and some grenades and left the armory. It was by this point around dinner time. He walked from house to house, and abused his position as a police officer to make people feel safe and gain entry to the home. Then he shot the victims, or killed the entire family with a grenade. He continued this pattern for the next eight hours, and into the early morning hours of April 27.

This speaks to a point I’ve been raising in the comment sections of various blogs: the police aren’t super humans. They are people, just like everyone else, and have the same passions, failings, virtues and deficiencies as the rest of us. Folks are calling it “insane” to suggest that valid concealed weapons license holders be allowed to carry on campus, but most would have few problems with a police officer in the same age range being permitted to do the same. Why? The idea that police officers are particularly well trained is a fallacy. Some are, and some aren’t, just like the rest of us. While police should be appreciated for the job they do, which is necessary, they should not be exalted above ordinary citizens. The police, in fact, are ordinary citizens, just ones that society pays to enforce laws and keep the peace. If you would trust an armed 22 year old police officer on campus, you should trust an armed CHL holder too.

Among The Dead

Professor Liviu Librescu:

Librescu was among the thirty-three people killed in the Virginia Tech massacre on April 16, 2007. He was killed during a class in the Norris Hall Engineering Building. He was 76 years old.^[6] Librescu held the door of his classroom shut while the gunman Cho Seung-hui was attempting to enter it. He was shot through the door but was able to prevent the gunman from entering the classroom until his students had escaped through the windows^[7]^[8]. A number of Librescu’s students have called him a hero because of his actions, with one student, Asael Arad, saying that all the professor’s students “lived because of him.”^[9]

In all tragedies come our heros.