Collegiate Times

WOW! I am shocked that the CT allowed a conservative argument to be made in their newspaper. The fact is people that take the time to register their weapons and get a CLP are the ones that mean zero harm to another 99.9% of the time. The people that carry guns illegally are the ones that mean harm. The people that intend to harm are going to get the guns regardless of how illegal it is. What they plan to do with the gun is even more illegal, so why do they care?

Nice column, Sam. A minor correction, though. Technically speaking, your wouldn't be breaking any laws if you carried on campus. You'd only be breaking a Tech rule. You could indeed be expelled, but you wouldn't face any sanctions from the judicial system.

Same goes for selling drugs in/out of a school zone. On this block it is kind of bad but on the next block it's really bad to sell drugs. As far as the article goes, I think it's the lobbying power of Big Coffin protecting their business and people wanting to protect themselves would cut into their fat cat profits.

Great column. Great presentation of the ideas we should all live by. But one point to clarify is that is not against the law of Commonwealth of VA for you to carry on campus. It is simply a Virginia Tech policy. A I recall from some research a while back our Attorney General's interpretation that rubber stamped VT's policy to create the ban came from a judges ruling on a completely unrelated issue in which UVA wanted the authority to raise capital in the bond market. AG took that judges ruling and decided there was precedent to say that colleges and universities in Virginia could do other things outside of the actual authority granted in the law of the Commonwealth. Nowhere in the code of VA is carrying on university campus illegal, and nowhere in the code of VA is the authority granted to a university to ban firearms on campus. The only exception is VCU, where code of VA specfically bans firearms (funny how VA government decided to disarm students in the most dangerous city in VA).

Get used to it. In most workplaces where you'll spend the 40 or so years (vs 4 years), you'll have to run to your car (gun) to defend yourself.

Way to address the issues anon. What you perhaps fail to realize is that "most" workplaces are private property therefore giving companies the choice to ban or not to ban. This difference at Tech is that this is public property.

attaboy Sam! I agree with you completely. This is the same debate they're having in our nation's capital, where the people who have weapons on them aren't the people who need to be carrying them. Imagine for just a second if another 4/16 broke out. Some delusional fool runs through Pamplin strapped, but finds himself in crossfire with three or four other students who have a licensed handgun at their side. The only sort of thing to look out for is a student who has the legal privilege to carry would have a roommate who snaps. Weapons should be permitted and checked in at dorms or locked away in apartments, just like my father did with his gun at home. Guns don't kill people, but guns in the wrong hands do.

I'm on the fence with the whole topic, but I think this article is a great argument except for the fact that I think the author errs in using the past few Tech tragedies for his argument. The girl who was decapitated and the two shot in the forest likely wouldn't have experienced anything different with or without concealed carry. It is extremely unlikely that a life would have been saved in either case. In the Cho case, there may have been some help from concealed carry, but there could have also been worse complications when the police arrived to find a shootout between cho and a carry permit holder and not knowing who was the bad guy. Again, I like the argument made in the article, but I would leave out the VT events as support.

Unfortunately, these high profile cases are often used by both sides as anecdotal evidence to support their cause. We need to look at overall statistics, not individual incidents. Adam, we don't know how it would have altered either situation, but the police wouldn't have encountered a shootout. By the time they arrived, it is unlikely that any more shooting would have occurred. They got there once Cho was already dead. You are right, though. What is needed is a look at the rates of defensive handgun use, the rate of permit holders using their guns inappropriately, and the rate of gun owners having their guns taken and used by others, among other things. From what I've read, it's far more common for someone to reveal their gun against an attacker in a 1-on-1 or several-on-1 situation and never have to use it, since the incentive to attack diminishes when the possibility of fatal injury is introduced.

Totally with you Sam.

Sam, sounds like the person with curiosity about your junk, both because of the nature of the comment itself as well as the extra 'n' thrown into the truncated form of anonymous, is making up for something small in the skull. Posting puerile comments about a serious subject evidently makes him feel like a big boy.

I remember the moment that the reality of 4/16 hit me was when Sam got out his shotgun at our townhouse. It's a case of feel-good rules that don't restrict enough people. Wait until they ban smoking on campus. :)

Excellent article Sam, and great comments to boot. It's good to hear that people are stepping back to consider the issues and avoid the typical knee-jerk reactions when they hear "gun." Guns are used about 1-2 MILLION times per year to defend the lives of good people, which is over 100x that of guns being used to hurt people. Reason and logic inevitably prevail when people begin to see these truths and find out the myths are just that - myths.

Slightly off topic of college campus carry but along the same lines; I lived in New York state a few years ago. I went through their process to get a concealed carry permit, $150.00, fingerprints, interview with State Police, provide photos and character references (that are not related),wait six months for all the interviews and background checks, etc. I received my carry permit and 9 months later I moved to Virginia. I now have a Virginia CHP, but guess what? I can not longer even have a handgun in the state of New York. Nothing has changed except my residency status. I have not become a criminal or so much as even received a speeding ticket. Now, New York State Law makes it illegal for me to possess a handgun because I am not a resident. Even traveling through the state to say Vermont where I have family it a tricky issue. I try to follow the federal guidelines for transporting a firearm across state lines but not all states recognize the federal law (Massachusetts is one of them). Pretty crazy how rights given in the constitution can be denied based on state laws.

Guns kill. Everyone knows that. So do cars. And knives. And rocks. If we ban all that stuff, we'll all live in Euphoria. I don't know why people don't get that!

One small but important correction. In reference to 4/16, the decapitation incident, and the most recent Caldwell Fields killing, you state that "a CHP holder committed none of the aforementioned crimes..." That is true of the first two, but we don't know whether or not it's true of the third since the police don't even have a suspect yet. The murder may have been a CHP holder, or he may not have been. Until we know, you can't really use that incident to support this particular argument.

Fair enough, teaspoon, but the odds that it was are so minuscule that it's really not worth talking about. Permit holders don't go out and apply for a permit to show they are a 'good guy' then go commit bloody murders.