Let me add to the June 20th, 2007, CollegiateTimes.com article, States look at gun policies, debate on-campus weapon carry. It’s positively encouraging because it reports on a movement sweeping the nation. The bottom line on the question will be public policy and interest.
Question: is it more in the public interest to see students carrying weapons than to see them unarmed and vulnerable? Is it in the public interest to question citizen authority to act and to characterize liberty individuals as anti-social, and to disarm them? Is it in the public interest to be alone and defenseless, or alone and armed not only with the personal weapon, but also with their legal authority?
Legal authority is key to the discussion.
Let’s examine at a few issues which factor into the question and which gun control nuts do not mention.
1. Praise to those institutions opening the issue. As I report often, it is wonderful to see colleges consulting constituents and no longer freezing them out of directing their own best interests. Consulting exclusively other officials denies constituent input, and I praise those officials who are open to deeper understanding of what personal weapons are really all about. Praise.
2. Within the article is the mention… “However, Clemson University and several other South Carolina colleges’ and universities’ police departments have come out strongly against the new bill.” [armed students] Excuse me, but the Founders did not consult the very people they hire and limit, and they wrote words of art to avoid the same thing in any era, including 2007. The second amendment was not written about guns, it was written to forbid abuses of due process, and consulting officials falls back into that trap. In fact, gun control itself is the exquisite example of abuse of due process. Coming out strongly against the new bill’ is to oppose the lethal force which backs citizen authority.
Of course, you don’t consult your servants on how much authority you have, or on what you are allowed or not allowed. You tell them. If they quarrel, you are not challenging their authority, it is they who are challenging yours. And this is what personal weapons is all about in this country: the force which backs that authority, forever, or in other words, ..shall not be infringed.’ Otherwise, elements, such as violent crime, can become a perfect excuse to disarm people.
All gun control fails because it obfuscates, discourages and outright punishes that citizen authority to act when facing grave danger. Crime grows. Police may not legally interfere with the right to self-defense, especially politically and when they are not around. Free people don’t need permission from their hired officials, they tell them. Is their knowledge so esoteric that it is beyond our instruction?
3. Individual citizens have not only the civil right to carry a handgun on their person, but they also have the authority to use up to lethal force when in their reasonable surmise they are facing grave danger alone. It is this authority which is being pushed aside as in consulting police instead of constituents, or in listening to anti-gun organizations, again freezing the consituent out.
4. In this country, Police have no duty to protect individuals, and there is no promise they could arrive in time, anyway.
5. Finally, where there is much quandary, when in doubt, we take a look to what is a preponderance of public policy and interest. Will it be public policy to see reasonable, armed students with existing legal authority, or will it be public policy to compel them to come to class defenseless and frustrate that lawful authority, putting them at a risk we know well by now? How is a known victim disarmament zone in public policy and interest?
It’s about time schools, churches, shopping malls, airports and civil aircraft, and public buildings take a close look at these elements of the issue, and take the side of the students and visitors. Disarming constituents under penalty of law is not being on their side.
As I say, we won’t prevent the next shooting by psychoanalyzing or profiling the next shooter, but by preparing their next victims and respecting their citizen authority, an authority which is not checked at the Admissions Office.
Students don’t die because they fought back, their lives are ruined because they didn’t. And when individuals are possessed of all legal authority to act, how does a city or any official body have an interest in obfuscating, blocking and punishing the exercise of that authority?
Officially recognizing that personal authority wherever one has a right to be is to act in the public interest.
And that would be good for the country.
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John Longenecker’s second edition of The Case For Nationwide Concealed Carry Of Handguns is available worldwide. See www.TransferOfWealth.net
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Joyanna Adams said,
He also reported that a lady had scamed over 8,000 dollars from his store and the city refused to arrest her. She then went a few miles away and stole over 30,000 in another city from a multinational company: she is now in jail.
The man has sought to get the corrupiton of the city’s consistent coverups, but there is only one paper in town, the Post Distpatch, and they own even the local papers…therefore the man feels frustrated that he cannot even warn the people of the danger in the “new” local mall.
Now John, if this is being done all over the United States, then many citizens do not know of the danger they might be in…and the need for the citizens to protect himself is not being known.
Your fight is an important one. Don’t stop.
June 24, 2007 at 8:03 pm
Roger Knight said,
“The man has sought to get the corrupiton of the city’s consistent coverups, but there is only one paper in town, the Post Distpatch, and they own even the local papers…therefore the man feels frustrated that he cannot even warn the people of the danger in the “new” local mall.”
And we are saying this on the Internet.
Starting and maintaining a website is EASY and INEXPENSIVE.
Just make sure that everything you post is the literal truth, that you can back it up with court pleadings and other public records, cite them, link to them if they are on line, and perhaps show the photographs of the three murdered persons to give a human face to the inexcuseable nonfeaseance, misfeaseance, and malfeaseance of your city’s officials.
Then find a cheap way of advertising the URL of your website. I’ll bet you are not the only one who is angry at your circumstances. If you are willing to ask around, you just might get a little help. Once people know about it, the hit count will grow, and soon Google, Yahoo!, Dogpile and other search engines will find your web pages.
The MSM no longer has the monopoly on news. While we talk about the Second Amendment, you need to show a willingness to use the First Amendment!
June 25, 2007 at 12:28 am
radio relay said,
The thugs and criminals that inhabit government these days are real keen on supporting their brother/sister thugs and criminals on the streets, by giving them ever increasing legal protection, and also by seeing to it that we, the law abiding citizens remain fat, juicy, defenseless “victims”, who are ready for plucking.
Fortunately, I live in a state that still has enough “honest citizens” in government that my right to defend myself and my family is still intact. However, major scam artists like the Reverend Clown Jesse Jackson, and Hizzonor “I’m stinking rich and you’re not” Bloomberg, along with their obedient minions in places like Illinois, New York, and California (to name only a few) are leading the charge to give their gangsta bruthas even more protection and victims.
Join the NRA, and other gun rights groups. Even if you don’t own a gun. It’s the only way “we the people” can fight this trend to turn us into “we the sheeple”!!!
June 25, 2007 at 4:39 am
Pazuzu said,
What would be the best way for the responsible citizens to carry their firearms, while limiting the access to punks and foolish “kids”. Would an increased age requirement work?
June 25, 2007 at 6:47 am
radio relay said,
Allowing arms everywhere is not overdoing it. Up until about thirty years ago firearms were “everywhere”. It’s only after the gun control frenzy started to take hold that killers began to take advantage of an unarmed populace to shed blood on a mass scale with firearms.
When I was in high school (not so long ago) we took our rifles to school, because we were going hunting or shooting after school. We were taught proper respect for firearms, and people too (for that matter). Nobody was concerned. Nobody had to be.
At the very least armed teachers, who have passed background checks, and have proper firearms training should very definitely be in every grade school, middle school, and high school. On college campuses, any law abiding citizen (student, or not) has the right to be armed!
June 25, 2007 at 7:49 am
Zebster said,
June 25, 2007 at 10:00 pm
Roger Knight said,
June 26, 2007 at 1:11 am