Campus Carry Bills Making Moves, and Should After Old Dominion

I'm constantly amazed at how many people can look at an incident and get the wrong lessons from it.

I mean, sure, there are some things where there are multiple possible lessons there, but just like a Norfolk prosecutor making an ass of himself for blaming the Old Dominion shooting on pro-gun "absolutism," despite the fact that the killer broke a ton of gun laws already on the books, to all of the people who seem to think that this is evidence that we need some particular bit of specific gun control.

I'm also rather curious about the wording in this piece about campus carry bills being considered in several states.

In at least six statehouses this year, lawmakers are revisiting a long-running debate over whether guns should be allowed on college campuses.

Republican lawmakers in Florida, Louisiana, New Hampshire, South Dakota, Utah and Wyoming have introduced bills that would allow students, staff or visitors with concealed carry permits — and in some cases, without permits — to bring firearms onto public college campuses.

Supporters say the proposals would allow people to defend themselves during emergencies. Opponents argue they could make campuses less safe and increase the risk of accidental or impulsive violence.

The push comes amid another year of intense debate over gun policy in state legislatures, where lawmakers are advancing sharply different measures.

And it comes as college campuses continue to grapple with the threat of gun violence.

On March 12, a gunman opened fire inside a classroom at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, killing one person and injuring two others before ROTC students fought back. One of the students stabbed the gunman, killing him, according to law enforcement officials.

Virginia law currently prohibits firearms on public college and university campuses. The FBI is investigating the attack as a possible act of terrorism.

Clearly, they present Old Dominion as an example of why these laws shouldn't pass. I mean, this is part of States Newsroom, which has a very anti-gun slant in general, so it's not hard to read between the lines here.

However, let's keep something in mind here. The only reason the body count wasn't worse at Old Dominion was that the killer picked the absolute worst classroom he could have picked to start his rampage. Rather than pick a classroom teaching lesbian fruitbat poetry, he picked the room full of ROTC cadets. He picked a room full of warriors in the making, and then he killed their instructor, who they all seemed to like, and got his 72 virgins in a hurry because of it.

Had the instructor been armed, and he might well have been were that an option, the whole thing might have gone differently.

Moreover, as we've seen in numerous other attacks, the bad guy with a gun doesn't stop at the end of campus property and go, "Well, drat! What now?" He crosses over that property line like it doesn't exist and proceeds to kill everyone he can.

The only people dissuaded from carrying on campus are those who want to obey the law.

We can't count on every potential mass killer picking a class of warriors ready to attack the source of hostility. Far too often, that's not who they pick. They go after almost anything else, and while many are willing to sacrifice themselves to protect others--and that's why I still have faith in humanity--the reality is that we don't need heroes dying for others. We need bad guys dying as an example.

What happened at Old Dominion University isn't something that somehow proves the laws aren't enough. It proves that the evil walking among us will never give a damn about a sign, a law, or something else that some have deluded themselves into believing protects them. What stops them is people ready to fight back, and the better weapons they have, the more efficient they can be about it.

Reports about what happened in that class have varied. Was it one student, a group of them, or what? Did one stab the bad guy while the rest curb-stomped him? I don't know.

All I need to know is that we have way too much history to look at to know this isn't the norm. We can't count on this protecting lives.

Armed citizens, on the other hand, are a different matter entirely.

Editor's Note: The mainstream media continues to lie about gun owners and the Second Amendment. 

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