Concealed Carry on the University of Tennessee Campus

Read the opinion piece by Ashley Cerasaro on the Tennessee Journalist.

I made a couple of comments in response to comments by “anti-gun nuts” as well.

Sa commented, on February 27, 2008 at 12:33 a.m.:

With more guns circulating campuses, I will definitely feel less safe than I do now. Young people can get angry fast and some often lose their patience right away, so I do not want to know what happens when those people have a little killer in their pocket.

I just wish the whole gun situation would be completely different in the U.S. In Europe, where guns have been banned for who knows how many years, school shootings or daily shootings are almost non-existent. As long as people here do not realize that no problem can be solved as long as everybody can get a gun as easily as getting a tattoo, there will be more killings, more deaths, and more parents crying over lost ones. I just hope none of them are supporters of guns.

I guess bills such as these quickly pulls this country back to the Wild West.

My Comment #1:

It never ceases to amaze me how these “anti-gun nuts” … who are against law-abiding, legal, concealed-carry permit holding adults exercising their Second Amendment rights to defend themselves from armed assailants … always have to resort to highly emotional, Quentin Tarrantino style, non-fact based, hypothetical worst case scenarios to argue their side.

They continue to do this in spite the fact that the preponderance of statistical evidence points the other way. I guess “anti-gun nuts” strive to “never let the facts get in the way of a good story.”

Bob commented, on February 27, 2008 at 6:11 p.m.:

And as we speak – 4 shot dead in bristol…

My Comment #2:

And … while that is tragic, taking guns from responsible concealed-carry permit holders would not have stopped that criminal in Bristol from shooting those 4 poor people.

A survey conducted in 1993 by Florida State University criminologist, Dr. Gary Kleck, and his colleague, Dr, Marc Gertz, shows that American civilians commonly use their privately-owned firearms each year to defend themselves against criminal attacks, and that such defensive uses significantly outnumber the criminal uses of firearms in America.

The survey shows that American civilians use their firearms as often as 2.5 million times every year defending themselves during a confrontation with an armed criminal, and that handguns alone account for up to 1.9 million defenses per year.

Dr. Gary Kleck is the author of “Point Blank: Guns and Violence in America.”

ParatrooperJJ commented, on February 28, 2008 at 10:25 a.m.:

Virginia also allows concealed carry at universities.

My Comment #3:

Actually, Virginia does not! In January of 2006, the Virginia General Assembly shot down a proposal to allow concealed-carry holders to legally carry concealed firearms on campus. Tragically, this was not too long before the awful massacre occurred.

It is also interesting to point out that Jason Kenneth Hamilton, the man responsible for the deadly shooting spree in Moscow, Idaho, was a card-carrying Aryan Nations member and had an extensive criminal history in Idaho, Arizona, California and Oklahoma, including arrests for violent crimes, domestic battery and drugs.

To illustrate how well “strict” gun control laws work, it should also be noted that Jason Hamilton was licensed by the federal government to possess fully automatic weapons, including a military-style machine gun and also had a concealed weapons permit in Latah County, despite a domestic violence conviction that should have barred him from owning guns.

Relying on the police, state law, and the federal government to protect you is an exercise in futility. Strict gun laws are broken every day by criminals, and criminals do sometimes squeak through background checks because the agencies performing them fail to use due diligence.

Only “you” have the ability to truly protect yourself or your loved-ones, that was one of the driving forces behind the Second Amendment.

Those who argue that the Constitution is out-dated (usually meaning … the Second Amendment) fail to understand that if the second Amendment can be called out-dated, the same argument can be made by someone else for any of the other amendments. If one fails, then they all fail!

News from the Second Amendment Foundation

SAF FILES AMICUS BRIEF IN D.C. GUN BAN CASE BEFORE SUPREME COURT

For Immediate Release: 2/13/2008

BELLEVUE, WA – The Second Amendment Foundation has filed an amicus curiae brief in District of Columbia v Heller, the appeal of the landmark case that overturned the district’s handgun ban on the grounds that it unconstitutionally violates the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms.

Written by attorney Nelson Lund at the George Mason University School of Law, the brief has already earned praise of veteran Second Amendment authority David Kopel, who noted in remarks on a popular Second Amendment website, “If you want to read a model Supreme Court brief, this is the brief to read.”

In the brief, Lund notes that the Second Amendment right of the people to keep and bear arms would remain even if the militia were disbanded.

“Our 48-page brief is tightly written, and it refutes the contentions by anti-gunners that the Second Amendment only protects some right of the states to maintain militias,” said SAF founder Alan Gottlieb. “The brief, which can be read on our website at http://www.saf.org, gets right to the heart of this case. We also note that the opposition arguments are absurd, and explain why.”

SAF’s brief further reminds the court that “In liberal theory, the most fundamental of all rights is the right of self defense.” It also notes that ‘the people’ referred to in the Second Amendment “has always been a much larger body of individuals than the militia.”

“Congress cannot abolish this constitutional right of the people by abolishing the militia,” notes Lund in the brief. “Neither can the right be limited to contexts in which its exercise contributes to the functioning of an organized militia that Congress is not even required to maintain.”

“While anti-gun extremists are beating drums about the downfall of civilization if the high court upholds the individual right,” Gottlieb stated, “we believe that the time has come for the Second Amendment to take its place as the Constitution’s insurance policy against tyranny and as our guardian against unjust laws that leave us defenseless against a growing criminal element.”

The Second Amendment Foundation is the nation’s oldest and largest tax-exempt education, research, publishing and legal action group focusing on the Constitutional right and heritage to privately own and possess firearms. Founded in 1974, The Foundation has grown to more than 600,000 members and supporters and conducts many programs designed to better inform the public about the consequences of gun control.

The Second Amendment Foundation (www.saf.org) is the nations oldest and largest tax-exempt education, research, publishing and legal action group focusing on the Constitutional right and heritage to privately own and possess firearms. Founded in 1974, The Foundation has grown to more than 600,000 members and supporters and conducts many programs designed to better inform the public about the consequences of gun control. SAF has previously funded successful firearms-related suits against the cities of Los Angeles; New Haven, CT; and San Francisco on behalf of American gun owners, a lawsuit against the cities suing gun makers and an amicus brief and fund for the Emerson case holding the Second Amendment as an individual right.

Omaha shooting another failure of ‘gun free zones’

Shopping malls should be as safe as public schools and university campuses, and the outrage that unfolded at the Westroads mall in Omaha, Nebraska proves they are, thanks to the monumentally stupid proliferation of so-called “gun free zones.”

These victim disarmament zones are the handiwork of extremist gun control fanatics and their soulmates in state legislatures who created these loopholes in right-to-carry statutes across the country. Instead of providing areas of presumed safety where nobody is supposed to have a firearm, gun free zones are nothing more than risk-free environments where every criminal and lunatic with an axe to grind or a desire to become famous can stack up a quick body count with little concern about resistance from an armed citizen.

Nineteen-year-old gunman Robert A. Hawkins had no intention of surviving his bloody rampage. Despite what the gun control camp will argue, there is no way to prevent a person from committing a violent act when he is willing to die in the process. Hawkins, who had a criminal record, could not legally possess a firearm but he evidently stole the murder weapon, a semi-automatic rifle, from his stepfather.

If there is a true outrage in this incident, it is the prohibition of legally concealed firearms at Westroads Mall. One hell of a lot of good that prohibition did for Hawkins’ eight victims. Undoubtedly such bans make anti-gunners – who fought bitterly and hysterically against passage of a concealed carry law in Nebraska – feel good about themselves, but the reality is that such prohibitions cost lives.

In our new book, America Fights Back: Armed Self-Defense in a Violent Age, we detail the failures of gun-free zones, and how their only “contribution” has been to raise homicide statistics that gun control proponents can use in their ceaseless campaign to deprive law-abiding citizens of their gun rights.

Recall the Trolley Square shooting in Salt Lake City earlier this year, or the 2005 shooting at the mall in Tacoma, Washington. The shooters in both of those incidents were stopped by people with guns. In Salt Lake City, an off-duty policeman from another jurisdiction happened to be in the mall with his wife, essentially as a private citizen. Fortunately, officer Kenneth Hammond ignored the “no guns” signs at Trolley Square and had his pistol. He traded shots with Sulejman Talovic, sending the gunman running for cover until uniformed officers arrived and killed Talovic.

In Tacoma, gunman Dominick Maldonado was confronted by a courageous armed citizen named Brendon McKown. Although Maldonado seriously wounded McKown, he quickly stopped shooting and ultimately surrendered to police. The Tacoma Mall also prohibits firearms.

Remember Luke Woodham, who shot up Mississippi’s Pearl High School in 1997? His rampage was stopped by Assistant Principal Joel Myrick, who had rushed to his car to retrieve a .45-caliber pistol. Myrick aimed the gun at Woodham’s head and held him until police arrived.

In January 2002, gunman Peter Odighizuwa, who had just murdered three people on the campus of the Appalachian School of Law in Grundy, Virginia was confronted by two armed students who had rushed to their cars to retrieve handguns. He dropped his gun and was wrestled to the ground.

Unfortunately, at Virginia Tech this year, there were no armed students or teachers to interrupt Seung-Hui Cho before he killed 32 defenseless people. Sadly, nobody ignored the ridiculous prohibition at Westroads Mall in Omaha.

The strategy of gun control extremists is to rob people of their right of self-defense by stripping them of the tools to defend themselves. They alone are responsible for the gun free zone loophole that leaves us all vulnerable to this kind of senseless attack, and it is time that America tell these fools that we’ve had enough.

Alan Gottlieb is founder of the Second Amendment Foundation (www.saf.org) and Dave Workman is senior editor of Gun Week (www.gunweek.com). They are authors of America Fights Back: Armed Self-defense in a Violent Age, published by Merril Press.

Ted Nugent Speaks Out!

WACO, Texas (CNN) — Zero tolerance, huh? Gun-free zones, huh? Try this on for size: Columbine gun-free zone, New York City pizza shop gun-free zone, Luby’s Cafeteria gun-free zone, Amish school in Pennsylvania gun-free zone and now Virginia Tech gun-free zone.

Anybody see what the evil Brady Campaign and other anti-gun cults have created? I personally have zero tolerance for evil and denial. And America had best wake up real fast that the brain-dead celebration of unarmed helplessness will get you killed every time, and I’ve about had enough of it.

Nearly a decade ago, a Springfield, Oregon, high schooler, a hunter familiar with firearms, was able to bring an unfolding rampage to an abrupt end when he identified a gunman attempting to reload his .22-caliber rifle, made the tactical decision to make a move and tackled the shooter.

A few years back, an assistant principal at Pearl High School in Mississippi, which was a gun-free zone, retrieved his legally owned Colt .45 from his car and stopped a Columbine wannabe from continuing his massacre at another school after he had killed two and wounded more at Pearl.

At an eighth-grade school dance in Pennsylvania, a boy fatally shot a teacher and wounded two students before the owner of the dance hall brought the killing to a halt with his own gun.

More recently, just a few miles up the road from Virginia Tech, two law school students ran to fetch their legally owned firearm to stop a madman from slaughtering anybody and everybody he pleased. These brave, average, armed citizens neutralized him pronto.

My hero, Dr. Suzanne Gratia Hupp, was not allowed by Texas law to carry her handgun into Luby’s Cafeteria that fateful day in 1991, when due to bureaucrat-forced unarmed helplessness she could do nothing to stop satanic George Hennard from killing 23 people and wounding more than 20 others before he shot himself. Hupp was unarmed for no other reason than denial-ridden “feel good” politics.

She has since led the charge for concealed weapon upgrade in Texas, where we can now stop evil. Yet, there are still the mindless puppets of the Brady Campaign and other anti-gun organizations insisting on continuing the gun-free zone insanity by which innocents are forced into unarmed helplessness. Shame on them. Shame on America. Shame on the anti-gunners all.

No one was foolish enough to debate Ryder truck regulations or ammonia nitrate restrictions or a “cult of agriculture fertilizer” following the unabashed evil of Timothy McVeigh’s heinous crime against America on that fateful day in Oklahoma City. No one faulted kitchen utensils or other hardware of choice after Jeffrey Dahmer was caught drugging, mutilating, raping, murdering and cannibalizing his victims. Nobody wanted “steak knife control” as they autopsied the dead nurses in Chicago, Illinois, as Richard Speck went on trial for mass murder.

Evil is as evil does, and laws disarming guaranteed victims make evil people very, very happy. Shame on us.

Already spineless gun control advocates are squawking like chickens with their tiny-brained heads chopped off, making political hay over this most recent, devastating Virginia Tech massacre, when in fact it is their own forced gun-free zone policy that enabled the unchallenged methodical murder of 32 people.

Thirty-two people dead on a U.S. college campus pursuing their American Dream, mowed-down over an extended period of time by a lone, non-American gunman in possession of a firearm on campus in defiance of a zero-tolerance gun ban. Feel better yet? Didn’t think so.

Who doesn’t get this? Who has the audacity to demand unarmed helplessness? Who likes dead good guys?

I’ll tell you who. People who tramp on the Second Amendment, that’s who. People who refuse to accept the self-evident truth that free people have the God-given right to keep and bear arms, to defend themselves and their loved ones. People who are so desperate in their drive to control others, so mindless in their denial that they pretend access to gas causes arson, Ryder trucks and fertilizer cause terrorism, water causes drowning, forks and spoons cause obesity, dialing 911 will somehow save your life, and that their greedy clamoring to “feel good” is more important than admitting that armed citizens are much better equipped to stop evil than unarmed, helpless ones.

Pray for the families of victims everywhere, America. Study the methodology of evil. It has a profile, a system, a preferred environment where victims cannot fight back. Embrace the facts, demand upgrade and be certain that your children’s school has a better plan than Virginia Tech or Columbine. Eliminate the insanity of gun-free zones, which will never, ever be gun-free zones. They will only be good guy gun-free zones, and that is a recipe for disaster written in blood on the altar of denial. I, for one, refuse to genuflect there.

You tell em … Ted!