By Ginny Kruta
This morning I was awakened by a text message at 2:30am. That isn’t necessarily odd, as my husband is a baker and is occasionally (OK, more than occasionally) at work at that hour. Except it wasn’t my husband. It was the emergency text alert system from my school – Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. But I’m getting ahead of myself. SIUE, like much of the state of Illinois, is a gun-free zone. It’s not even legal to store a weapon on campus, which essentially means that aside from campus police, no one is armed. Which is awesome, because that means we’re all totally safe . . .
Except the text message I received this morning suggested otherwise in a big way.
A little after 1:00 a.m. today, according to Fox News, two suspects robbed a 20-year-old male student in Cougar Village (an SIUE apartment complex) at gunpoint. Only one of the suspects was armed, but surprisingly enough, when none of the victims are armed, that’s generally enough to do the trick.
The questions running through my mind were simple enough:
How exactly does an armed robber get into a gun-free zone? Doesn’t he set off an alarm of some sort? Aren’t there automatic sensors for that kind of thing? And if there aren’t, how can any politician claim that a gun-free zone is anything other than a euphemism for a “conveniently disarmed victim zone”?
Whatever the case, the words “gun-free” don’t make me feel any safer as I head to class less than 12 hours after receiving that message. With a .38 Special tucked discreetly into my bag.
Ginny Kruta is a political science and history student and a mother. She writes at Live, from the Catacombs. This post originally appeared there and is reprinted here with permission.
This is painful to watch. Logic goes out the window. It is all about emotion and sensationalism.
Whoops. Do we have an OpSec fail here? GK heads to class packin’ heat in apparent violation of university policy….?
Even here kangaroo court wont completely go with the hags gun ban.
MSRP is $1900 to $2100 based on version and they are impossible to find for sale.
Isn’t it great when not only do we have to suffer being victimized by criminals, but then suffer re-victimization by iatrogenic politics and public hysteria?
I go to Drexel in west Philly and we get these messages often, but not nearly as often as incidents happen. It’s as if the police put out the alerts every now and then to show us they’re there, but not as often as they could so as to keep us in the dark about the actual state of school security. Kid gets stabbed to death behind a sorority house? Shots fired in front of campus career center? No warnings. Drexel University is a victim rich gun free zone as well.
Quoth L.A. Police chief Gates:
“Being who I am, I cannot recommend that you carry a concealed weapon, but we’d all much rather that the cops caught you with it than that a bad guy caught you without it.”
Pretty strong words for the ’80s…
To play devil’s advocate for just a moment: here we have a female ex-servicemember who is a mother of four, studying political science at a public university receiving federal funds, and attending class at a campus on which an armed robbery has just occurred. Setting aside the problems this post could cause for her, the NRA, SAF, and the pro-self-defense community in general should be so lucky as to have the university administration or the police flip out over it. The ad almost writes itself.
‘Dianne Feinstein: Semi-automatic weapons are unnecessary personal pleasures’
http://www.examiner.com/article/dianne-feinstein-semi-automatic-weapons-are-unnecessary-personal-pleasures
In for updates! can’t wait to see what ole’ Shotgun Joe has to say about this.
TTAG,
Thanks for alerting us on this. I held my nose and watched it. I determined to listen with an open and unbiased mind. And, though I tried (really, I did) I did not hear one word of “testimony” that that would convince any objective, logical thinking person that a ban on so called “assault weapons” would in anyway, whatsoever, reduce gun crime. Just as I suspected. ZERO
I did hear very effective challenges from the likes of Graham and others as O.o reported above.
And, Di FI did say something to the effect that she “thought” the recently gun ban “started” to dry up the number of assault weapons out there … at the end” . (which said nothing about drying crime)
Anyway, I’m pretty sure she gonna get called on that misstatement.
Maybe by some of y’all?
I have a few family members that are sold out on Obama/leftist religion/philosophy. (and , yes I have been thinking about having some DNA tests done :-0 )
They don’t want to discuss this with me anymore because the only question I ask them to answer is: “How exactly are the ideas you propose going to stop ” criminal gun violence?” Ultimately, they can’t answer.
You’ll have to keep bringing them down to earth as they try skirt the question and go off on statistics (most of the time they are wrong) and “this time it’s different” and “we have DO something … for the children” (BTW: when they say , “its for the children” you know they are running out of gas).
But in the end if you keep pressing and pressing ” just answer the question”, they can’t.
This hearing, stacked with ringers as it was, was no different.
DJC
Slow Joe inserts his foot again…. In his mouth!!!
I’m a big aficionado of shotguns, and have a lot of time behind pumps and autos. For HD and general use I have a Mossberg 590A1 with an EOTech. With the right ammo (some of the new sabot slugs with polymer tips are amazing) I can shoot 8″ groups all the way out at 200 yards. With buck I have a 22″ pattern at 45 yards. For home defense I can’t imagine a more effective weapon. As far as some concerns about armor that I find generally unfounded, I have a handgun that will do just fine. The 7.62×25 cartridge fired by my Tokarev will zip right through even IIIa soft armor. It’s a 90 grain bullet doing almost 2000 fps, about equal to a .25 cal deer rifle at 150 yards.
As far as the intimidation factor of racking the slide, let me paraphrase Travis Haley. I don’t rack my shotgun to scare someone, I rack it to shoot someone.