“Do I dread the potential presence of young vigilantes – because, let’s not be euphemistic about it, ‘vigilante’ is the right word for the people (mostly men) who will carry concealed guns – in my classroom? Certainly. But I don’t want to concede an inch to fear mongers: University campuses are some of the safest places in the United States. What I do fear, what I am truly scared of, is that we will get used to the presence of guns. I fear that sharing a classroom with students ‘packing heat’ will stop shocking us as it now does, and that we will become something other than what we are: Women and men committed to teaching and learning in environments where everybody can freely express his or her ideas.” – Javier Auyero in Guns on Campus Make Colleges Less Safe [via nytimes.com]
Heaven forbid Austin becoming just like the rest of Texas.
“Women and men committed to teaching and learning in environments where everybody can freely express his or her ideas.”
Oh the irony in that statement! Especially coming from someone who environmental bubble is constructed on “safe spaces”, “trigger warnings”, “microagressions”, and no due process.
Pull your head out of the faculty arse and look around Javi. You know you don’t want free expression and exchange of ideas. Just man or woman or zi or whatever pronoun you prefer up and say it.
For bonus points go take a look what happens when Ben Shapiro or Milo Yiannopoulos try to give presentations.
A+
Excellent!!!
My first reaction too. Universities today, and for a long time, have been anything but welcoming to diversity and free discussion.
I think Steven Crowder stated that the only diversity universities and SJW don’t care about is intellectual diversity.
Ahh, but they do care about it. They care about it like Stalin cared about the kulaks.
“Women and men committed to teaching and learning in environments where everybody can freely express his or her ideas.”
Unless of course you want to freely express your idea that the Second Amendment means what it says and that you have a natural, civil and Constitutionally protected right to keep and bear arms.
You’re free to express it as long as it toes the leftist/statist line. Deviate from the approved script, and you will quickly find yourself at the bottom of the grade curve. Having spent 7 years on campus getting my bachelors and then professional degree I can tell you with certainty a large number of people in professorships are there precisely because they can’t hack it in the real world. They never leave college, and after 30 years in that echo chamber rational discourse with these people is impossible.
And that is what I believe youngsters today call a “mic drop.”
“Women and men committed to teaching and learning in environments where everybody can freely express his or her ideas.”
Is that the ‘what we are’ or the ‘something other’?
Spot on! Cognitive dissonance is a tenet of the progressive faith.
“Women and men committed to teaching and learning in environments where everybody can freely express his or her ideas.”..as long as they are exactly the same ideas and opinions that I hold.
I read somewhere once something along the lines of “An armed society is a polite society.”
OC is legal at Utah schools and they can do nothing about it. Someone should help normalize him
So the regressive left has been screaming for years about the ” rape culture” on campus and gun violence epidemic. Then when carry laws pass so people can defend themselves campuses are all of a sudden some of the safest places around.
And if a woman carries a weapon to defend herself from rape she’s a vigilante.
Javier, you have nailed the liberal college metrosexual professor look!
How did that whole non-normalization thing work out in Los Angeles yesterday. Dude strolled through campus with a long gun. That is California, yes California. They don’t let you off when you illegally carry, which didn’t stop the kid from killing the professor.
Your feelings don’t line up with reality.
Too late professor. We, the people of the gun, are already used to it.
“What I do fear, what I am truly scared of, is that we will get used to the presence of guns.”
Be afraid, ‘professor’, be *very* afraid…
Reading his quote warmed my cold, dark heart in ways he’s incapable of fathoming.
And that, fellow TTAGers, is an official Martha Stewart “Good Thing”.
*snicker*
How is making people uncomfortable a “good thing”? I’m not carrying a firearm to make others uncomfortable; I’m doing it because I think it’s a safe thing to do.
If you’re enjoying making others uncomfortable, then perhaps you should reconsider your reasons for carrying a firearm. It calls for a lot more maturity than your comment displays.
I’m ok with annoying and upsetting liberals as a reason… And if that bothers you, then chalk up another reason. Too annoy liberals and Kevin Lowe – done and done.
I for one am glad the professor brought that up because it raises the most important point in the fight for firearms freedom: normalization of firearms carry and ownership is winning. The professor knows once a majority of the populace is even marginally educated about and used to guns, and they aren’t some dangerous object carried by thugs (both uniformed and otherwise), they won’t be able to exploit fear and mis-information to pass their antigun legislation.
Kev, they won’t know because *concealed means concealed*…
“let’s not be euphemistic about it, ‘vigilante’”
Absolutely and completely incorrect. People carry for protection of self and others, not to support the application of justice in place of the police. Anything he says after this can just be ignored.
But who would expect this leftist professor to get anything right at all.
Professor of Latin American sociology. Communist agitator is what I say.
Vigilante, in general terms, is someone who unilaterally imposes his views without discussion. It’s usually used in the context of street justice. I’d say that’s a pretty good description of how the entire progressive culture works, especially in academic circles.
Vigilante, heed thyself!
Excellent point.
Felix wrote, “I’d say that [vigilantism] [is] a pretty good description of how the entire progressive culture works, especially in academic circles.”
Once again we see projection. This typical Progressive knows that he will use everything at his disposal to silence his adversaries. And he assumes that everyone else will likewise. Thus he would never want his adversaries to have firearms which they could use to silence him.
I’m mostly shocked that an actual university professor doesn’t understand the definition of the word vigilante.
I’m not surprised at all.
No doubt he does understand it, he is counting on the reader not understanding it, which will be the case for the vast majority of progressives.
The statist loves to manipulate language to their own ends, they can never succeed in the free marketplace of ideas and reason. Progressive to them means slavery; Tax the rich means tax everyone but the rich; Affordable healthcare means… well I needn’t go on.
Vigalante in this sense is just name calling, that’s all.
Just another rant by another ivory tower snowflake totally divorced from reality. Guess he hasn’t stopped to considering that right now he doesn’t know who’s already carrying a gun. Guess his fears have blinded him to the fact that “concealed means concealed” So maybe he wants open carry so he can actually see the evil guns he so fears.
World to Prof.
MAN UP AND GET OVER YOUR FEARS
Great take on the good professor. He lives and works in an artificial environment in which common sense and experience take a back seat to liberal theories and dogma. If UT had any sense, it would eliminate the Sociology Dept all together. It’s nothing more than a place for liberals to indoctrinate young minds with their opinions.
18% of females who attend UT have claimed that they have been sexually assaulted at least once on campus. Does not seem it is as safe as the professor likes to think. He fears the normalizing of the sight of guns, but I suppose he supports a lot of things that have become normalized in recent times that others are not so enthusiastic about. What I fear is that we have a society filled with fear at someone exercising their constitutional rights.
“sexually assaulted” again the feminish PC newspeak.
Sexually assault” is supposed to make you think RAPE. But no, it also includes: a horrible man glanced (or didn’t glance/ignored) at me in passing, or his briefcase/elbow brushed me while passing thru a crowd, or he didn’t “properly” tip, or ___________.
Translation into English: “If I had a gun, I would go around shooting people all the time. Therefore you should not have a gun.”
That is hilarious. That is the textbook definition of cognitive dissonance.
He is scared that because people will stop freaking about guns, that things will go back to normal. As opposed to now when people are freaking out about guns and being afraid.
Shouldn’t you be more afraid that you clearly see that nothing has or will change, and yet you are still freaking out about it anyway?
Not just cognitive dissonance, but illogic. He is “afraid” that people will not be afraid of guns when they are normalized and no longer shocking, and this will lead to “something we are not”, i.e., people unwilling to freely express themselves “because guns.” And I am like, huh?
Everyone can freely express their ideas, except when that idea is armed self defense.
“Do I dread the potential presence of young vigilantes – because, let’s not be euphemistic about it, ‘vigilante’ is the right word for the people (mostly men) who will carry concealed guns…”
University professor- does not know what the word ‘vigilante” means.
“But I don’t want to concede an inch to fear mongers: University campuses are some of the safest places in the United States.”
Correction: “University campuses are DEEMED some of the safest places in the United States”. Because professor, your “safe” universities cover-up crimes.
“Elizabeth City State University is one that seemed like a safe campus on paper.
The North Carolina school’s annual crime reports showed that during an 11-year span, no student ever had been sexually assaulted.
But then in April 2013, a dorm security guard pushed student Katherine Lowe onto her bed and fondled her. It was the fourth time he had done that to her, and she was determined that it would be the last. She went to police, who soon learned the truth: The school’s crime reports were way off.
Police discovered as many as 17 sexual-assault victims whose cases never were reported to federal education officials — a gross violation of a law that requires colleges to count and report such crimes.” -The Columbus Dispatch, June 2, 2016
http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2014/09/30/campus-insecurity.html
“I fear that sharing a classroom with students ‘packing heat’ will stop shocking us as it now does, and that we will become something other than what we are: Women and men committed to teaching and learning in environments where everybody can freely express his or her ideas.”
No one can freely express his or her ideas on campus unless they will agree with your far left wing, singular point of view. I will just respond with these links:
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2015/03/09/college-conservatives-branded-hate-group-for-refusing-lgbt-sensitivity-training.html
http://campusreform.org/?ID=6117 -Women’s college viciously attacks freshman girl for conservative reporting
“Nutty -Butter, peanut butter ! OMG ! Left-wing fuzzy logic at it again! “
Prof Javier Auyero
You are an overly sensitive, fearful, easily offended, quivering coward who demands a “safe space” lest your fears and feelings get hurt. Like other liberal degreed idiots. you can’t bear anything you disagree with like Free speech, the sight of guns, a Confederate flag, or other “expressions of hate” As a self appointed spokes person for the university hothouse fragile folks stand up and demand protection from the racism!, sexism! and homophobia! of the law abiding gun people.
You’re a good example of what’s wrong with UT why it needs to change
1st Sargent X Mountain
NO he is not scared of vigilantes in that what this punk is scared of is that he can’t flex on his students like my college professor tried to back when I went and say whatever he wants to without fear of repercussions. He is scared of “normalization” because he won’t know who not to talk smack to and act like he is the campus alpha. He also can’t become an issue for women or gay men who might blast his ignorant self for harassing them in his position of authority looking for sexual favors in lieu of grades or finding the weak who wish to sleep with authority will become harder.
His inability to simply teach the subject and be in control around people with guns like the military and law enforcement etc. does daily promoted him to write about his fears.
“… environments where everybody can freely express his or her ideas.” – Javier Auyero
Now that’s rich since no such environment exists at academic institutions these days.
Mr. Auyero really means that he wants to maintain the current environment where everybody can freely express Progressive ideals … and where various entities can freely silence anything contrary to Progressive ideals.
Two things-
1) Maybe some of you old timers can help me with this. We’ve all heard the stories of kids riding their bikes down to the creek with .22s on their backs and no one batting an eye. As a 40 year-old guy, this concept is largely foreign to me. When did the country get so freaked out about guns? Follow up: why didn’t anyone do anything about it at that time rather than waiting 40+ years to try to “normalize” as the professor puts it, guns again?
2) I totally understand this guy’s “fear.” It’s largely the same reason all the anti-smoking types hate vaping/ e-cigarettes and why so many demand that smoking laws be applied to vaping. These anti groups have spent millions upon millions of dollars trying to demonize smoking and smokers, then e-cigs come along and essentially undermine the notion of seeing visible vapor coming out of someone’s mouth is the very worst thing that could possibly happen to you today.
Anti-gun groups have done the same thing where the sight of a gun alone is enough to physically assault someone in a wal-mart over, even if the someone you’ve just tackled is legally allowed to carry that weapon. Things like open carry go against that groupthink that only crazy, anti-government vigilantes would carry around a gun in plain sight! Which subsequently, could cause people to change their minds about guns and gun owners, which they absolutely cannot allow to happen.
Depends on where you grew up, urban vs. rural environment, but to put a time frame to it, I’d say sometime in the early to mid 80’s are when things went to shit. About the time that Tipper Gore started her crusade against rock music lyrics and Nancy Reagan thought she could end the drug war by just saying no. That’s about the time adults started abdicating their responsibility for teaching their kids to behave like civilized human beings and leaving it to the public school system.
Clint,
It was more than just biking around town with your .22 slung over your back, as my grandfather did at age 16 in suburban Connecticut. As others here have echoed in the past, kids kept guns in their lockers or car racks in high school. College was no different, guns in dorm rooms were commonplace. Someone on here knew a guy who kept a full auto M2 carbine on the wall. Nobody died. Guns were infinitely easier to buy back then in a myriad of ways, nearly everyone had them, and yet the kinds of shootings we’ve seen since Columbine just plain didn’t happen.
What happened is a multitude of cultural changes, some calculated social-engineering schemes, some accidental. I could honestly write for pages, but the biggest one is the 30+ year lack of parenting in America. Now that so much as taking your kid’s wallet away as punishment is considered “abuse,” parents have their hands tied. The ones who used to be disciplined ’til they cut their shit out are free to do whatever they want, so the spoiled/entitled mentality spread like a virus. Parents also kept their kids busy. In my dad’s youth, the Adam Lanzas of the day didn’t even have time to think about murder because they were too busy helping with yard work Saturday morning or working some kind of a job. And if they didn’t have a job they’d be miserable, because mom and dad didn’t buy jack for you that wasn’t food, school supplies, or clothing. Come summer time, no kid was unemployed. 95% of the emotional disorders and utter nonsense we see in kids today (SJW culture, rabidly protesting non-progressive college speakers) wouldn’t exist if all those people had been kept busy with jobs from 7th grade on.
I don’t want to be a history geek, but I would argue that the change in gun attitudes and the start of gun fears began in the 1960’s “peace & love” movement. It started with the Kennedy assassination and the passage Gun Control Act of 1968. Before the GCA became law, guns could be routinely shipped directly to a person’s home. After the GCA, the Federal Government began a push to regulate both the firearms industry and firearms owners. Under the GCA, the nose of the gun control camel got under the tent by “just” regulating the interstate commerce in firearms. After the GCA the interstate transfer of firearms transfers became generally prohibited except among licensed manufacturers and FFL dealers. We have President Lyndon B. Johnson to thank for signing the GCA into law on October 22, 1968.
As people of the gun, let’s take the history lesson to heart, Laws written in the heat of a “terrible gun disaster” usually are both BAD to begin with and have WORSE unintended consequences later. They “normalize” the infringements to our Second Amendment rights.
Senior Gun Owner 1950
Point-counterpoint –
Having seen, and we’ve all seen, the irresponsible and unsafe behaviors of irresponsible people with guns but no training, the professor has a slight point for safety in the cariryng environment. College students, unfortunately are not the most responsible individuals in general.
However, he does totally miss the vigilante moniker, as well not understanding the in-place constraints for those carrying: over 21 and a License To Carry. Those two points will eliminate approximately 80–90% of the University population, and will directly and favorably impact the safety issues above. My biggest issue with the good professor. is the total miss – “university campuses are among the safest places…” What off-the-grid, disconnected rock has this guy been living under?
“What off-the-grid, disconnected rock has this guy been living under?”
The same place he works, if I had to guess.
he’s just upset that now teachers can also carry in the classroom. Yes! Teachers! And that means pro-gun teachers too. And that is the real complaint. How are they going to indoctrinate and brainwash if pro-gun teachers are teaching. Can’t have firearms normalization here people!
We can have a discussion and debate of ideas as long as Javier agrees with them. “Firearms normalization” shouldn’t be part of that debate.
So many masks, so much slipping of late. Keep pushing back, and eventually the facades all fall away. Maybe what they’re selling makes sense – I don’t think so, but I’ve been wrong before – BUT, how nice to finally deal with what they’re really selling.
They think you are violent, racist, reactionaries, and that they have the right, prerogative, and perhaps obligation to manage you, for everybody’s benefit. Got it?
“Do I dread the potential presence of young vigilantes – because, let’s not be euphemistic about it, ‘vigilante’ is the right word for the people (mostly men) who will carry concealed guns…”
So, dear Prof can dress it up all he wants, but he’s saying people who carry guns (and I’ll assume other means of self-defense) are not *really* intent on self-defense, but rather on pursuing and punishing presumed criminals, outside the law.
Some definitions of that magic word “vigilante”:
http://www.dictionary.com/browse/vigilante
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/vigilante
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/vigilante
Notice the rhetorical cheat as he introduces the word. “Let’s not be euphamistic …”, so backing off that terrible accusation is appealing to “euphamism.”
You really don’t think much of your students, fellow faculty, or rest of your community, do you. Convenient to slime people who you disagree with, by accusing them of behaving outside the law – of course we don’t want people like that to have guns. And they’re personally violent, and members of a “committee.” What, you thought saying “KKK” flat out might get noticed?
Also it’s them menfolk carrying, you know the rape culture people.
BTW, his evidence?
“…But I don’t want to concede an inch to fear mongers: University campuses are some of the safest places in the United States. …”
That’s been nicely taken down in comments so far.
“… What I do fear, what I am truly scared of, is that we will get used to the presence of guns. …”
Again, with the eventual, accidental honesty. As always, for “guns” read “agency”, “independence”, “autonomy”, and “personal responsibility.”
What he is truly scared of, is that we will get use to individual people having autonomy, and acting independently with their own agency. Taking responsibility for yourself, to protect yourself if you can, and use your discretion and judgment about when you do, is the last thing he wants anybody getting used to.
“… I fear that sharing a classroom with students ‘packing heat’ will stop shocking us as it now does, …”
Again, the accidental truth. He doesn’t want people thing about “bearing arms” but just shocked to see one. This is why normalization is the game.
“… and that we will become something other than what we are: …”
What an (other) interesting connection to guns. So, guns are for vigilantes. And having guns around will 1) change us against our will and 2) into *that.* Really, I was pretty impressed with the guns that fly off their shelves, out of their drawers, through their closet and safe doors to bullet-hose here and there, all by themselves. Now we learn that the have the power to cloud the minds of men. Or at least UT sociology professors. (Not sure those are fully human.)
I bet Haruka Weiser wished she had a gun nearby as she died…
The students are in far greater danger from a semester of his leftist teachings than from a woman in his class carrying concealed for her own personally safety.
And only a liberal would ask the police to protect them instead of taking personal responsibility. How selfish to ask someone to risk their life for yours when you won’t even protect yourself to your greatest ability.
Nice photo in the corner of Juncal and Agüero streets, Buenos Aires.
I just sent him this:
Dr. Auyero,
In reading your article on campus carry I cannot help but sense irrational fear. In American Society guns should be normalized, as they are nothing more than tools, much like a circular saw or a blender. They do nothing without human activation. Further, millions conceal carry every day with blood running in the streets. (A myth perpetrated by the Hollywood idea of the Old West.) Youth should be taught to respect and safely use all tools, and not fear an inanimate object.
A concealed carrier will not expose his or her weapon; you probably will not know it is in your class or on campus. But, I guarantee should a mentally ill person walk onto campus with a rifle you will pray one of those students in your class has a CCW.
This goes beyond campus carry though. Your irrational fear would lead you to dictate what others would do; limit the freedoms we enjoy in this country. How much further would you go? Limit my right to free speech and expression? I bet you already do that when a student does not agree with the subject matter of the class.
You of all people should know that violent crime is at an all time low, yet gun ownership is at a record high. To put things in perspective I would ask you to consider this: do you suffer from back pain? use oxycodon or another opioid based prescription? you are more likely to die of an overdose. Own a pool? more likely to drown. Car? more likely to die in an accident.
As an aside, I have a MA in Criminology and Deviance from Bowling Green State University. I am a member of the International Association for Correctional and Forensic Psychology. I have worked in the criminal justice system for over 20 years and have taught Criminology and Juvenile Delinquency at the Penn State University for 12 years.
Regards,
John Eliyas
Nice letter, man.
This is the kind of thing we need more of from ourselves as gun owners, in my opinion.
Very well written. But unfortunately, knowing “teachers” like him, it’ll probably go right into the trash bin.
Mr. John Eliyas:
I applaud both your excellent, articulate and well argued rebuttal to Prof. Auyero and your decision to send it directly to him. As a gun community I believe we need to politely but directly respond not only to the broader society but also directly confront those who would infringe on our fundamental rights to keep and bear arms.
Senior Gun Owner 1950
Excellent letter.
Hopefully he’ll realize that’s not what you meant to say.
The dear professor has more to fear from a tick or mosquito bite…
Who is Javier Auyero and why do we care what she has to say about anything?
We care about Prof. Auyero’s NYT rant because as a gun community we need to “normalize” guns in the court of public opinion. We need to politely and directly respond to the broader society to “normalize” our fundamental rights under the Second Amendment. Failure to responding to the Prof. Auyero’s of the world concedes the gun control argument to them. As members of the gun rights community we need to continuously and directly confront those who would infringe on our fundamental rights to keep and bear arms.
We care about the Prof. Auyero’s of the world because of the damage they do not only to those they directly teach, but because of the influence they have on the gun control civil disarmament debate as pseudo experts when we don’t respond or confront them with facts and well structured counter arguments.
Senior Gun Owner 1950
“environments where everybody can freely express his or her ideas”
Holy hell that’s a laugh. There are, what, maybe ten colleges/universities left in America that respect true freedom of speech and expression, if that? I went to college in Texas, SMU to be precise. While most profs kept their rants on a leash in my case, the curriculum readings were often too well selected to be coincidental. I realized just how terrible the content quality was after I started reading outside the classroom for fun. It’s shocking how much more you learn from historical analysis written by professors 30+ years ago than today.
The precious little metrosexual snowflake.
“University campuses are some of the safest places in the United States.”
Wait, I’m confused. Either campuses are under constant threat of mass murder and we need strict gun control across the nation to stop it, or campuses are the safest places in the US and thus gun control isn’t needed. Which is it?!
Progressive double-speak in action:
“Cops are racist murderers who can’t be trusted to do anything right, they’re the last people we need carrying guns.”
“Joe citizen will only make things worse in a bad situation, only cops should carry guns because they are trained.”
Entertaining isn’t it?
NewSpeak is here, folks. Orwell was a prophet.
The latest word to be redefined by the left:
Vigilante: one who would defend oneself.
WE’ve got to stop letting them redefine language.
Start calling SJW’s ‘Social Vigilantes’ and see their heads pop off.
Funny, lefty SJW types are a far greatest threat to free speech than law abiding citizens who may or may not be carrying firearms.
What I do fear, what I am truly scared of, is that we will get used to the presence of pencil-necked professors wearing ill-fitting, unpressed sports jackets and faded jeans spouting off about vigilantes and other bullshit.
“I fear that sharing a classroom with students ‘packing heat’ will stop shocking us as it now does, and that we will become something other than what we are: Women and men committed to teaching and learning in environments where everybody can freely express his or her ideas.”
Um… non-sequitur much?
“…where everybody can freely express his or her ideas.” As long as it agrees with my ideas, said the gun grabber.
Professor Auyero says, “What I do fear, what I am truly scared of, is that we will get used to the presence of guns.” If knowledge is power, then what he’s really saying is that he doesn’t like the idea of the hoi poloi having power over their own lives. He believes that we should let our betters–progressive academics like him, for instance–make all our decisions for us, especially the decision to carry a firearm for self-protection. What he’s really afraid of is decentralized power in the hands of the law-abiding citizenry.
He’s just another freedom-loathing tyrant.
I fear that we will take him seriously.
The professor must be terrified by his own shadow. His last Man Card was his birth certificate.