“Parents, university officials and campus police took to Capitol Hill on Tuesday, wearing bright-red ‘Campus No!’ stickers to protest legislation that would have allowed professors and staff to carry weapons onto the gun-free campuses of Tennessee’s public universities and community colleges,” tennessean.com reports. “The state House Judiciary Committee appeared to agree, sending State Rep. Andy Holt’s bill to a summer study committee — a legislative purgatory that all but guarantees that it will not come up for debate again until at least next year, if at all. The decision came as a relief to the delegation of parents, administrators and campus police who traveled to the Hill.” Huh?
Parents? How can anyone think that a gun ban would protect their children from the madman who loosed their insanity at Virginia Tech? Do these parents fear accidental or negligent discharges from licensed concealed carry weapons holders, to the point where they “take to the streets” to lower the odds? Have they seen the stats in that regard? Do they understand that there’s nothing to stop an illegal gun from entering this supposed sanctuary?
Administrators? As Vice President Spiro Agnew might say (if he were alive and not busy soliciting brown paper bags stuffed with unmarked bills), they’re effete intellectual snobs. They really do live in an ivory tower, from which they feel free to dismiss concealed carry weapon permit holders as barbarians at the gate. Never once considering how guns have given and continue to give them the freedom they enjoy to spread their ill-informed agenda.
But cops? It would seem to me that cops—yes, even rent-a-cops—would favor individuals protecting themselves by exercising their right to keep and bear arms. Are we thinking that campus cop Derek Myers has never seen a young girl shaking with shock after being raped on the University of Memphis campus? How could anyone see such a thing and not wish that the victim had been armed?
The argument against campus carry: college students are too stupid, mentally unstable or aggressive to bear arms. Sound familiar? Maybe Officer Myers has seen too many stupid, unstable or aggressive students to believe that the ones old enough, as a group, should be able to exercise their Second Amendment rights. Maybe he’s decided that the kids aren’t alright. They couldn’t be trusted with a Super Soaker, never mind a Springfield .45.
Well who died and made him boss? It’s my understanding that anyone who reaches the age of majority is entitled to his full rights as a citizen of the United States. Period. And don’t give me that crap about shouting “fire” in a crowded movie house. Carrying a concealed weapon is not shouting anything. It’s protecting your life (or competing or hunting). Unless it isn’t, in which case the full force of the law is against you.
I guess cops don’t really “get” the whole Constitution thing. As far as they’re concerned, the real rules governing the populace are the bureaucratic BS they deal with day in and day out. At the sharp end, they eventually confuse enforcing the rules with making them. Either that or they lose track of the reasons behind the rules. Because they don’t matter. To them. Or all of the above.
But I think the real reason cops don’t want citizens to keep and bear arms is that they hate guns. The whole concept of shooting someone scares them. They see lethal force as a ticket to a nightmare investigation and the potential loss of their job. And they can’t have that. What’s more (or less), they suck at using them. They have no confidence in their gunfighting skills. And rightly so. So they think no one else can handle a gun, either.
An armed citizenry is only a threat to a certain type of cop. The kind of cop who shouldn’t be charged with protecting our children. What’s your take?