Monday, April 16, 2007

And this is why I carry...

I'm sure by now everyone and their fourth cousins thrice removed has heard of this awful slaughter, so I'll not rehash the details.

What's not being advertised on the airwaves is that this senseless massacre of college students was entirely preventable.

"A bill that would have given college students and employees the right to carry handguns on campus died with nary a shot being fired in the General Assembly.

House Bill 1572 didn't get through the House Committee on Militia, Police and Public Safety. It died Monday in the subcommittee stage, the first of several hurdles bills must overcome before becoming laws.

The bill was proposed by Del. Todd Gilbert, R-Shenandoah County, on behalf of the Virginia Citizens Defense League. Gilbert was unavailable Monday and spokesman Gary Frink would not comment on the bill's defeat other than to say the issue was dead for this General Assembly session.

Virginia Tech spokesman Larry Hincker was happy to hear the bill was defeated. "I'm sure the university community is appreciative of the General Assembly's actions because this will help parents, students, faculty and visitors feel safe on our campus."

Del. Dave Nutter, R-Christiansburg, would not comment Monday because he was not part of the subcommittee that discussed the bill.

Most universities in Virginia require students and employees, other than police, to check their guns with police or campus security upon entering campus. The legislation was designed to prohibit public universities from making "rules or regulations limiting or abridging the ability of a student who possesses a valid concealed handgun permit ... from lawfully carrying a concealed handgun."

The legislation allowed for exceptions for participants in athletic events, storage of guns in residence halls and military training programs.

Last spring a Virginia Tech student was disciplined for bringing a handgun to class, despite having a concealed handgun permit. Some gun owners questioned the university's authority, while the Virginia Association of Chiefs of Police came out against the presence of guns on campus.

In June, Tech's governing board approved a violence prevention policy reiterating its ban on students or employees carrying guns and prohibiting visitors from bringing them into campus facilities."

Didja get that? Duly licensed individuals, checked out and certified by the state, are prohibited from carrying their lawfully-owned weapons on-campus for personal protection. I daresay that, had even one of this nutcase's victims had a weapon, this wanton slaughter of innocents would have ended rather abruptly, with a great many lives saved.

Instead, we have students lined up against a wall and executed, by a lone madman. The prohibition against weapons on campus certainly didn't deter him; rather, if anything, it encouraged him, as he knew that there would not be anyone, not one person, capable of stopping him in his rampage.

This is why I carry, everywhere I can. It is my greatest fear that I will be forced to use my handgun in such a situation. No, strike that. It is my greatest fear that I, like these Virginia Tech students, will need a handgun, and be prohibited by law from having one.

Madmen do not heed the law. Criminals scoff at it. And those of us who do abide by said laws are rendered as defenseless as sheep by that self-same law.

Which is more tyrannical - the madman who wantonly murders many in defiance of the law, or the law itself which demands that the madman's victims be quietly slaughtered, the law that makes criminals out of anyone who DARES to possess the means to their own defense and the defense of others?

Know this: I carry a gun in dreaded anticipation of being placed, forced, into a situation like this. I carry a gun so that, should the unthinkable become reality, I can stop the carnage with one or two well-placed bullets into the brainpan of a predator.

I would have been glad to face the full force of the law, had I been in one of those classrooms in Virginia's halls of learning, for I would not have been unarmed, regardless of the law. If the price of saving thirty or more lives is the loss of my freedom, I will weep for freedom lost, but the cost of protecting my own legal reputation is pennies next to the enormity of lives saved. If the madman kills me as I attempt to protect my own life and the lives of those around me, I will die with honor, knowing that, law or no, I did the right thing.

To quote a tagline I saw on a forum somewhere: "Carry 24/7, or guess right." Virginia Tech's students followed the law, and guessed wrong.

To the bastard who committed this foul act, "Rot in Hell."
To the bastards in Virginia's legislature which allowed the conditions to be ripe for this slaughter, though, there is a special circle of Hell reserved for you and your ilk, a circle lower even than that of the killer, for YOU allowed this to happen.

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