Lynchburg, VA - On Wednesday, Liberty University officials announced the decision by their board of trustees to allow students and staff members with concealed-weapons permits to carry their guns while on campus.
While students will only be permitted to carry their gun while walking on campus grounds or in a vehicle, faculty and staff will be allowed to carry their weapons inside university buildings.
Liberty Chancellor Jerry Falwell Jr. believes the new policy will improve campus safety, saying: “It adds to the security and safety of the campus, and it's a good thing. If something — God forbid — ever happened like what happened at Virginia Tech, there would be more than just our police officers who would be able to deal with it.”
Conversely, Old Dominion University officials recently proposed a regulation which would completely ban guns, unless carried by police officers, from all campus buildings and sporting events.
The proposal will be considered at ODU’s governing Board of Visitors meeting in December.
Given the following examples, Chancellor Falwell may have a point:
-In 1997, Mississippi teenager Luke Woodham killed his mother and then drove to Pearl High School where he killed two students and wounded seven more. Assistant Principal Joel Myrick ran a quarter of a mile to his vehicle and returned with his .45 pistol. Myrick confronted the teen aged killer and detained him while waiting for police to arrive. Woodham was attempting to leave the high school and planned to drive to the local middle school and continue his killing. Myrick's actions undoubtedly saved the lives of many children that day.
-In 2002, a Nigerian student named Peter Odighizuwa shot and killed three people at the Appalachian School of Law in rural Virginia. His shooting spree was ended when fellow students Todd Ross and Ted Bessen went to their cars and retrieved their own guns. The pair returned and ordered Odighizuwa to drop his weapon and held him until police arrived.
-In February 2007, at a Salt Lake City mall, an armed off-duty police officer shot and killed a young Muslim named Sulejman Talovic. The officer (Ken Hammond), prevented a massacre as Talovic was found with a backpack full of ammunition, a shotgun, and a pistol. Before Officer Hammond ended the shooting spree, Talovic murdered five people.
In 1975, handgun ownership was banned in Washington D.C. Since that time, violent criminals have over-taken our nation's capital. From 1976-2005, an astounding 8,278 murders have taken place in that city and guns were used in almost all of them.
In 2008, the Supreme Court heard the case of the legitimacy of the D.C. handgun ban. Fortunately, a majority of the Justices saw the ban as having been in direct conflict with our Constitution and the ban was overturned. Chief Justice John Roberts let everyone in the courtroom know his opinion that the ban was unreasonable when he posed the question: “What is reasonable about a total ban on possession of handguns?”
In 2010, amid a rash of violent crimes on and around campus, a group of students at Old Dominion University began a petition asking the school’s administration to change the on-campus gun ban, so that students and faculty alike can defend themselves without fear of expulsion or termination.
The ODU College Republicans sponsored the petition with a page on Facebook entitled “Students for a Safer Campus,” asking for signatures. Club member Tyler Spires told WAVY-10: “If they have their concealed weapons permit to be able to carry their weapons on campus, they're already law abiding students, they have the right to carry it on campus.”
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