Virginia Tech again: when will they learn?

February 10, 7:18 AMLA Gun Rights ExaminerJohn Longenecker

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For all their criticisms of the so-called gun lobby, Virginia Tech doesn’t seem to grasp much after a murderous rampage. How can an institution teach if it will not learn? In Safe Streets In The Nationwide Concealed Carry Of Handguns, I critiqued the Virginia Tech Review Panel and its absolute ignorance in its report to the Governor of Virginia. I pointed to silly things, such as how guns should be disallowed because some are uncomfortable sitting next to an armed adult student. (Do they have a Law School there?) If that was their best evidence in their report, it was easily impeached.

In April, V-Tech surrendered up $11 million in a quiet lawsuit settlement brought by survivors of Virginia Tech’s shooting, assets entrusted to them as an institution of higher education. Gone, and for what?

Last month, an Asian student was decapitated on the Virginia Tech campus. No gun there, but a sharp knife and all the time needed as students watched and did nothing.

And they still haven’t learned: in a New York Times Editorial of February 7, 2009 [The Virginia Tech Betrayal] the gist of that piece hardly describes betrayal, but more accurately misses a little United States History, some moral imperatives, a little law, some germane facts, and, of course, student safety.

For instance, "Richmond lawmakers have callously rejected a gun control proposal sought as a memorial to the 32 students slain in the Virginia Tech massacre. Once more, state senators proved more beholden to the gun lobby’s propaganda and campaign money than to public safety."

Well, you know, we don’t suppress a civil right [ a gun control proposal ] for the sake of a memorial to those who died from negligence; our objective is to reduce the negligence contributing to the massacre. To 80 million gun owners, guns are not for killing in this country, they are for staying alive in this country. Killers kill, and they are criminals for it, not voters, not gun owners. Just because they acquire a gun doesn’t make them gunowners any more than handing over $11 million makes you a trustee. As far as the so-called gun lobby propaganda goes, it’s more informative and useful to student safety than anything the college has transformed yet. V-Tech didn’t hand over $11 million to be nice, they had to, and in doing so, they purchased another turn at denying their adult students the right and authority of armed self-defense on campus.

We don’t suppress a civil right [ a gun control proposal ] for the sake of a memorial to those who died from negligence; our objective is to reduce the negligence contributing to the massacre.

Elsewhere in the editorial is this: "Bereft of courage as public servants, the Richmond senators made clear their crocodile tears about "closure," shed in the immediate horror of students gunned down. They also made clear the need for a federal law to bypass cowardly statehouses and to close gun-show loopholes."

What gun-show loophole? There is none, since all sales have to conform to those of all sellers. When anti-gun activists say that half of all gun-show vendors are not registered, they mislead readers, since half of those vendors at the show are not selling guns, but books, and other products.

Campus killings with or without guns are not the fault of the so-called gun lobby, they are the fault of stubborn trustees who refuse to honor state law. Virginia is a right-to-carry state, and at the time of Cho’s rampage on 32 adult students, there was no state law banning weapons on campus. Only the trustees said that you can’t carry in your own right-to-carry state, and I’ll bet Cho discovered that. They usually do. V-Tech policy for carrying your Virginia-legal handgun on campus was suspension, expulsion or worse (counseling) which, as I prefer to put it, forced students to choose between felony and funeral. Virginia Tech lost $11 million for deciding for students on funeral. V-Tech then sought and obtained such a state law long after Cho’s murders, but do you really believe that disarming students will avert future shootings any more than it has? Of course not. Too many knifings and decapitations, too.

Virginia is a right-to-carry state, and at the time of Cho’s rampage on 32 adult students, there was no state law banning weapons on campus.

You don’t stop the next campus or workplace shooter by profiling them with psychoanalysis, by having student alerts which take fifteen minutes to write and send, or by restricting the rights of the adult students: you stop the next shooter by recognizing the legal authority of your adult students to stop a crime in progress and to act in self-defense. Colorado and Utah, to name a few, affirm their students’ being armed on campus, and they don’t seem to have V-tech’s recurring problems.

Campus killings can be avoided so very easily, but trustees will have to give up some of their turf and some of their prestige. Public or private institution, the trustees have to quit being so stubborn. It’s too expensive, way, too expensive.

All gun control is incompatible with liberty.

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John Longenecker is author of Safe Streets In The Nationwide Concealed Carry Of Handguns, which contains a critique of the Virginia Tech Review Panel.

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