A "grassroots" group brought a special guest to Virginia Tech this week to support the right to pack heat on campus
The online weapons dealer who sold one of the guns used in the Virginia Tech shootings visited the campus, a decision the school's spokesman called "terribly offensive."
Dealer Eric Thompson spoke at the school Thursday night as part of a weeklong demonstration in favor of allowing people to carry concealed weapons at colleges.
...
Thompson visited to support a chapter of Students for Concealed Carry on Campus, which advocates weapons on campuses, but said he paid his own way.
A school spokesman denounced the visit in a statement Wednesday, saying it was "terribly offensive" that Thompson would set foot on campus.
...
Virginia Tech last week marked the first anniversary of the shootings in a dormitory and classroom building in which 33 died, including shooter Seung-Hui Cho.
Cho bought a Walther .22-caliber handgun through Thompson's Web site, based in Green Bay, Wis. Through another company Web site, Thompson also sold handgun accessories to the man who killed five Northern Illinois University students and himself in February.
Thompson pointed to a student's T-shirt that said "Guns Kill." "They certainly do," he said, but added "focusing on guns and focusing on who sold the guns is not going to solve the problem."
Clearly. After all, if no-one had sold these two disturbed young men guns sight unseen, they would have just
um
not killed 39 people and wounded another 35.
Anyway. Students for Concealed Carry on Campus have a front guy
W. Scott Lewis is a board member and spokesman for Students for Concealed Carry on Campus...
NEWSWEEK: Why do you think it would help matters if students were allowed to carry guns on college campuses?
W. Scott Lewis: We're talking about licensed individuals age 21 and above, in most states, who have gone through extensive background checks, training, testing, etc. Basically, these are the same individuals who are licensed to carry in virtually all other unsecured locations in these states. By unsecured I mean anywhere where there are not metal detectors and X-ray machines. So you're saying that individuals who are licensed to carry in office buildings, movie theaters, grocery stores, restaurants, shopping malls, churches, banks, etc.—they're currently not allowed to carry on college campuses for some reason … College campuses are unsecured locations. Anybody can walk onto a college campus carrying just about anything they please. So what happens is these state laws and these school policies that prohibit concealed carry on college campuses stack the odds in favor of dangerous criminals who have no concern for following the rules.
Concerned about all that undergraduate binge drinking if we arm the kids? Well, don't be, because like the man says, you can't get a concealed carry permit until you're 21.
So this shiny new group that just popped up like mushrooms around the country is warning second amendment absolutists about the erosion of their rights if people who aren't eligible to carry concealed weapons aren't allowed to carry concealed weapons.
Why, anyone would think that this was a particularly sleazy attempt to fire up a reliable Republican voting bloc and get them to the polls by using a bunch of dead kids to draw attention to something the NRA has been trying unsuccessfully for years to do.
Well played, profoundly cynical Republican wedge issue apparatus.
Shame about all those dead kids, though.
Login Here
Share This
Spotlight
1?
2 nighs in a row! Hi Julia. Did you ever get the email i sent?
ayup.
No, I don’t think I did. Try sending it to jmhm at livejournal.com
who the hell is this w. scott lewis?
grrr, julia, this post has pissed me off. forker has to be an nra/gop frontman to pull off this amount of insensitive bullshit.
He looks to be about sixteen, so I’m saying Young Republican on the make.
If students were suspected of being armed, then the lunatics would either:
1) Not change their behavior at all because they are, um, crazy.
or
2) Bring more and heavier firepower.
A little Digg for ya Julia!!
You can carry a weapon here even younger than getting a library card. Just can’t carry it to school.
nicely dugg, thanks nahant
OT Sharks score first on a trickler!!
Well, yeah.
I’m also picturing the campus cops having to figure out which of the students are
a) disturbed/teh worse for substances
b) hiding a weapon about their person
or
c) hiding a weapon about their person but it’s OK, their birthday was last week.
giving nahant the LQQK
Yes, let’s make it easy for students to carry guns on campus. Horny, homesick teenagers armed with handguns. Should make the frat row keggers super duper exciting! The first time some guy looks at some other guy’s gal sideways we’ll have the shootout at the OK Corral. Excellent idea!
Freakin morons.
Why is it that in this country we never learn anything? The last thing we need is hot-headed kids, possibly drinking or using drugs with fire power. Good lord, will the madness never end.
but but but madmommy, there’s money to be made from them gun sales, hospitalizations, funeral expenses, and the like
Too late to hang out but anyone who has the chance, DO WATCH MOYERS tonight. Rev. Jeremiah Wright in person and not chopped up into sound bites.
Must see teevee.
dayum, that is one mean lQQk!
Assault weapons ban now!
crazy merkunz!
blech.
The University of Kansas had a group advocating this during the week. I’m interested to know that these groups popped up at the same time all over the country. And I thought it was a local initiative.
Sorry Suz& Julia couldn’t help it
There’s a company which is now selling paints to make real guns look more like plastic toy guns which they named after Mayor Bloomberg because he made it illegal to paint real guns so they look more like plastic toy guns.
Thereby unconscionably abrogating the second amendment rights of elementary school students to get shot by cops who can’t afford to assume that’s not a real gun pointing at them.
all i gotta do is act naturally
Um.
I’m a little tired right now, I guess. The first thing I thought when I saw that was West Side Story (but here come the Jets…)
judas forking priest
are they gonna show up at columbine high school next?
some of our gang members are now serving in Iraq and Afghanistan…
sharks/jets
Chilling, eh? Evening, Suz!
I love that opening shot.
C!
me too.. and the jets song and the only in america song and dayamit, i like the whole forking movie
hey ct
Yay Julia!
Hi to all.
learning how to fight an urban war. what wonderful skills to bring back and teach their fellow gangbangers.
Julia, Thompson certainly had some chutzpah to show his face on campus…! I’m disappointed that nobody really thanked him for his role…!
Here you go Suz: America
yeppers.
those that do make it home, that is.
we are so >..?_)!
I thought it was bad enough at our high school, lo these many years ago. We rolled other schools’ buses when we lost football games. (I don’t mean me, I never went to a high school football game but I did hear all about them.)
I can’t imagine adding guns to the mix…
Sorry, what the hell was I thinking? Obviously I need to start embracing my inner greedy bastard and stop thinking about how what I do affects everyone else. I’ll try to do better from now on.
my my how times have changed.
there are whole new meanings for ’she’s queer for uncle sam’
frying pans don’t fry eggs, people fry eggs, right?
cars don’t drive to Detroit, people go to detroit…
hmmm I wonder if those who claim “guns don’t kill, people do” have tried frying eggs with their bare hands.
or walking on the shoulder along I-94 all the way to Detroit.
your mileage may vary, but try these over beers with non-deranged gun fetishists.
Heh, Howdy, LL and MM! ;-)
*laughing* do their eyes get all beedy and a tight look come across their face as if there is too much pressure inside their heads?
Now now. Focus.
What’s important is that when those gang members get back, they’re going to need to be able to walk onto the grounds of your kid’s school with guns stuck in the back of their belts.
I guess they couldn’t stand to look at him.
negroponte on charlie rose……………full hour…………
sick em..
number two at the state department, right behind, ahem, condi.
she has the boots, he’s got the whip.
Virginia already has a concealed carry law that was carefully constructed to have reasonable exemptions. The idea that some outside group is gonna come in and make political hay out of these dead students is OUTRAGEOUS.
Tech is one of the two schools that nearly everybody in northern Virginia sends their kids to. Every high school in Fairfax County has kids that go there. This was personal for a lot of people, and as folks might remember from 1861, Virginians don’t take kindly to outsiders telling them how to run things.
Julia, great post. Here in VA recently there was a group who were exercising their concealed carry rights by visiting restaurants and packing heat, just to show that they could. I just don’t get the mentality. Anyway…
Aloha CT!
*loads a spitball*
Weird. Here you’re allowed to refuse service to barefoot people.
They need to pack something in their pants to compensate for their ‘lack’…! ;-)
My body guard has a concealed carry permit. He needs it. So do several of my friends. I’m very strong 2nd Amendment, but don’t like the idea of people with permits being able to walk around government buildings and schools while they’re packing.
In government buildings, often employees can protect other employess because some are armed. In schools, the only armed people are campus police, which is more and more being farmed out to security companies who know little of the campus cultures and currents.
I think airline pilots should be armed, and each school should have some staff who are trained to use guns defensively. That gives the school a “deterrent,” which doensn’t always work, but sometimes does, and certainly doesn’t exist now.
someone wants my attention
I was working with a Tech grad when it happened. We all wore maroon and orange to work that Friday.
Was Virgil NO Goode at the head of the line?
“No Shirts, No Shoes, No Service!” A very popular sign in Rednecklandia. Ah, for the copyright…
Our school has two full time officers who are armed with taser and gun.
Heh! ;-)
ET– you have a body guard???
omg.
Heh, what, you’ve stirred enough hornet nests up there to need a body guard, ET? ;-)
Julia, please forgive…just got back to FDL. Going to read your post.
The key is training. Too few people who are supposed to respond to an emergency like a nutty student or dad blowing up on campus, spend enough time in realistic training to have it work well.
That is a good point. I strongly support my right, amoung other rights, to bear arms. But to use a tragedy like this for divisive political purposes is just wrong.
He’s been my bodyguard for 28 or 29 years. We can’t agree on the exact date when he convinced me I needed one. He’s the best-armed Shriner clown in the North.
ET, depends totally on the school/community.
Agreed. I’m not entirely sure about the quality and extent of the training that the security guards where I work have gone through. They are armed.
Bless you both.
:)
My #66 was a very poorly constructed sentence…blergh…I think you all know what I mean! ;-)
These are trained cops.
Great post, Julia. Perhaps this YouTube video shows the lunacy of this position.
Right. On. Point.
That’s quite an emsemble she’s sporting, there. Wonder what kind of fabric that is?
I have one gun in within arms reach right now and another across the room near the back door and several more throughout the house. Aside from hunting, living through a burglary once in my life without a gun was one time to many. In High School one could look across the student parking lot and count at least a hundred guns in pick-up truck gun racks. Nobody ever questioned it.
Saw the article earlier this evening. This whole sorry episode is so wrong on so many levels. Done on the sly so there’d be no opposition.
This administration has opened the door to so many nutjobs.
Enabled by a bunch of willfully ignorant, lazy citizens.
Oh, please, tell me what to believe. I’m so absorbed with myself and my stuff that I don’t have time to think.
Give. me. a. break.
early kevlar?
Past time for that fool to get gone…
OMG. ET. I totally disagree. We teachers are trained on at least five new, cool, fix-it-all programs every year. You read it, are lectured on it by someone who believes in it, but cannot make it work.
If we had someone involved in firearms on my campus, I would feel a lot less safe.
angie, definitely. It’s turning more and more purple here over the past couple of years; hopefully he and his ilk are on the way out.
It’s definitely reflective, if not refactive. And pink. Still, she kicks ass.
As an aside, finally saw “Walk The Line” tonight. Many days late and several dollars short, but a good movie.
OFG, the Archie Bunker clip was teh funny ;-)
That’s the best solution on the training level, but when you do that, the deterrent is obtrusive enough that it sort of redefines the school itself. I’m thinking more along the lines of the principal, and two other faculty or staff in a public or private school, and by department at a college or university. They wouldn’t be uniformed, but they’d have some disabling weapon on them always. I hate pistols and tasers, though.
I’ve read of experiments with goo or nets or other stuff people can shoot out of dispensers that are far more disabling than tasers. They make a big mess. In Alaska, we’ve found that bear pepper spray is more effective - even on a charging Grizzly - than firearms.
There are also at least three military vets on our campus, but don’t know if any are armed
w scott lewis
why is this guy so ’under the radar’ ?
i’ve searched in all my places, not much..(that’s why i’m always epu’d)…little iddy biddy gop donations, that’s all……..who’s backing him? that’s the first thing i always look for, gop suck babies don’t leave their nest unless they have money guaranteed, can’t find it, any evidence of who’s backing him…….had a little business, ads, little contributions, a while back, can’t find anything recent…..haven’t gotten through the whole list on newsmeat.com yet, long list of states and i’m on dial up…so, where’s his ’funk’ comin’ from?
nuthin’ here that i can find in the notes–
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S....._on_Campus
(and i got epu’d again on the last thread, all my best stuff is epu’d, university of cincinnati pres, a female, on NCAA board, all she votes on in a yea manner is bad news, and they ASKED HER to be back on the board….just as horrific as gonzales at the doj, i’m tellin’ ya, pay attention sports fans, and i really mean the real sports fans, she is all about changing the rules. in a gonzales kind of way)
Goodness sakes. You must have grown up in a rough and tumble area. I gather that you and I are about the same age (I’m 55). How could your world be so much rougher than mine? I came home to a robbery when my daughter was about 5 months old. I had her (in the car seat) in my arms. Heard the burgler in the house and split. Scared the crap out of me…
I’ve heard that from faculty where I work, and I respect that.
The chances of something happening like what did at Virginia Tech or the U of Texas or McLean or other places are more remote than tornadoes or drunk drivers. Things like Columbine are less of a problem statistically than a lot of other things that kill school kids - like the food they buy from vending machines. Or, maybe not…
I’m ambivalent on whether or not school faculty or staff should be armed, but feel that that would be better than what the guy who spoke at VA Tech is advocating.
If we are going to be Second Amendment absolutists, we have to realize that there are going to be a lot of innocent dead people than there would be if we limit gun ownership. We make it easy for people to buy guns, and therefore a lot of people have guns who just shouldn’t have guns. So there are more and more innocent dead people.
I’ve followed your comments on this. How can one person have such power on the board? And I wonder if she’s getting something from some outside source that is the driving factor in her changes at school. Like a turn-around CEO. Then a lucrative contract with some associated firm.
Offhand I’m guessing that if we knew what W stood for there’d be a few more hits for him (which I’m also guessing is why he went with W Scott)
The two faces of Arizona….
Arizona Weighs Bill to Allow Guns on Campuses
Chandler boy suspended for sketching gun
I really hate guns. People say “guns don’t kill”….but I have never heard of a drive-by knifing. I don’t object to people hunting - well, I do, but that’s another question - I most certainly disagree with kids walking the streets with AK47s and such and killing 4 year olds inside of houses.
A drive by knifing would kill only one and not 15.
Guns don’t kill people, pictures of guns kill people.
BTW, we’re having a huge snow storm in Southcentral Alaska right now. The old record for Anchorage on this day was less than 2 inches. It has snowed about a foot there today, with up to 15 more inches predicted for tonight. Where I live - 35 miles to the north - it is snowing less, but we’ll get almost a foot by midnight.
Driving home this evening was CRAZY! Half the people took their winter tires off last week when it was so nice. Watching people peel off the freeway and into the ditch on the way home, was a little like being in an 8th Air Force B-17 on the way into Schweinfurt, seeing the ack-ack take out your squadron. Hundreds in the ditches.
In Alaska, we’ve found that bear pepper spray is more effective - even on a charging Grizzly - than firearms.
Anybody using pepper spray to stop a charging Grizzly is going to end up mighty tasty.
Wow ET.
We’re in the middle of thunder storms and tornado watch here in central texas.
I am 42. The area where I attended High School wasn’t particularly rough.. South Arkansas farm and hunting country. Everyone had guns and a great respect for them. Kids fought all the time, like kids do, especially when drinking but I don’t recall a single incident involving kids and guns.
I’m not in favor of guns in school, although I do not have near the problem with guns many of my fellow progressive have. To me and many others they are like lawn mowers or some other basic necessity. Just don’t stick your hand into the moving blade area!
My prejudice is that I’m in an elementary setting. There are really people advocating that I have a gun in the classroom. Not many, but enough to get me worried.
Westside Story - Teh Gay
some people are just never pleased unless there is a clown car and a camel involved
Who’s W. Scott?
ET, how horrible! That was like us last year when 30 inches fell the day before Easter. We saw a coach bus turned over in the ditch! BTW, my Dad was a tailgunner in the 8th in a B17.
You talkin ta me?
A lot of people seem to have very low opinion of college students. Oh well.
What’s the difference between a 21 y.o. with concealed carry permit and an 18 y.o. army kid in Irak? The safety training I learned in civilian life was far better than army basic training.
Now, hmmm, what was the mall shooting that was ended by an off-duty police person technically violating the gun-free zone?
And, lastly, why whenever this topic is raised, it’s not long before someone makes the genital comment?
and in my searching for dirt on w scott lewis proponent of lunacy, i found a landscaper–a landscaper, who believes in obama……financially.
a landscaper doens’t have that much to spread around in winter……..
i am for the supreme court and federal judges, that is how i will vote, but i hafta say, i was affected by the landscaper in florida who in the m