Last year Va Assembly rejected all gun-carry permits for VaTech

In many states, you can get a permit to carrry a concealed weapon if you abide by certain conditions. You have to have a clean criminal background, i.e. no past criminal history. You have to be mentally competent. You have to take a firearms safety course, and in some state repeat that course yearly. If you qualify in all these things, you can get a permit to carry a weapon. This can come in handy when someone starts selecting people in a classroom and shooting them in the head for no apparent reason.

It is also nice to have such permits available, when some whacko is contemplating someday lining up people and shooting them in the head. He may notice that laws permitting ordinary law-abiding citizens to carry, exist where he wants to do his thing. And he may realize that, if he takes any time at all to get through 32 people (plus 28 wounded), chances are that SOMEONE will have a gun nearby... and he won't know where. He obviously isn't afraid of dying, and even intends to die... but not before doing his thing and killing a dozen or three of his fellow men.

But here he will see that he's pretty unlikely to be able to make whatever insane statement he wanted to make before getting suddenly dead, a lot sooner than he intended. This may affect his planning, or even get him to take up another line of work. IF the laws permit qualified, law-abiding people to carry concealed weapons where he is.

If they had permitted qualified, law-abiding people to carrry on campus, probably most people wouldn't bother anyway. But a few probably would - they already found one guy who was one of those qualified, law-abiding people who did carry on campus, and they busted him for it.

But last year, when a bill was presented to the Virginia Assembly to allow qualified people to carry a concealed weapon on campuses including Virginia Tech, the Assembly never even let it onto the floor for a vote. They killed it in committee. And so law-abiding people, no matter how responsible and carful, were forbidden to carry concealed weapons on campus. Some legislator even boasted that he would feel safer on campus because of it.

As today's assassin moved from room to room, shooting people literally for hours while NO ONE HAD THE ABILITY TO STOP HIM, I wonder if any of the soon-to-be-victims wished that that other student who got busted for exercising his legal concealed-carry permit, was there to help.

Looks like the Virgina Assembly killed more than just a bill that day.

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http://www.roanoke.com/news/roanoke/wb/wb/xp-50658

Gun bill gets shot down by panel - Roanoke.com

Roanoke.com
January 31, 2006
Greg Esposito

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.

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."

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.

 

so you are suggesting that the way to combat this sort of violence is for every student on campus to be packing heat?

yeah....that sounds like a great idea. I wonder if that works at the high school level as well...middle school?

 

Would anyone like to comment, who actually read what I wrote?

 

I did...you are suggesting that law abiding students carry concealed weapons on campus.

I think that is insane.

 

I read what you wrote but was under the impression that you are FOR concealed weapons for students on campus? Or are you for weapons for campus security? You must be more clear. If you are for weapons for campus security, i agree. If you are for the right of students to carry weapons on campus, I completely dissagree and would call that notion a dangerous one, and anyone who agrees with it (along with Todd Gilbert) to competely lack any sense of logic and intellegence beyond that of a jr high drop out who plays too much Grand Theft Auto.

 

(sigh) Please read the first and fourth paragraphs of my OP, then get back to me.

 

I understand where you are coming from but this idea would not help anyone. Your not taking into account accidental deaths due to guns, trigger happy guys full of angst, drunk students who pull out a gun to show off, there is too much testocerone in college to allow anyone, (even if they have a clean record) To have the right to carry a gun, and ultimately the right to choose who dies. That authority should go only to police and campus security. It is not a students obligation to protect anyone, and with a gun in the right or wrong hands, people will get shot period. How can you be for concealed weapons on campus? What do guns have to do with education? Whats to stop a guy (hypothetically speaking) getting beat up at a bar on sunday, and then walk into a dorm the next day and shoot up the guys who beat him up along with innocent bystandards? Whats to stop a non-law abiding student from stealing a concealed weapon from a law abiding student? Whats to stop violence with more violence? You are not thinking with you head. Violence does not stop violence. What about the 364 days that someone does not shoot up a school, sure the gun comes in handy for one day. Then the rest of the year we are adding up the pile of gun related incidents and injurys.

Preschoolers have more logic than that, Infact why dont we let pre schoolers have guns as well? Or high school kids at columbine in colorado? Lots of high schoolers dont have criminal records, and are over 18, and are law abiding. Infact did Eric Harris have a criminal record? No, but that didnt stop him from murdering 13 people.

 

Id be curious to know if the shooter was, before today, considered a qualified, law abiding citizen with no criminal background before making grand assumptions that are neither here nor there. I do agree that private law abiding citizens shouldbe allowed to carry guns... but im not sure that students at a university is quite the same thing any more than any other government location that prohibits personal weapons despite conceal and carry laws.

Id probably wait for more details before grandstanding and using this to further an agenda.

 

If there had been even a few people among the thousands on that campus, carrying weapons, the shooter would not have gone on shooting for HOURS as he did and killed 32 people. No matter what his angst level, inebriation, testosterone, or any of the other excuses people use to prevent responsible, law-abiding people from defending themselves.

Gotta hand it to the Virginia Assembly. They managed to produce 100% perfection: Among all those thousands, there was not ONE WEAPON in the hands of ANY of the law-abiding, responsible people there. Not one. The Virginia Assembly couldn't have given the shooter a safer venue to pull off this massacre, if they tried.

I'm assuming they didn't try, of course.

 

While I have reservations like the above with many of our students at the college level, I must say that I noticed quite a few uniformed students, (ROTC?) being hustled out with the throngs. I can't see where those would have not been armed, along with the security police.