Guns on campus: one is too few

Guns on campus: one is too few
Date: Apr 18, 2007 8:17 AM
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Guns on campus: One is one too few


BLACKSBURG, VA., IS a college town surrounded by countryside full of good
ole boys who grew up shooting and hunting. Virginia Tech undoubtedly has a
good number of experienced marksmen on campus as students, staff members
and faculty. If just one of them had been able to retrieve his weapon
quickly, there might be only three dead -- the first two victims and the
shooter -- instead of 32.

Crazy? Hardly.

Consider the Saturday shooting at the Uptown Tavern in Manchester. Two
men, one a Golden Glove boxer, were being tossed from the bar at 12:45 in
the morning when the boxer allegedly punched a bouncer in the face. The
other man pulled a handgun and started firing at the bouncers and
assistant manager.

The gunman fired six shots into the crowded bar before a customer who had
come over to help the bouncers whipped out his own handgun and fired back.
He hit the shooter twice, disabling him and instantly ending the shooting
spree. The only reason that same scenario could not have played out on the
Virginia Tech campus is that firearms are banned there.

Predictably, where guns are banned, only those willing to disobey the ban
have guns. Law-abiding, rational citizens who might be able to stop a
mentally ill or simply cold-blooded killer are left defenseless in the
face of a murderer.

"All the school shootings that have ended abruptly in the last 10 years
were stopped because a law-abiding citizen -- a potential victim -- had a
gun," Larry Pratt, executive director of Gun Owners of America, said after
the Virginia Tech shooting.

Those that did not end abruptly? No armed citizen was there to stop the
massacres.

You can say that one gun on campus is one too many. But it is and always
will be impossible to prevent a determined person with ill intent from
smuggling one (or more) onto campus. The best defense against such people
is to increase the number of armed good guys so that there is always
someone nearby able to respond.




The Second Amendment IS Homeland Security !