This is very troubling.
College Admins: If You Favor Second Amendment Rights, You Must Be Crazy
By Jon Sanders
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
A Minnesota college student was suspended and ordered to undergo "mental health evaluation" for his response to campuswide e-mails from school officials concerning the Virginia Tech massacre.
The college, Hamline University, a private, liberal-arts institution affiliated with the Methodist Church, has a policy on "Freedom of Expression and Inquiry" that guarantees that Hamline students will be "free to examine and discuss all questions of interest to them and to express opinions publicly or privately."
With such a strong guarantee on students' "freedom from censorship and control" by the university, student Troy Scheffler's e-mail must have been horrifically bad to warrant such a crackdown. Right?
Wrong. What Scheffler did was make a gun-rights case for concealed-carry permits on campus to help ward off potential Cho Seung-Huis before they strike Hamline. This was no monstrous act; in fact, it was in line with public debate across the nation following Cho's rampage, not to mention an issue of perennial debate in America. Many researchers, most notably John R. Lott Jr., have shown conclusively that gun ownership itself wards off crime while laws banning guns lead to increases in crimes. Criminals are less likely to strike if they have reason to believe their prospective victims could be armed.
Scheffler had written in his April 17 e-mail reply to David Stern, Hamline vice president of student affairs, that "Considering this university also pushes 'diversity' initiatives like VA Tech, maybe its 'leadership' will reconsider [Hamline's] ban on conceal carry law abiding gun owners... Ironically, according to a few VA Tech forums, there are plenty of students complaining that this wouldn't have happened if the school wouldn't have banned their permits a few months ago."
He added, "I just don't understand why leftists don't understand that criminals don't care about laws; that is why they’re criminals... Maybe this school will reconsider its repression of law abiding citizens rights."
Two days later, Hamline President Linda Hanson e-mailed the campus about Virginia Tech. Scheffler replied to that e-mail also, expanding upon his comments to Stern.
In both messages, Scheffler made it clear to all but the most hysterically inclined person that his advocacy of concealed-carry permits was to protect the students from criminals. Scheffler recognized that this protection would be afforded primarily by predators' foreknowledge that any one of the students at Hamline could shoot back, but also – given that the administrators had both brought up the VT massacre – by students being able to stop a killing rampage before it got started.
In short, what Scheffler wrote was no preamble to a blood-lusty explosion of violence. At worst it was crude criticism of the university administration combined with a stark assessment of the true risk of a concealed-carry society like Virginia Tech's: total defenselessness against a Columbine-inspired mass murderer. Regardless, it should have been protected by the university's stated policy guaranteeing free expression.
Nevertheless, on April 23 Scheffler received a hand-delivered letter from Dean of Students Alan Sickbert that informed him his e-mails were "deemed to be threatening and thus an alleged violation of the Hamline University Judicial Code" and that he was placed on "interim suspension" to be lifted only after he agreed to a psychological evaluation by a licensed mental health professional.
Click on the title to read the rest.
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I know that a lot of people are afraid of guns and would never want to have one on their person or in their homes. I also know people who support gun rights but for various personal reasons cannot or will not have a gun. Yet those of us who are willing to train, practice and apply for a concealed carry permit should not be denied that right. Statistics show that the very fact that we do so provides some protection for our fellow citizens. The fact that some percentage of the population could be armed does deter some crime. As I have said before, if one of the professors or students at VA Tech had been legally armed, some, if not most, of the lives could have been saved. We will never know in that particular instance. We may never know in future instances if our institutions of higher learning continue to insist that an unarmed campus is a safe campus. Why do you think criminals choose campuses to shoot up? They can be reasonably certain they will not face armed opposition.
As an aside, I think this might be a big thing in the Methodist Church. Several years ago I attended a conflict resolution training event in a Methodist church. One of the people I trained with was also a CCW permit holder and we were both surprised that we were prohibited from carrying on the church property. (I used to work in a church - considering some of the people who show up there looking for "help" being armed is not such a bad idea.) More recently, we vacationed at Lake Junaluska, a Methodist assembly in NC. We stayed in the old Lambuth Inn. It was lovely. However, they prominently display a sign on the front door prohibiting concealed carry. Now, I did not feel unsafe there as I normally do in a hotel. It did not seem to me to be a place a criminal would be drawn to. However, I did wonder how they proposed to protect me if someone did decide to take advantage of this group of disarmed victims. After all, they did not want me to be capable of defending myself! As much as I liked the environment, we will probably choose another facility on our next trip to the mountains, one that will not deny us our lawful rights.
---Katie
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