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Students call for concealed weapons |
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Tuesday, 30 October 2007 |
by JILLIAN SWORDS
News Reporter
Across the nation, students from 110 universities awoke to take a shower, shine their shoes, strap on an empty holster, and head to class.
Last week a group under the banner of “Students for Concealed Carry on Campus” organized the nationwide protest, University Police Chief Gunther E. Doerr said.
Its leaders urged college students to wear empty holsters to class to campaign against state laws that prevent lawful permit-holders from carrying concealed weapons onto college campuses.
According to the National Conference of State Legislature, 38 states ban firearms on school grounds.
Sixteen of these states, including North Carolina, explicitly ban concealed weapons on college campuses.
Lenoir-Rhyne is the only college in North Carolina to have a chapter of the organization.
However, Provost Stan R. Aeschleman alerted all Appalachian State
faculty of the demonstration via e-mail, should any students have
decided to participate.
“I have no problem with their protest and support their right to
exercise free speech on campus,” Associate Professor of Criminal
Justice Matthew Robinson said. “[However,] I would be uncomfortable
teaching with guns in the classroom. While I can envision a scenario
where a student with a gun might ‘cut short’ a campus shooting episode
by gunning down a school shooter, I can also envision a student with a
gun shooting another student or a professor as a result of an argument.”
Doerr said University Police had received no information that anyone at
Appalachian had participated in the protest, although news of it
eventually reached some students through faculty.
“The second amendment, (the right to bear arms) runs by a different
standard in that it doesn’t apply to state laws,” junior political
science and secondary education major Clark C. Anderson said.
Anderson, who is president of Appalachian’s chapter of the American
Civil Liberties Union, also said that constitutionally, individual gun
control rights have no precedent of winning over states’ rights in
court.
“It’s a bad case,” he said.
The concealed-carry organization, formed after the [Virginia
Polytechnic Institute and State University] massacre in April, said
current state laws and school policies “stack the odds in favor of
armed killers” by leaving potential victims defenseless, according to
its Web site.
The Virginia Tech shooting had the largest body count of any mass shooting in U.S. history.
The incident itself and ensuing research sparked the formation of
numerous groups across the country calling for stricter background
checks on firearm buyers.
Doerr said after the shootings, experts found numerous holes in
security rules and state laws that are in the process of being
tightened.
Legislation to tighten background checks has passed in the House of
Representatives and is sitting in the Senate, according to an Oct. 24
article from Fox News.
Supporters of the bill, which would “give states funding to submit
information to a national database that would prevent guns from being
sold to dangerous buyers,” include survivors and families of victims of
the Virginia Tech shooting, according to the article.
Shortly over a year before the Virginia Tech incident, the Virginia
General Assembly squashed a bill that would have allowed qualified
students, faculty and staff to carry handguns.
ROTC Cadet Nicholas C. Mack, a freshman undecided major, said as long
as gun holders have been trained and know how to use the weapon they
own, it should be legal to carry that protection.
However, “it is a constitutional right, but we’re also on campus
property,” he added. “I believe it should be up to the states to
decide.”
Town of Boone Police Chief Bill Post said open carry is legal in North
Carolina, with several exceptions including “arming to the terror of
the public.”
According to Appalachian’s Code of Conduct, North Carolina General
Statute makes it unlawful for anyone other than police officers to
carry or possess firearms or weapons on campus.
The university’s definition of weapons includes but is not limited to
BB guns, paintball guns, Bowie knives, slingshots, razors, brass
knuckles, and unaltered nail files.
The minimum punishment for student carriers is suspension and the maximum is expulsion.
Capt. Curtis A. Main of the Boone Police said although there was a law
several years ago that set the legal carried knife blade limit at three
and a half inches, it has since been changed to any knife that is
intentionally used for crime.
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Then I read, “The second amendment, (the right to bear arms) runs by a different standard in that it doesn’t apply to state laws,” junior political science and secondary education major Clark C. Anderson said. Please tell me, how does the state over rule the Bill of Rights? Some where I recall the Fourteenth Amendment! Oh, then I read further that Mr. Anderson's bias is exposed! "Anderson, who is president of Appalachian’s chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, also said that constitutionally, individual gun control rights have no precedent of winning over states’ rights in court.
“It’s a bad case,” he said." Perhaps Mr. Anderson should read "Supreme Court Gun Cases-Two Centuries of Gun Rights Revealed" by David B. Kopel, Stephen P. Halbrook and Alan Korwin. Let's not forget to mention the ongoing D.C. gun ban case possibly going before the Supreme Court this month.
I find it amazing that the president of the ACLU chapter has such contempt for the SECOND AMENDMENT and the individual's GOD Given right to self-defense against either a tyrannical government or individual evil like the shooter at Virginia Tech. Yeah, 20,000 firearms laws are on the books and not one stop a raving lunatic from killing 32 people! One armed student of sound mind and body could have provided a different outcome. Furthermore, most of the gun control laws were directly attributed to Jim Crowe laws that effectively 'disarmed' the blacks and other minorities in the south. Where does Mr. ACLU stand on those historic facts? How ironic it is that Mr. Anderson's organization concerns themselves with bestowing U.S. Constitutional Rights on al Queda terrorists and at the same time trying to strip away what is truly our GOD Given right to Self-defense and Self-preservation as a people and country! The Founders understood that evil transcends time and they intended for us to be armed! "Veritas Vos Liberabit!"