Guns on Campus May Have Limited Scope of Massacre

Virginia Tech is one of the few places in the gun-friendly state of Virginia where law-abiding citizens cannot legally carry a gun.

Students at Tech who are 21 can get a concealed carry permit (just like anybody else in Virginia) and go almost anywhere in the state – but not on the campus of their school. Students with such permits have to leave their guns off campus.

As we found out this week, they may need their guns on campus even more than they need them off campus.

Five years ago, a similar shooting scenario unfolded on the campus of the Appalachian School of Law in Grundy, VA, not far from Virginia Tech. It ended very differently because two students ran to their vehicles, got their guns and used them to subdue the shooter. The shooter was reloading, indicating that he was not finished with his killing spree.

Those two students were in violation of state laws which allow universities to ban firearms on campus. They were not prosecuted. No doubt prosecution would have resulted in an acquittal without the jury even leaving the jury box.

That raises a key question. Why do we have a law on the books that could not get a jury to convict anywhere in the country (outside, perhaps, of San Francisco)? Anyone who would acquit those two students for illegal gun possession essentially agrees with ending the gun ban on the nation’s campuses.

Some object that adult students with guns will mean shoot-ups at drunken frat parties. This is a variant on the elitist objection that has been made against every concealed carry law enacted now in almost 40 states. “Oh, if people can walk around with guns, there will be shootouts in bars, and the roads will turn red from rage.