Having been vetoed by our governor last year, our wacko legislators are trying again to make it legal for students and faculty to carry concealed weapons on college campuses.
Does anyone need any other evidence of how crazy these people are? Even after the bonkers defunct Senator Russell Pearce was yanked out of office by a recall election, they just don’t get the picture that Arizona still has some rational citizens.
Pearce promptly found new work as the state Republican party’s vice-chairman (its no. 2 position) and still maintains a Web page describing himself as Senator. Why bother to take it down, after all? He intends to run again to take the seat back.
When (not “if,” I’m afraid) they finally push this crazy legislation through, I’ll need to consider whether I really want to stay in the classroom, or if there’s some other way to make what passes for a living here.
It sounds melodramatic to say you’re not going to stand in front of a class when who knows how many students are toting pistols around. But to understand the situation, all you have to do is watch the video of Pima Community College that poor nut case Jared Loughner posted before he shot an elected representative and a bunch of innocent citizens, including a child.
Loughner is far from unique. Every college and university campus hosts a few people who are so far lost in the wilds of mental illness that they’re capable of anything. The last thing we need to do is make it OK for them to arm themselves. And between you and me, I don’t think it’s worth risking my life to earn $2,400 per 16-week class.
The idea that if everyone is armed we’re all going be safe…my god! Is it even possible to express how absurd that is?
In the first place, the fact is most people do not easily shoot another human being, all bragging to the contrary. No matter what we think we’ll do, few of us know exactly how we will react under stress. It takes training—a lot of it—to prepare a person to make a decision, under duress, to kill another person and then move to do it quickly and accurately.
And in the second place, few American citizens get that kind of training. At civilian ranges you learn to shoot at motionless targets. By and large it takes military or police training to learn to shoot a moving target accurately, and it takes a great deal of psychological preparation to shoot a moving target that happens to be a human being. How many of the 18-year-olds wandering around college campuses have that kind of training? A few returning veterans may, but that’s about it. And I can guarantee that not one in a hundred college professors have a trained shootist’s mindset.
My father was a military sharpshooter and he remained a firearms enthusiast all his life. I have one of his guns, and yes, I’d use it against an intruder, given the right circumstances. But I don’t practice often enough to delude myself that I could strike an assailant in a classroom without hitting a kid, too—or even that I could get at a pistol in time to do much if such a person burst into the room.
My own strategy for avoiding harm is simply to stay out of harm’s way. And since our legislators propose to bring a lot more harm into my workplace, I guess it’s time to consider how I might find some other workplace.
At my age, there’s not much I’ll be able to do. But I have considered that during this relatively slow semester I could get myself licensed as a Realtor. The course, I’m told, is very easy, and as an adjunct “employee” I can probably take it for free through the community college. While I’m not much of a salesperson, I certainly could work as an assistant in a real estate office. In Arizona, you need a Realtor’s license even to work as a gofer for a real estate office. Pay would be low—but what I’m earning now is lower than low. A part-time job filling out forms and answering phones would at least bring in money through the summer instead of just eight months a year.
Real estate. Maybe it’s time to take a closer look at that.
If you can qualify for a concealed weapons permit I don’t see any reason why that person could carry his weapon anywhere unless specifically banned by a business or some institution ( no shoes, no shirt, no service). Our Wal Mart allows open carry.
Nevada is an open carry state but I almost never open carry I just carry a Buck 650 N in the Grand Caravan and if I am car jacked and if the perp sticks his arm thru an open window, he ain’t getting it back.
I can slice a tomato as thin as a piece of paper with that blade.
If there was a student with a CCW at Virgina Tech the outcome may have been much different. Maybe 32 people didn’t have to die.
The Brady bunch seem to to think that if our citizens are disarmed crime will go away.
That is laughable as the law biding citizens will turn in their guns but the criminals won’t.
So think about this.
If some one is breaking down your door at 4:40 am (when you are in deep REM sleep) do you want to dial 911 or grab your Remington 870 12 gauge with the pistol grip so you have more control of your weapon?
Never use bird shot at the first load. If they live they will sue you and win.
00 Buck or No. 4 as it is best at close range inside a house.
If push come to shove I will never turn in my guns or my ammo.
I have enough ammo in our Y3K room to supply a SEAL team for a month and enough Hamburger helper to feed them for 6 months.
Loughner was a mental defective.
If I was teaching a class and I knew several people in my class had a valid CCW, I’d fell safe.
Yah, but George: THEY DON’T!!!! Augh! Our illustrious leaders have done away with any safety training or any freaking other thing. Ya just fill out a form and ya get a concealed carry permit.
Just because a person thinks he’s gonna kill the bad guy doesn’t mean he can kill the bad guy. Maybe by accident li’l Roy Rogers all grown up will get off a good shot, but it’ll be an accident. My point is, to function well AND accurately under extreme stress, you need to be trained and practiced. And how many 18-year-olds do you know who are there?
If every kid in my class was a combat veteran or a cop, well..sure, I’d feel safe (sorta), too. But today maybe two in 25 are vets. None of them are cops.
@funny
To get a CCW in Nevada you have to take a class to know how to use it and when to use it. You just can’t go out and start shooting people
Then you have to take a target test to see how many holes you can make in the target.
If you don’t make the holes in the right places, you don’t get your ccw.
On the other paw when I was in the NAVY when we did target practice many of the people in my squad couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn and this was regular NAVY not special OPS.
The way I see it if you invest the time and money to get a CCW you know when to use it and how to use it.
I don’t have a CCW. I don’t want THEM to know where I live and what I have when they come for my guns.
I want to surprise them.
No Comment?
The reason I don’t have a ccw is I live 60 miles from nowhere and 6 feet from Hell.
Interesting article, FAM. Would you make a distinction between young and older returning students having a CCW permit?
Nope. Old returning students can be just as loony as young students. Craziness is not a function of age.
My husband was a First Force recon Marine in Vietnam. He was a sharpshooter. He told me many times that a non military person would have a Real Hard time shooting to kill.. That it takes training. And that they didn’t know how bad it felt to kill, even when one was trained for it. He was absolutely pro con control. He didn’t think the average person had any business with a gun, especially hand guns. He taught our son to shoot a rifle at a target range, but Had no use for hunters of animals. And for defense, would have recommended a shotgun, though we never had one. The thought being, just the sound of it being cocked would scare someone off. First load, birdshot, second load buckshot.
It’s like Republicans vs. Democrats…..Rebublicans are all about rights, regardless of talent and intellect. Democrats know that all people do not have the same talent and intellect.
@ Kerryann: My gun enthusiast friend would make the same argument in favor of a shotgun; not only is the “say good-bye now” sound of a pump-action shotgun somewhat alarming, but you don’t have to be an expert to hit something with buckshot.
I’m not at all sure that talent & intellect are relevant to one’s position on Constitutional rights; just because one is clueless does not mean one forfeits one’s Constitutional rights. As a wild-eyed liberal, I’m able to see that if the government takes a civil liberty away from one person or one set of people, sooner or later all of us will lose our liberties. Nor does it strike me that Republicans are any more respectful of that rule than Democrats: let’s recall that it was Bush who blithely ignored habeas corpus in the case of anyone even vaguely suspected of terrorism and whose party made torture acceptable, and Obama who blithely continues those policies.