Sic Semper Tyrannis

Today's tragedy -- nay, massacre -- is particularly real for me, as I was a student at Virginia Tech for six years, until about four years ago. While I don't know anyone still there who was directly harmed, I can actually visualize the places where the events happened, and vividly imagine them unfolding. It is chilling, to say the least.

But I don't think this can be written off as just "another crazy going on a shooting rampage". In many ways, the incident was officially mis-handled. Two or more hours elapsed between the first shooting with the first two deaths, and the second shooting, with the other thirty-plus killed. There was time there to do something; to get prepared.

Follow up:

The school's administration -- and by extension, the state government which is in charge of that public university -- failed horribly today. But what is perhaps the greatest shame at all is that, less than a year ago, their "protection" may not have been required. At least, a chance existed to decentralize that protection, when legislation was introduced in the Virginia assembly to allow licensed concealed-carry of firearms on public college campuses in Virginia. The legislation was in response to an incident involving a student with a concealed-carry permit was carrying his firearm while a dangerous criminal was loose on campus. The student was reprimanded, and the law was shot down.

University spokesman Larry Hincker hailed the bill's defeat as a victory, saying:

I'm sure the university community is appreciative of the General Assembly's actions because this will help parents, students, faculty and visitors feel safe on our campus.

Apparently Hincker was more honest than he realized: the defeat of the bill certainly made most people feel safer.

But I would argue it very well turned a tragedy into a massive slaughter. The first two deaths were a "random" tragedy; the next thirty or more were a preventable slaughter. The perpetrator apparently chained shut the doors of the second building he occupied, and simply picked off as many of the trapped people as he could.

If instead even a single student or faculty member was carrying a concealed firearm, at that point, they could have given the attacker something to contend with. Rather than picking off the unarmed and defenseless, they would have at the very least had to spend some time and ammo on the "vigilante", perhaps ultimately saving some lives, even if they were not stopped completely.

This could have been the case especially if even a little bit of information about the threat was available to such a person (as in the case last year that prompted the failed legislation).

In an essay last year, Hincker makes a number of remarks that are now plainly ridiculous, some of which I will respond to below. The title of the essay is "Imagine if students were armed", to which one might now reply, "Imagine if only the insane students were armed":

The writer would have us believe that a university campus, with tens of thousands of young people, is safer with everyone packing heat. Imagine the continual fear of students in that scenario. We've seen that fear here, and we don't want to see it again.

Now, would everyone be "packing" heat? Grow up, Larry.

And is the fear of a rampaging killer really the same as the "fear" of a licensed and trained student or faculty member carrying a weapon? How is this really much different from having trained and armed police -- other than the fact that you get much more protection for far fewer dollars? What is so special about police and private security that makes them immune to causing tragedies with their legally-sanctioned weapons? Oh, wait, they aren't...

Who among us thinks the writer of the commentary would not have been directly in harm's way if he showed himself to those tactical squads while displaying a deadly weapon? Would he even be here today to tell us the story?

Why would such a person do that? When you have a concealed weapon, you keep it concealed -- until you use it on a malicious criminal.

Guns don't belong in classrooms. They never will. Virginia Tech has a very sound policy preventing same.

Apparently comforting platitudes like this aren't really the issue: guns found their way into classrooms at Virginia Tech anyway; they just did it illegally. And what resulted was a nightmare for thousands of people.

We will never know if lives could have been saved by allowing licensed concealed-carry on campuses in Virginia, but we certainly know that they weren't saved by the existing policy. Government protection that makes the vast bulk of the population docile and dependent still doesn't work, and never will. Sadly, the more this system brings about disasters like today's, the more people clamor for more of the same "solutions".

By the way, Larry Hincker's email address can be found on this page.