ONE GUN TOO FEW
Dr. Edwin Vieira, Jr., Ph.D., J.D.
April 20, 2007
NewsWithViews.com
What the Washington Times of Tuesday, 17 April, aptly headlined as the “Massacre at Virginia Tech” is a tragedy that should—that must—teach this country a number of serious lessons.
First, that all so-called “gun-free zones” are exceedingly dangerous places. For all “gun-free zones” amount to “self-defense prohibition zones” for honest citizens, and therefore “free-fire zones” for psychopaths, “terrorists,” and other homicidal criminals. If common sense did not, certainly the experiences documented by researchers such as John Lott confirm that the less “gun free” an area is (in terms of firearms in the immediate possession of honest citizens ready and willing to use them), the less violent crime occurs there.
Virginia Tech has long been a “gun-free zone” for the purposes of its students’ self-defense. In the name of preventing violence, the university has prohibited every student with a Virginia license to carry a concealed firearm from doing so on campus. Surely debatable is whether such a regulation is even legal—given that such a license is a Virginia statutory right of any individual who qualifies for it (and, I should argue, a constitutional right as well) that no mere administrative body has any authority to deny. Beyond dispute is that events have written in blood just how disastrously that idea worked on Monday, 16 April 2007: Apparently everyone among the student body obeyed the edict, except the killer. The regulation perhaps disarmed students who might otherwise have legally been carrying a firearm with which they could have stopped the killer in his tracks. And the police, who were armed and on the campus, proved ineffective, because they were not on the scene.
This points up the second lesson—that police, even when they happen to be close at hand, cannot possibly protect Americans against unexpected homicidal attacks by psychopaths or “terrorists” determined to carry out their plans even if it costs them their own lives.
The first fatal incident at Virginia Tech occurred at about 7:15 a.m. Campus police responded, and found a man and a woman shot in a dormitory (West Ambler Johnston Hall). Although the police “locked down” the dormitory, the first incident apparently did not raise any suspicions or concerns about the possibility of further shootings. And it caused no heightened level of general security to be invoked elsewhere on the campus, the only action taken by university officials being an e-mail vaguely informing students that a “shooting incident” had occurred (Washington Times, p. A12).
About two hours later, around 9:15 a.m. (according to USA Today, p. 6A) or 9:45 a.m. (according to the Washington Post, p. A1), the killer began methodically shooting people in another building some half-mile across the campus (Norris Hall). And the police could do—or at least did—nothing to stop him. (Eventually, he stopped himself, by committing suicide.)
To be sure, it is virtually impossible to “lock down” an entire university the size of Virginia Tech at a moment’s notice. And such a course of action would be especially difficult to justify as a response to what reasonably appears to be an isolated incident in only one building. But what else could the police have done, other than (as they did) to arrive only after the fact to succor the wounded and otherwise survey the carnage in Norris Hall?
The third lesson arising out of the events at Virginia Tech will be taught in the very near future: that, in reaction to the rather convincing proof of their own ineffectiveness against a sudden outburst of homicidal violence, university and police bureaucracies—and, inevitably, politicians and special-interest groups, too—will seek to impose ever-more-intrusive police-state controls on colleges and universities, if not all of society, in the name of “safety.”
As the Establishment media crank up their disinformation apparatus, Americans can expect to be bombarded with hysterical demands for:
more campus police—but never enough to prevent the homicides that will inevitably occur just beyond their presence;
surveillance cameras and other 1984ish gadgetry—effective perhaps to record the killings, but never to stop them;
reliance on high-tech student ID cards—which a demented assassin or “terrorist” plant who is also a student will of course have; and the ever-flowing political snake oil of
general “gun control” to disarm everyone—except the “terrorists,” psychopaths, and common murderers who will obey no “gun bans” in any event.
Unfortunately, but predictably, all too many Americans will not notice the illogic of these demands. The authorities at Virginia Tech failed to provide safety with the rather extensive powers they already had. Yet, according to “safety-at-any-cost” school of thought, society must now acquiesce in public officials’ and bureaucrats’ assertion of even more power, trusting them to use the added increment wisely—but never asking whether the reason they proved unsuccessful in the first place was not the insufficiency of the powers they had, but their refusal, neglect, or failure to employ those powers properly. For, in that case, the very last thing they should be given is any additional, potentially highly abusive power to misuse.
The fourth lesson from Virginia Tech is that one obvious (albeit only partial) alternative to a police-state solution for campus security would be to allow holders of Virginia permits to carry concealed firearms on campus. This would bring into play the only type of “gun control” that Americans should tolerate, and the only type of “gun control” that might have saved some lives in Norris Hall: an honest citizen’s sharp eye and steady hand in the defense of himself, his family, and his friends.
Perhaps some student who could legally have carried a concealed firearm and used it to stop the killing, but in compliance with the university’s regulation did not, will come forward to explain why there was one gun too few at Virginia Tech. Should that turn out to be the case, God help the administrators who adopted such a misguided policy. But even if it does not, the possibility should be precluded in the future, by rescinding such policies—at Virginia Tech and in every other institution of higher learning throughout Virginia and every other State.
The fifth lesson is that, although to a significant degree necessary, reliance on holders of permits to carry concealed firearms will probably not be sufficient to provide adequate security for college students, let alone for the general public throughout society, in an era in which homicidal (often coupled with suicidal) violence has increasingly become the tactic of choice to resolve complex personal as well as political problems. Inasmuch as a holder of a Virginia permit to carry a concealed firearm must be at least 21 years of age, whereas many college students range in age from only 18 to 20; and inasmuch as not everyone qualified by age will seek a permit; and inasmuch as even those who do obtain a permit may not carry their firearms regularly—the pool of students actually armed on campus will be far smaller than the population of the university as a whole.
Moreover, the university community cannot, in justice or reason, expect holders of concealed-carry permits to assume the primary responsibility for protecting their fellow students, faculty, and staff whenever and wherever the police do not. Especially because, outside of the privilege of self-defense, they have no particular legal authority to do so, and enjoy no clear-cut legal immunity from civil or criminal charges—perhaps specious, but nonetheless necessitous of litigation— if circumstances compel them to use deadly force against aggressors.
More is required. But what?
The sixth lesson from the Virginia Tech tragedy is that Virginians—indeed, Americans in every State—cannot expect the present gaggle of public officials and politicians to answer this question on their own initiatives and by their own lights. Again and again these people have proven themselves clueless, feckless, and reckless with regard to what constitutes true “homeland security” and how to achieve it.
According to the Washington Times, authorities at Virginia Tech decided not to cancel classes after the first homicidal event (in which two people were fatally shot), because they imagined that they were investigating only an isolated incident (page A1). Even if that story truly accounted for their behavior, though, it did not explain why they had never designed, let alone put into operation, a plan to protect against, thwart, or even respond in a timely manner to the type of rampage that took place some two hours later on the same campus.
Instead, the Washington Times reported Virginia Tech President Charles W. Steger as saying that “t’s one of those things that no one anticipated.” Yet any competent plan for security in these times of possible “terrorist” attacks should anticipate “the lone gunman,” “the suicide bomber,” or other homicidal fanatic or lunatic, intent for malign personal, political, or delusional reasons on killing large numbers of innocent people in schools, malls, sports stadia, or other crowded public facilities and places, even at the cost of his own life.
