Absolutely, the law prohibited all the law-abiding students, professors, administrators, and maintenance personnel on campus from possessing a firearm.

Why do people have so much difficulty understanding this? If you have a room filled with 30 rational people and 10% (3) of them have a pistol, what is going to happen when one crazy person with a gun walks into that room and tries to kill people?

The only practical way to guard against a "crazy person" with a gun from committing a random attack, is to have enough reasonable people sufficiently armed so that such attacks can be stopped immediately.

I don't think VT's "gun free" zone has the weight of law. That kind of stuff does have the weight of law in OH. But in VA, you cannot be arrested for carrying openly or concealed (with a permit, if concealed) on property where there's a sign saying "no guns allowed". I ignore these signs regularly, but try to not patronize such businesses if possible. If someone who works at the establishment sees you carrying, they can ask you to leave and refusing to do so will get you in trouble for trespassing. But the gun is totally legal. You can also carry in the VA state capitol bldg. and any state gov't. agency other than a courthouse or school. VA has been pretty good about cracking down on cities and counties that try to pass their own more restrictive gun laws.

Oh, and I buy most of my guns by mail via the Internet nowadays. I don't have an FFL, so I have to have my FFL fax a copy of his license to the seller who then mails it to him. When I go to pick up the gun, my FFL has to call the state police who then run my driver's licese # through the NICS while I fill out paperwork. Takes about 10 min. for everything and costs $27 per transfer. VA's one gun a month law also has an exemption for CCW holders. I always try to buy one gun a month. When that exemption becamse the law, I could buy as many as I want as often as I want. So I've bought three in one month before, but haven't bought any since Feb. Oh, my dad gave me five more two weeks ago. But that doesn't count.

Noah i got the bong hit comment and thought it was great.

They do. Look what happenmed to Don Imus

Geesh guys.

The First Amendment is a collective right to be exercised by the press.

The Second Amendment is a collective right to be exercised by the military.

Why are the Ninth and Tenth Amendments so easily forgotten?

There were no violations of his first amendment rights there. He is not under penalty of law for what he said.

We have the right to say whatever we want, but we are responsible for the effects of our speech.

A very important point that many forget.

If the VT teachers and other students has weapons and knew how to use them (and had the guts), our immigrant friend would have been taken out with a much lower body count.

The Second Amendment is not a right granted by the government, but rather a right that individuals have that our Constitution prevents (rather unsuccessfully) our government from infringing on.

I do not want to follow countries like England and Australia that deny their citizens this basic, inherent, inalienable right.

Just exactly how is his residency status relevent? And it's VA, VT is Vermont.

VT is Virginia Tech for our purposes here.

+ 1,000,000

The only thing you failed to add in this perfect description is the people like this kid at VA. Tech ALL HAVE ONE THING INHERENTLY IN COMMON...............THEY ARE COWARDS TO THE HIGHEST DEGREE HUMANLY POSSIBLE........if even the slightest threat had been in the back of this kids sick twisted mind that even one other male or female student in this class had a gun he would have never hatched this whole sick plan. When he turned and shut that classroom door he knew in his sick mind that he was the ONLY one with a gun, i.e., the power to be the man he wasn't in the real world, and he knew that ALL of those hapless students were HELPLESS or he never would have done this. Do these psycho nut jobs ever stroll into a police precinct and do this crap. NO! Because they are COWARDS! He could not even face justice and capped himself first...

Of course, I realized that, absoulutley I did , no really, I did.:rolleyes:

Very interesting. One question I have is if those victims of these crimes were armed, would these statistics be lower?

Just think...If the perp had shot his last victim first, there would have been 32 fewer deaths.

I think the implication is there would be less ATTEMPTED crime, ie: less potential victims.

As a criminal who are you going to rob? A group of people you know to be unarmed or a group of people where one person might be armed?

Criminals look for easy opportunities.

I say lawful citizens get into a Cold War with criminals. We all know the concept of a Cold War. In this case it would be that the lawful civilized section of the population doesn't make a move on anyone becasue they are just that, civilized (and armed in my scenario.) And, the unlawful uncivilized criminal section (who are also typically unmotivated, cowards looking for an easy way out and never interested in a level playnig field) would be far less likely to make a move on the civilized b/c they fear what they are capable of and no longer see them as weaker than they. Crimes almost always = power trips. Rape is a crime of power, so are most forms of strong arm robbery, muggings, breaking and enterings, etc... The criminal feels he has the power and he doesn't fear you and therefore moves forward with the crime. Drug crimes where the criminal is either so hopped up he doesnt know whether to scratch his watch or wind his ass are also more easily dealt with if you are armed and criminals who are drug addicts and so Jonesin that they are driven to crime are also more easily dealt with in this scenario. Obviously a more heavily armed society is not a fix-all to the crime problem but I think it makes a helluva lot more sense than a far less armed society. Numerous crimes are stopped on an almost daily basis by lawful gun owners they just never make the news b/c it doesn't feed fears and b/c the liberal media doesn't want to promote such things. The gun owners are finally winning on the political front thought. Most Dems will no longer go near the issue after Gore lost big in the South and rural areas and the GOP put Senators in house almost solely due to their support of the right to bear arms.

Gun control may be a nice fantasy, and may work on paper, but it can never be a reality in the US.

There are an estimated 250 MILLION guns currently in the US, and we have porous borders thousands of miles to the north and south of us (east and west, too, for those that have boats), over which flow thousands of people, legally and illegally, every day.

So the idea that we can prevent gun related crimes by depriving criminals or would-be criminals of the ability to get a gun simply is unfeasible, even putting aside Second Amendment issues. If we want to try to lessen gun related crimes, we need to look at other, more realistic ways of doing it.