The ban at the Fort Collins and Pueblo campuses, had been scheduled to take effect on August 1. The prospective ban had been imposed last winter, by a unanimous vote of the Governing Board, and against the express vote of the Student Senate. Congratulations to Rocky Mountain Gun Owners for bringing the case.
As the CSU spokesperson explained, the Governing Board really had no choice, in light of the recent Court of Appeals ruling in Students for Concealed Carry on Campus v. Regents of the University of Colorado. There, the unanimous three-judge panel ruled that Colorado’s Concealed Handgun Act, which is explicitly preemptive, had no implicit exception for state institutions of higher education. The University of Colorado has not yet announced whether it will petition the Colorado Supreme Court for certiorari in that case.
At the Fort Collins campus, firearms carry licensees (who must be 21 years or older, under Colorado law) had carried without incident ever since the enactment of the Concealed Handgun Act in 2003. The Fort Collins campus, which is the larger CSU campus, is located in north-central Colorado, in Larimer County. Sheriff James A. Alderden strongly opposed the CSU ban, said it was illegal, and announced that his deputies would not waste time arresting anyone for violating the Board’s ban on licensed carry. Colorado’s Concealed Handgun Act is modeled on licensing policies which Sheriff Alderden has been using in Larimer County since the 1990s.
EH says:
Last graph is a bit unclear, the sheriff opposed the ban but was going to enthusiastically arrest people for violating it? Is he referring to “the ban on the ban,” i.e. the court case?
P.S. Did you see the story today about banning people from buying guns who are on the Terrorist Watch List? Not sure who the most 2A VC’er is.
May 5, 2010, 5:39 pmRPT says:
EH, you beat me too it. The 2A seems to be the only absolute in Republican world. Sens. Collins and Graham seem to take the position that the only rights “terrorists” have are to buy and carry guns and that those rights are beyond restriction. Pretty bizarre. Looking forward to some great rationalizations in this thread.
May 5, 2010, 5:45 pmChris Travers says:
I’m opposed to that. Since there are no objective standards for being on the list, and no way to challenge it, I think it amounts to a real separation of powers issue. We do not require executive pre-approval to exercise Constitutional rights.
Next we will need approval from the DoJ to exercise our due process rights….
May 5, 2010, 6:01 pmFederal Farmer says:
No rationalization required. There is no due process for being placed onto the Terrorist Watch list. Those on the list haven’t even necessarily committed a crime yet a fundamental human right is to be denied? I don’t see how such a ban could survive any level of scrutiny above ‘rationalization’ interest-balancing that was clearly found unacceptable in Heller.
May 5, 2010, 6:04 pmFederal Farmer says:
The sheriff could not be clearer. He opposes the ban on concealed carry at the university and won’t have his deputies waste time enforcing it.
May 5, 2010, 6:05 pmTarantulas says:
“…announced that his deputies would not waste time arresting anyone for violating the Board’s ban on licensed carry.”
It sounds like he’s saying it would be a waste of time for his Deputies to arrest people for carrying on campus when state law says it’s okay.
May 5, 2010, 6:08 pmEH says:
Ah. I was interpreting that they wouldn’t waste time in the sense that they would snap right to it.
May 5, 2010, 6:13 pmTweets that mention The Volokh Conspiracy » Colorado State University board rescinds ban on licensed firearms carry -- Topsy.com says:
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by rah, The Volokh Conspirac. The Volokh Conspirac said: Colorado State University board rescinds ban on licensed firearms carry: (David Kopel) The… http://goo.gl/fb/KGU3w [...]
May 5, 2010, 6:22 pmRPT says:
Look, I’m not even a gun control person, but maybe I should have “hyperbole” instead of “rationalization”. Having a gun is now a “fundamental human right”? Most of those whom I perceive, perhaps erroneously, to be the strongest 2A supporters, seem to have substantially less regard for the rights of accused terrorists to be free from torture, indefinite detention, etc., and think that food, water, shelter, etc, are not fundamental human rights. Please explain in a non-snarky way.
May 5, 2010, 6:35 pmDavid M. Nieporent says:
1) Whether or not it’s a fundamental human right, it’s a fundamental constitutional right.
May 5, 2010, 7:00 pm2) Everyone thinks that food etc. are fundamental human rights in a negative rights sense, which is what we’re discussing here.
3) People on the “terrorist watch list” are not even accused terrorists. I’m quite certain that people you’re criticizing would not support 2A rights for, e.g., Gitmo prisoners.
JeffinCA says:
2A supporters and gun rights advocates come in different stripes. Many are true small L libertarians who abhor government force. Torture and related crap are the enemy of fundamental rights. Just as gun bans are. [insert caveats to allow gun bans for criminals and mentally adjudicated. Not torture. No torture for anyone :)]
May 5, 2010, 7:01 pmRPT says:
Thanks for good answers. It helps.
May 5, 2010, 7:08 pmFederal Farmer says:
Well, I am not about to be an apologist for what our conservative friends think with respect to terrorists. To me they are criminals and, at the very least if captured within our borders they have the usual Bill of Rights and Due Process protections.
Anyway, with respect to the 2nd Amendment, it is a fundamental right based upon our ‘unalienable’ rights which are endowed by our Creator (Mother Nature to this areligious person) which are to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. Defense of one’s life is fundamental and firearms have long been one of our best tools…nature is red in tooth and claw and since we are tool-making natural creatures guns suit us. Given this, all humans have a right to defend themselves regardless of their citizenship status and country of origin provided they have not been stripped of such rights via due process of law.
Frankly, I consider felons that have served their time and have been released should have the right restored. If they can’t be trusted with a gun, they shouldn’t be let out. I see no reason they should be the helpless prey of other uncaged felons.
May 5, 2010, 7:08 pmsvi says:
Under the proposed regime only the civil rights of suspected terrorists would be affected by being on the Terrorist Watch list. (oh and the occasional US Senator.)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A17073-2004Aug19.html
EDIT: Also what Federal Farmer said
May 5, 2010, 7:09 pmMac says:
The Colorado State University Governing Board must be in a real tizzy!
Agreed.
Self-defense is a fundamental human right. You can take it from there and argue whether or not having a gun to defend oneself from someone else with a gun (the Va. Tech. massacre comes to mind, among others) qualifies as self defense. I think it does and that the Framer’s of our Constitution thought so as well.
Strawman argument. The one has nothing to do with the other in any way. I trust this comment is not “snarky” as I truly do not intend any snarkiness. (Is that a word?)
May 5, 2010, 7:10 pmSteve says:
I don’t see why the government ought to be able to take away one of your constitutional rights just by putting your name on a list without any due process.
Then again, I also don’t think the State Department should have the power to revoke your citizenship without due process, so what do I know.
May 5, 2010, 7:55 pmShelbyC says:
Reminds me of the old STL 3-mile island skit: “Did he mean that you can’t put too much water in a nuclear reactor, or you can’t put too much water in a nuclear reactor?!?”
May 5, 2010, 7:55 pmAllan says:
Let’s see. A guy turns 21 years old. Now he can drink and carry a concealed handgun. Seems like a good match to me. No prudential concerns here.
May 5, 2010, 8:10 pmFederal Farmer says:
Nevermind that they’ve been drinking and driving a deadly weapon since the age of 16.
May 5, 2010, 8:16 pmShelbyC says:
No, Allan’s point is well taken. One more reason to lower the drinking age.
May 5, 2010, 8:26 pmMac says:
And, possibly serving in the Military and carrying very deadly weapons since they were 18.
May 5, 2010, 8:29 pmShelbyC says:
May 5, 2010, 8:48 pmEvilDave says:
I’d rather see a law that says if an organization that takes away a student/customer (or other persons) 2A rights, the organization and its rule-makers are personally strictly liable for any harm that comes to the student/customer while they are banned from exercising their 2A rights (e.g., on campus). The organization and its rule-makers have assumed the risk of their students/customers defense.
May 5, 2010, 8:50 pm.
They want to regulate their charges/customers right to self defense but they don’t want to take any responsibility for abridging that fundamental human right.
.
The right to self defense is not just a fundamental human right but the foundational right which underlays all others.
The right to bear arms is merely a Constitutional embodiment of that right; although I don’t think the right to self defense and the right to bear arms are the same.
Mark E. Horning says:
I’d like to see a 14th amendment challenge to the requirement to be 21 to legally buy alcohol. (or to buy a handgun from an FFL)
At 18 you can be drafted, join the military (without parental consent), enter into contracts, get married, own firearms, etc. buy you can’t legally buy beer?
May 5, 2010, 9:08 pmDYSPEPSIA GENERATION » Blog Archive » Colorado State University board rescinds ban on licensed firearms carry says:
[...] Read it. [...]
May 5, 2010, 9:36 pmColoComment says:
Colorado Revised Statute 18-12-106, Prohibited use of weapons, states “(1) A person commits a class 2 misdemeanor if:
…
(d) He has in his possession a firearm while he is under the influence of intoxicating liquor or of a controlled substance.”
Your 21 year old can drink and carry in Colorado, but he may not, and he’ll lose his CCW permit permanently if he’s caught at it.
May 5, 2010, 10:26 pmMac says:
Thank you for the correction.
May 5, 2010, 10:33 pmAllan says:
The average joe on campus has not been in the military (unfortunately).
I do concede that the average joe has likely been drinking since age 16 and driving since age 16 (I would hope not at the same time).
I find no solace in the age limit on legally carrying a concealed weapon or drinking being restricted to those over the age 21. They might as well be 18.
I think that concealed weapons are considerably more dangerous than vehicles, in that, generally, vehicles are not used to intentionally commit crimes of bodily injury. That is, an assault is more likely to be done with a firearm than a vehicle. Drunk driving victims are simply more random. Hence, the problem with alcohol and guns.
I am just pointing out the juxtaposition of the timing.
May 5, 2010, 10:52 pmStephen Lathrop says:
I have been trying to figure out why I find the gun comments on this blog so disheartening. It may have something to do with this: I think that responsible gun use requires more humility than comes across in these comments. Less confidence. More sense of what can go wrong. More sense of how chaotic the world can become in a moment.
I wonder how many of the people commenting here about the fundamental right to firearms, with which I reluctantly agree, have ever been threatened with a gun, or shot at, or seen someone killed with a gun? How many have even hunted and killed game?
Maybe some have been in the military? Seen combat? When I was a child there were a lot of adults around who had seen combat in WW II. You couldn’t pester them enough to get them to talk about it. What they saw and experienced made them cautious and reticent. That’s different than what seems to show up here, and I think inexperience may have something to do with it. Correct me if you think I’m wrong.
May 5, 2010, 11:14 pmTom says:
Allan:
While you may THINK “concealed weapons are considerably more dangerous than vehicles”, you should consult the facts, which do not support your thought. As the estimable politician (Reid, I believe) said, “You are entitled to your own opinion, but not your own facts.”
You will find that permitted, legally concealed carry weapons are rarely used to commit crimes. Defensive, life-saving assaults, yes; crimes, no.
May 5, 2010, 11:18 pmroad2serfdom says:
Yea better a random family be killed by a drunk driver than a drunk criminal intentionally shooting fellow or rival criminals.
May 5, 2010, 11:20 pmTom says:
Stephen:
May 5, 2010, 11:26 pmYou don’t own or know how to use a gun, it seems to me. I do. And I know lots of gun owners. None is in any way cavalier or disrespectful about their potential lethality. They are all scrupulously careful about themselves and about others.
G.R. Mead says:
Danger is an objective matter of likely harm — not a subjective matter of feared intent. Objectively, automobiles are VASTLY more dangerous in the per car rate of death than the per firearm rate of death, and the per concealed firearm rate of death is even smaller than that. CCW holders are statistically a remarkably well-behaved population and much more prudent on average than the general population — one of the reasons Florida’s CCW plan enacted in the 80′s has been so successful -and so copied. Thirty-odd reciprocity states — and counting.
Open versus concealed carry is a more interesting debate — Concealed carry demonstrably increases deterrence of violence against the unarmedby reason of uncertainty. This we know — but Heinlein’s Social Arms Postulate suggests an open carry regime would affirmatively increase the level of public decorum, which has significant impact on more broadly gentling public behavior, and reducing property crimes through more visible risk and therefore deterrence, though this tradeoff is hard to quantify, but the broken-window thesis suggests the reduction of property crime through visible deterrence helps reduce the likelihood of violent crime. IN bluer than blue Connecticut this informal online poll by the Hartford Courant is intriguing: http://www.courant.com/news/connecticut/hc-poll-open-carry-handguns-0417,0,5186935,post.poll
May 5, 2010, 11:41 pmLarryA says:
OTOH cars are far more likely to kill and injure people accidentally, due to the complex nature of driving. In 2004 there were 45,509 motor vehicle deaths, versus 30,896 firearm deaths. Note that most firearm deaths, 16,883, are suicide, leaving 12,791 murders and 642 accidental firearm deaths to worry about. Balance that with 360 legal interventions.
But this is a huge difference. If you have a clean criminal record and don’t abuse drugs or alcohol your chances of being assaulted even by a criminal with a firearm are fairly low. Your chances of being assaulted by someone legally carrying are not worth keeping track of.
OTOH clean living is no defense against a drunk, distracted, or careless driver.
May 5, 2010, 11:42 pmG.R. Mead says:
Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan — who should NEVER, EVER be besmirched by even indirect comparison to the likes of Reid and his ilk.
May 5, 2010, 11:44 pmDan Hamilton says:
The gun people once were very quiet. You almost never heard from them and when you did they were all you are asking for.
What happened??
The anti-gunners happened. They yelled and screamed. Lied every time they talked. Always used nothing but unreasoned emotion. When the gun people looked up they were seeing their gun rights being stolen from them by these liers.
The gun people stopped being nice and quiet. It is the only reason there are any gun rights left. So sorry. We had to change. The lying anti-gunners forced us to.
May 5, 2010, 11:44 pmLarryA says:
P.S.: Statistics at the CDC’s interactive WISQARS Injury Mortality Reports.
May 5, 2010, 11:47 pmgreat unknown says:
Justice Sotomayor, during her confirmation hearings, was uncertain if a right to self defense existed. For an illuminating (as always) discussion, see, in this selfsame blog,
http://volokh.com/2009/07/21/a-constitutional-right-to-self-defense-2/
BTW, the UN these days, in pushing for an international handgun ban, is also denying any natural right to individual self defense. IIRC, this stand is in contravention of the UN charter.
If this fundamental right is under attack, then aggressive protest from right-to-lifers (i.e., the right to life of each individual) is more than justified.
May 6, 2010, 12:16 amStephen Lathrop says:
Maybe I should have been clearer. I have owned nine guns (if I haven’t forgotten any). I used them to hunt pheasants, spruce grouse, sage grouse, Hungarian partridge, chukar partridge, cottontails, deer, and elk.
I have also been shot at intentionally on one occasion, and accidently (accidently I think, but cavalierly for sure) on two others. In the intentional case the shooter was arrested, and subsequently acquitted in a jury trial, by reason of insanity. He was my landlord, and a paranoid schizophrenic as it turned out.
The other two cases involved hunting. In one, I was in a thicket looking for deer when a guy showed up on the cliff above and started firing into the thicket with me in it, I guess to see if he could scare any deer out. In the second case I think I was mistaken for game at about 600 yards range in open country—one shot that passed close enough to hear the zip in the air, followed by the report.
That doesn’t count the time I was with friends who were professional elk guides, and we were sighting in rifles, but were endangered by an idiot whose handgun bullet ricocheted downrange as we were inspecting a target.
And I suppose I should mention the close friend whose date was murdered in cold blood, by a stranger with a handgun, in her presence, for no reason at all. Then there was my other friend who came under suspicion when his long-time girlfriend shot herself while he was away driving around the countryside, and couldn’t account very well for his whereabouts. And the time I was arrested by a cop who saw me step into an alley after dark and came after me with a cocked revolver pointed at my head.
Oh yeah, and there was the time I was walking a little-used path in the back country of Idaho, and fully automatic fire came down from the hillside ahead, hitting the path about 100 feet in front of me. I assume that was someone guarding pot plants. Of course I turned around and went back.
Then there was my friend with whom I often went bird hunting in southern Idaho. He went out with some other folks and got hit in the face, a la Cheney, thankfully after the birdshot had passed through some tall sagebrush and at long range.
This could actually go on. I’ve got some crime scene tales, and two great mistaken identity shootings to tell about. And in my days as an Idaho journalist I got all the grim press releases on the hunting accidents and mistaken for game incidents—like the schoolgirl shot and killed by the side of the road while waiting for the school bus.
Your friends are paragons, no doubt. But I would like to suggest to you that experience suggests the kind of assertion you made in your comment is over-confident, and that’s where the trouble starts.
May 6, 2010, 12:50 amreality check says:
Very simply, there are hundreds of thousands on these lists. Nobody is suggesting that hundreds of thousands be subjected to enhanced interrogation – only the half dozen or so of the very worst terrorists recieved that treatment (or should recieve it). “Even the strongest 2A supporter” would probably agree to limit the right of those half-dozen high-profile terrorists from possessing guns as well.
May 6, 2010, 1:28 amwhit says:
not familiar with colorado law, but GENERALLY speaking “under the influence” means more than just having SOME alcohol in your system and/or drinking it. it means the alcohol (or controlled substance) is at a certain threshold level, either defined as an exact #, or based on how it impairs
iow, there is a difference between saying you are under the influence of alcohol, or you have consumed or are consuming alcohol
hth
May 6, 2010, 3:00 amwhit says:
in my 20+ yr cop career (damn, am i old), i have never responded to a single crime involving a CCW’er using their gun illegally.
not… ONE
legal defensive uses? several
anecdotal, but n= many. and for the last 12 yrs i’ve been in WA state, a right-to-carry state. LOTS of legal gun owners and carriers here.
May 6, 2010, 3:13 amwhit says:
threatened with a gun? yes
Shot at? yes
seen someone killed with a gun? yes
i support RKBA, live in a strong right to carry state.
May 6, 2010, 3:25 amInstapundit » Blog Archive » MORE CIVIL RIGHTS PROGRESS: Colorado State University board rescinds ban on licensed firearms carry… says:
[...] MORE CIVIL RIGHTS PROGRESS: Colorado State University board rescinds ban on licensed firearms carry. [...]
May 6, 2010, 7:54 amKatahdin says:
Wow, you have certainly been unlucky in the firearms department. I don’t have stories like that. I have, however, come very close to being killed by bad drivers on several occasions. I don’t personally know anyone who has been shot, robbed at gunpoint, or anything like that, but I have had several personal acquaintances killed by bad drivers.
OTOH, I personally know people who have used firearms to defend themselves, and probably would not have survived if unarmed. One, for example, fired only as he felt himself passing out while being choked by a much larger guy, with a long and violent record.
I’m all for keeping irresponsible people away from cars and guns, and I agree there are at least a substantial minority of people who are too careless with both.
May 6, 2010, 8:36 amSun Tzu's Nephew says:
Personal defense, against any aggressor (state or individual) is a fundamental human right. Guns are tools that facilitate that right. Laws that inhibit that ability inhibit fundamental human rights.
May 6, 2010, 8:41 amSDN says:
Self-defense is a fundamental human right. Guns are the most effective means of self-defense. QED.
May 6, 2010, 8:43 amSun Tzu's Nephew says:
If I’m dead at the hands of a criminal, disarmed by someone’s decision because I chose not to be a criminal, what good does personal liability do me?
However, I do think that individuals, including law enforcement, judges, mayors, chiefs of police, prosecutors, parole officers and the like should be held PERSONALLY responsible for their actions. No immunity, if they screw up (illegal search and seizure, illegal arrest, beat-downs, ‘accidental’ or inadvertent executions, releasing career criminals who kill again, sign unconstitutional search warrants, allow unqualified or poorly trained police officers or others to do these things, whatever) they lose their savings, their income, their pensions, their homes, their cars, their kids college savings.
I bet the incidence of such ‘mistakes’ would stop within a year.
May 6, 2010, 8:51 amMike says:
Firstly: the founders, as well as English common law, most definitely considered self-defense to be a inherent right, or they very likely wouldn’t have made it the second amendment, one run down from freedom of speech.
I think the problem is that most gun-control people don’t see a difference between *by definition*, law-abiding individuals carrying guns versus criminals carrying guns.
If you have had a gun pointed at you, or known someone who was shot… by definition the people doing so were already breaking the law. Why would they care whether it is legal or not to carry on campus? I own a fairly large frame revolver, and with a cheap holster I can conceal it under a T-shirt so no one will ever take a second look at me. The only people who would even bother to complain or comply with a statute like this are the people who are not going to carry with the purpose of committing crimes. These same people cannot get a permit if they have ever done something illegal before.
So that leaves accidental firings, people losing their temper, and mistaken shootings (such as accidentally shooting another CCW holder, or an off duty cop, when attempting to do the right thing) as possibly legitimate worries about allowing concealed carry on campus. Thankfully, we have years of statistics to show that none of these are a real concern. You could worry about them, but it’d be like worrying about getting struck by lightning on campus – there are more useful things to spend time on, especially when the “cure” for these situations infringes on what is an essential right.
Even in places were firearms have been banned, the right to defend yourself against attackers has not been completely suppressed. They have simply handicapped the law-abiding against those who are stronger, younger, and definitely less law-abiding than they are.
May 6, 2010, 8:52 amSun Tzu's Nephew says:
Or handguns, or get a CCW in most places. So much for the 14th…
May 6, 2010, 8:53 amBohemond says:
It’s been tried. The Supremes shot that argument down some twenty-five years ago.
May 6, 2010, 9:00 amSun Tzu's Nephew says:
Or handguns, or get a CCW in most places. So much for the 14th…
Is that the criteria?
I’ve been threatened with guns. I’ve been shot at. I’ve been shot by a criminal trying to rob me. All that happened BEFORE I joined the military, and saw combat. Since then, I became an emergency physician and I’ve seen a lot of patients shot.
Why, exactly does that matter? Do fundamental human rights to self defense apply only to certain classes of people? If so, I’d be willing to wager that there is a pretty small group of people with these qualifications.
However, I don’t count myself as an ‘Only One’, entitled to more or less rights than my neighbors.
May 6, 2010, 9:00 amBlogassault says:
Chailk one up for the good guys! It pays to fight for what is right, especially when it comes to so called higher education.
May 6, 2010, 9:02 amFederal Farmer says:
Cars are more dangerous the firearms per CDC statistics. Yet cars are ok because they aren’t designed to kill. Ironically, the firearm is designed to kill yet seems to succeed in doing so much less than the car, which wasn’t designed to kill.
May 6, 2010, 9:20 amHoodaThunk?: CO State Univ reverses ban on licensed carry of firearms says:
[...] Via The Volokh Conspiracy: [...]
May 6, 2010, 9:57 amKen Arromdee says:
Gun rights supporters should forget quoting Heinlein here. While it’s possible to interpret it in other ways, the most straightforward interpretation of “an armed society is a polite society” is that people are polite in an armed society because if they are rude they run the risk of being shot. Unless you think that shooting someone for being rude is acceptable behavior, you are pretty much confessing that the worst fears of those in favor of gun control are true.
May 6, 2010, 10:16 amDJR says:
Wow.
At approximately 200 million privately owned guns in the U.S. (source), that’s a rate of 0.00015 deaths per gun, versus approximately 251 million passenger vehicles (source) making a rate of 0.00018 deaths per passenger vehicle.
At 1.8 versus 1.5 deaths per ten thousand, cars are hardly “far more likely” to kill people than guns. But wait, you say, that counts all deaths, not just the non-suicides. Fair enough. The rate is 0.6 deaths per ten thousand guns using your non-suicide number; however, its also estimated that people who own guns own an average of 4 each (same source), so accounting for that, the rate is 2.4 deaths per 10K gun owners.
You might argue that cars are overcounted too because people might own more than one car, but even if that’s true, the passenger car number doesn’t count trucks and other commercial vehicles that are a substantial percentage of the cars on the road.
In addition, the rate of use of cars is much much higher than the rate of use of guns, creating far more opportunities for accidents.
May 6, 2010, 10:20 amdave in dallas says:
I think the sheriff was saying he would NOT WASTE TIME ARRESTING anyone the university complained about because the perp/student violated the school’s own gun ban. If a student or teacher had a permit and was armed, then the sheriff was saying he’d consider them legal in every way. State property, all that.
I have LONG said that wackoes who want to go out in a blaze of glory aim for college campii on purpose, KNOWING NOBODY THERE WAS ARMED. If there are now some armed people on a college campus, that fact ALONE might well deter the next wacko, and the people he’d have killed are now still alive BECAUSE SOME PEOPLE ARE ARMED.
This ain’t rocket science.
May 6, 2010, 10:22 amSun Tzu's Nephew says:
Well, it would be evolution in action….
May 6, 2010, 10:28 amdave in dallas says:
RPT responded to someone else with this
__Having a gun is now a “fundamental human right”? Most of those whom I perceive, perhaps erroneously, to be the strongest 2A supporters, seem to have substantially less regard for the rights of accused terrorists to be free from torture, indefinite detention, etc., and think that food, water, shelter, etc, are not fundamental human rights. Please explain in a non-snarky way__
Okay, first the rights business. In order to have the right to food, water, shelter, etc, someone ELSE must first be deprived of HIS rights, namely to own the fruits of his own labor. You have to TAKE food from one person to GIVE it to another. The first guy has his rights violated in order that your idea of the second guy’s “right” to eat is respected.
Rights are NOT positive things. They’re negatives. I have the right NOT to be killed, NOT to be enslaved, NOT to be oppressed, NOT to be arrested without cause or convicted without trial by jury of peers, NOT to have my person or effects searched without warrant, etc. I have the right NOT to have my gun taken from me.
You cannot grant someone a right that, in its execution, REQUIRES that someone ELSE’S rights be abused. “wealth redistribution” is thus NOT a right. Nobody has a RIGHT to reach into his neighbor’s wallet and just TAKE what he needs. It is true that all human beings have a moral obligation to be charitable, but one man’s obligation does NOT translate into another man’s RIGHT.
This things are simple, timeless truths. YOu abandon all idea of rights if you begin granting some people the right to take from other people. “Thou shalt not steal” addresses this simply enough.
Now, “the right to be free from torture, indefinite detention, etc”
I want a DEFINITION OF TORTURE. This word is constantly thrown around but NOBODY AGREES on its meaning, and therefore any conversation using the word is DOOMED TO IRRESOLUTION. I do not have the right not to be tortured, not if I consider my wife nagging at me to be torture… and I DO. I ask you NEVER to use this word again until it is defined, and then use the definition instead of the word, i.e. “the right not to be waterboarded” if you believe waterboarding is torture.
But addressing your point, I do not believe any American ‘torture’ sessions involved bamboo slivers under fingernails, the removal of teeth with pliers but without anasthetic, or the attachment of wires to genitals followed by application of electric power. So in my view, nobody has been tortured, and nobody IS being tortured, except guys like me having to read and listen to this incoherent pap.
As to the absolute right to own a gun, I believe the second amendment is clear. At the beginning of constitutional government, the amendment refers to the right to keep and bear arms as, in implied terms, existing, current. It’s a right that PREDATES the U. S. Constitution. The language says “it shall not be infringed” by government. It doesn’t say government GRANTS the right to have a gun. It says government can’t infringe on the (pre-existing) RIGHT TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS.
There were two purposes, the protection of citizenry BY citizenry against the ravages of a tyrannical government (that is why it refers to militia, a citizen army to fight the government) and to protect “me and mine” in more general terms.
Millions of people in this country own guns, and many carry them. Google “the armed citizen” blog to read daily excerpts from news stories on TV and in newspapers EVERY DAY about guns used by lawful owners to prevent or stop crimes. Many times no shots are fired. Sometimes a homeowner or store clerk shoots in self defense. But every damm DAY in the country someone defends himself with a gun. IT IS A RIGHT. The cops will be there in minutes when you need them in seconds.
May 6, 2010, 10:39 amdave in dallas says:
I think real life defies your oversimplified interp. On a blog called “The Armed Citizen”, the blogger simply reposts news stories from local papers and TV stations across the country which involve citizens using their guns to defend themselves or others and prevent or stop crimes. There are a couple of new stories every week. Hundreds per year. Over the past thirty years, probably millions. Some of these citizens are in real danger, and sometimes they are even shot. But the number and variety of crimes either prevented or stopped by armed citizens is astonishing, and is TOTALLY IGNORED in larger media.
The only mature adult interpretation of ‘armed – polite’ means that when a CRIMINAL is convinced that his WOULD BE VICTIM may well be armed, the planned crime is discarded and the criminal goes on his way. “polite” does not mean gracious as opposed to rude, it means respecting people’s RIGHTS as opposed to VIOLATING them.
I was recently at a tea party in texas, at which several thousand people gathered. I examined clothing and bags carefully, and concluded there were hundreds of guns there at least. The event lasted for hours, and NOBODY WAS SHOT. gasp… how is it possible that so many people could be armed and in a gigantic protest mob scene and nobody even got one out and fired into the air shouting YEEE HAHHH???
simple. Polite, decent people, doing the right thing and prepared to intercede when they see the wrong thing done. THIS IS AMERICA.
Huge amounts of person on person crime happen in non-gun areas. DC. Chicago. but in Wyoming, Texas, etc. you see a LOT less of it. Because the victim may be armed.
If you didn’t have a bias against ‘gun totin’ rednecks’, you would see the simple truth.
May 6, 2010, 10:56 amPhilistine says:
Aren’t most college campus shootings done by students or others who actually have an association with the school–suggesting that they’re not targeting the school because people don’t have guns, but because they have some perceieved grievance against it?
May 6, 2010, 11:01 amPersonFromPorlock says:
I’ve always thought that particular work of Heinlein’s was silly. But my own experience with concealed carry is that the presence of my weapon makes me careful to keep my temper, because the consequences – for everyone – of losing it would be ‘way more drastic. “An armed society is a polite society” may therefore be pretty accurate, albeit not for Heinlein’s reason.
May 6, 2010, 11:01 amDJR says:
Math fail.
Even assuming 999 per year, that only gets you slightly less than 30K over the last 30 years. You would have to have about 180 such incidents a day to reach 2 million (i.e. “millions”) over 30 years.
May 6, 2010, 11:04 amElliot says:
“Maybe some have been in the military? Seen combat? When I was a child there were a lot of adults around who had seen combat in WW II. You couldn’t pester them enough to get them to talk about it. What they saw and experienced made them cautious and reticent. That’s different than what seems to show up here, and I think inexperience may have something to do with it. Correct me if you think I’m wrong.”
I’d suggest you are confusing supporting the right to have a gun for defense with a desire to actually use that gun for self defense.
I also have a fire extinguisher in my kitchen, but I certainly don’t look forward to using it to put out a fire in the kitchen.
Each day my gun and fire extinguisher both sit idle is another great day.
May 6, 2010, 11:07 amFederal Farmer says:
The 200 million number for private arms in the US is way low. Since 1984, there have been 122 million small arms enter into civilian hands alone. Interestingly, the rate of firearms accidents is the only category of accidents that has declined since 1984.
It is likely true that the rate of gun usage is lower than car usage, but the argument many make is that simply owning a gun is dangerous.
May 6, 2010, 11:15 amStephen Lathrop says:
Well, it would be astonishing if 2 per week added up to “hundreds per year,” or if that rate for thirty years added up to “millions,” or even to more than 3,120.
Why point this out? Why not just let it go? The problem is that much of the most passionate defense of gun rights is plain irrational. And that won’t carry the day. Worse, following along without criticizing allows the less thoughtful advocates to fashion an indefensible position for everyone.
If you boil down the most insistent arguments on this blog, they seem to amount to these: virtuous people don’t commit gun crimes; criminals do commit gun crimes; licensed gun owners are astonishingly virtuous; and everyone not a criminal or insane has a right to whatever ordinary firearms they want, partly because the cops come too slowly, and partly because government could turn tyrannical.
Unless you believe convicted criminals and the insane are the only reservoirs of human folly, vice, violent passion, iniquity, etc., that position makes no sense. Today’s armed and virtuous citizen is tomorrow’s gun criminal (or not) according to circumstance, self-restraint, and statistical chance. The two categories are pure post hoc analysis.
If essentially everyone has a right to a gun, then the catalogue of potential gun owners is, of course, also the catalogue of every human vice imaginable, and contains ALL the future gun criminals who have not already been excluded by consequence of prior offense. That is a problem that society at large must deal with. It is also a problem that those who wish to defend gun rights must come to terms with, putting aside preposterous assertions and bristling defensiveness in favor of some kind of realism.
If you don’t do that, then you run the risk, a risk amounting almost to certainty I think, that society at large will conclude that gun rights advocates are mostly loons—dangerous loons with too many weapons.
Before you conclude that could never happen, because look how many gun owners there are, let me say again that I am someone who likes guns, shoots guns, hunts with guns, and believes the Second Amendment is an important bulwark of liberty. Not every gun owner will be ready to defend demands that insist on elevating principle over reason at the risk of chaos.
May 6, 2010, 12:25 pmSun Tzu's Nephew says:
Most mass murderers have some association with the place they choose to commit their crimes…..the fact that they pick unarmed locations is secondary.
May 6, 2010, 12:44 pmKatahdin says:
I trying to follow your argument. Can you elaborate on the source of ‘the risk of chaos’? Is it that, say, Montana and Vermont have such lax laws that they are likely to descend into chaos at any moment? Or are you arguing that if the gun laws of Montana and Vermont were extended nationwide that chaos would break out in Chicago and Los Angeles?
May 6, 2010, 12:55 pmPhatty says:
If I were to kill myself by operating my car in a closed garage with the exhaust piped into the passenger compartment, would that be counted in the official statistics as a motor vehicle death?
May 6, 2010, 1:02 pmDave in Dallas says:
fair enough. I was oversimplifying. On “the armed citizen” blog, there are anywhere from a couple a week to a couple a day, stories of armed citizens defending themselves successfully. And those are ONLY the stories that make the news, because the blog only excerpts the news. So, in a week, it could be two, it could be ten, or it could be 20 or 30 stories that never make the news.
a different survey I read once but cannot find or quote says it’s a million a YEAR, episodes of successful self defense with guns. I am not sure that’s true, but I’m sure it’s millions over the past few decades.
my point remains that NOBODY ever talks about the gazillion (exaggeration) times people have used their God given right to defend themselves with constitutionally protected personal firearms. they only talk about crime and college shootings and so forth.
and we know that outlaws don’t obey laws. You cannot keep guns out of the hands of criminals. No more than you can keep drugs out of the hands of addicts. where there is a demand for a pricey product, there WILL be a supply. It is human nature.
given these truths and realities, I insist and demand my right to defend myself on the grounds that those who are charged with defending me, the cops, simply cannot manage to protect everyone, or stop crimes while they’re happening.
20 years ago my wife was carjacked, raped and murdered with an ILLEGAL gun with no serial #.
I remarried later. My present wife is very good with her guns and enjoys practicing.
Lesson learned. It’s jolly nice to have liberal positions and tell everyone you’re more moral than they are, but real life is dammned ugly, and it knocks the liberalism right out of you if you have any common sense at ALL.
May 6, 2010, 1:15 pmFederal Farmer says:
That is the cynical mindset that drives the gun control agenda. To them, we are all pre-criminals simply lacking the means to carry out our rampage. Take any law-abiding citizen and put a machine gun in their hands and they’ll start shooting indiscriminately.
May 6, 2010, 1:24 pmGun control has never succeeded in preventing a murder much less a murder-spree.
Dave in Dallas says:
Statistics to the rescue in your speculative analysis. Wyoming, crime stats. Texas, crime stats. If you are right, then gun crimes should be MUCH higher in those states, because far more people own guns in Texas and wyoming than in, say, New Jersey or Massachusetts. Or washington DC. We’re all morally equivalent, right? Any one of us could go nuts at any time, cuz we’re tea partiers who love violence and hate government and black people.
So, how does Washington DC stack up, gun crime wise, against Dallas, TX or Cheyenne, WY?
Just curious.
while you’re doing the research, you might attempt to differentiate in the stats between “VIRTUOUS” gun owners, that is to say those who legally own guns and live normal lives, and, say, drug dealers buying guns with no serial #s on them and attacking each other during their day jobs.
It is my guess that the legitimate gun owner, the law abiding normal american, commits so few gun crimes that it doesn’t even REGISTER in any statistic.
Nobody is asserting that we’re all perfect and will never have a bad day. We’re just saying that we have a right to defend ourselves, and the few events involving people who should not HAVE guns are not going to be large enough in number to justify keeping MILLIONS OF NORMAL PEOPLE from defending themselves, which they do, every day, all over the country.
I myself, to sin by anecdote, have owned at least one pistol for more than thirty years and have never shot a single person of any race or creed or culture or sexual preference. I would no more shoot someone than deliberately run down someone with my car. I am a ‘virtuous’ person. I have a right to own a gun and to defend myself with it.
May 6, 2010, 1:24 pmKirk Parker says:
I’m with EvilDave. I suppose that makes me evil, too.
Stephen L., when the mighty and powerful who want to restrict the little people’s access to guns–you know, people like Bloomberg and Holder and Feinstein–start showing a little more humility, and a little more sense of what can go wrong when you disarm the law-abiding, then maybe I’ll respond in kind.
May 6, 2010, 1:37 pmSuperlite27 says:
O.K. Mr. Logic
Please explain why the police have not decended into a mass group of bloodthirsty killers by now.
After all, police officers have been armed with firearms for generations. Wouldn’t they also contain the catalogue of human vice? What makes is acceptable for a police officer to defend his life with a firearm, yet bad for anyone else?
Since the only difference between a human being who is a diesel mechanic and a human being who is a police officer is a badge, you would have to logically conclude that a shiny metal disk is some kind of magical talisman that makes carrying a firearm a morally acceptable endeavor.
You also state “Today’s armed and virtuous citizen is tomorrow’s gun criminal.”
Wow! All that impressive logical mumbo-jumbo and you offer this as if it contains vast intellectual knowlege.
How does the introduction of a firearm reference change this from any other statement?
Wouldn’t today’s cigarrette lighter user be tomorrow’s arsonist?
How about today’s whittler? Wouldn’t that be tomorrow’s Jack the Ripper?
Is today’s gardener tomorrow’s patio stone head basher-inner?
Honestly, your attempt to paint lawful firearms owners as tomorrow’s criminals is nothing more than an EPIC FAIL. For all your logical prowess, you cannot explain why a firearm owner is any more likely to become a criminal than any other segment of the population.
There must be some magical property to the inanimate material in firearms to cause gun owners to be “future criminals” while the rest of the non criminal population remains unaffected by this criminal creating mystery substance found in firearms (That is strangely counteracted by the magical “badge” talisman.)
May 6, 2010, 1:55 pmBlue Neponset says:
I find the hard core gun rights crowd a lot like the anti-vaccine crusaders. Both groups don’t seem to accept the consequences of what would happen if everyone acted like they did.
As an example, if every child in the Fort Collins school system didn’t get vaccinated some of those children would die from preventable deaths. If every student at Colorado State owned and carried a hand gun some of those students would die from preventable deaths.
Does anyone doubt those two conclusions?
May 6, 2010, 2:01 pmsaywhat? says:
So, how does Washington DC stack up, gun crime wise, against Dallas, TX or Cheyenne, WY?
Well, of course DC has had a consistent violent crime problem and Cheyenne is really not much larger than a large suburb so it is hardly fair to compare it to the other two cities though. If you do compare crime statistics though, Dallas, and most of the other large cities in Texas have about the same crime rate as Chicago (and by your logic, they should have much lower rates since guns prevent crimes). Also, New York city, with its draconian gun control laws, is consistently one of the safest cities in the country. New Orleans, with no meaningful gun control at all, is by far the most violent city in the country. As for state wide crime statistics, the states with the loosest gun control laws (especially in the south and west), also tend to have the most violent crime (again with Louisiana generally near the top), contradicting the theory that “more guns means less crime”.
In fact the state with the strictest statewide gun control laws and the greatest ability to keep guns out of its borders (Hawaii) generally is one of the least violent states in the country, which implies (although I certainly would not argue it definitively proves) that effective gun control does have a positive influence on violent crime.
May 6, 2010, 2:06 pmWACollier says:
The question I have for those who back a ban on CCW on campus: Why should I or my wife be disarmed? I am a CCW permit holder, and a veteran. And by happy circumstance, my wife is also a veteran, and a CCW permit holder.
Why should should she or I be forced to disarm merely because we are teaching (in her case) or taking (in my case) a night class on a local college community campus? Please justify that. This isn’t about 21 year old university Juniors as many seem to concentrate on. Its about denying adults a fundamental human (self defense) and Constitutional (2nd Amendment) rights. What justification is there for that?
May 6, 2010, 2:09 pmJerry M says:
I wonder how many of the people commenting here about the fundamental right to firearms, with which I reluctantly agree, have ever been threatened with a gun, or shot at, or seen someone killed with a gun? How many have even hunted and killed game?
Shot at: yes. The 20-20 with a scope missed, b-b gun hit back of my head.
Threatened: Yes
Never seen someone shot or killed.
Never hunted.
Bought a gun 1 month after the Zero was elected.
May 6, 2010, 2:11 pmKatahdin says:
But Hawaii has twice the violent crime rate of North Dakota, Vermont, Maine, New Hampshire, … (source). Hawaii ranks 36th, in fact, i.e. 14 states have lower violent crime rates.
Don’t you think that there would be some evidence to support that from, say, Massachusetts or Illinois?
May 6, 2010, 2:18 pmR7 says:
I think Stephen Lathrop is a concern troll. Pretends he is on your side when he really isn’t. His contempt for his fellow citizens:
-gives it away.
May 6, 2010, 2:24 pmBlue Neponset says:
You and she should be disarmed because we have to apply the same rules to everyone. The 21 year old university junior packing heat in pysch 101 is what people are worried about. Ignoring that isn’t a very good argument.
May 6, 2010, 2:26 pmR7 says:
Blue Neponset says:
Nice to show your contempt for your fellow citizen. Other commentators have already shredded your slanderous arguments against CCW holders.
May 6, 2010, 2:35 pmWACollier says:
“You and she should be disarmed because we have to apply the same rules to everyone”
In case you didnt notice (and I made it clear) this is addressing a recognized individual right, not a collective one (as you seem to think), as given by natural law, and expressed in the US Constitution and Colorado constitution and Colorado statutes.
The one who hasnt a very good argument is you. That “answer” of yours might work with school children, but not here — It amounts to ipse dixit (“Because I Say So”). As well as appeals to emotionalism and other resorts of the propagandists.
Why should I (or any other licensed adult) be denied a fundamental right? My Rights. Not a group. Not the nebulous “everyone”. Not the imaginary and quite stupid emotional appeal to a hypothetical 21 year old psych student. MY RIGHT. On what basis do you justify infringement of it?
May 6, 2010, 2:49 pmSun Tzu's Nephew says:
LOL.
Illinois has very rigid firearms (not just handgun) control. Chicago has (at least for the time being) very strict firearm control, in fact a near total ban. Likewise, Massachusetts has very tight controls.
Chicago and Cook County has quite more gun violence and other crime than does the rest of Illinois, per capita. And Illinois has quite a bit more than surrounding states. Massachusetts and Boston has quite a bit more violence than surrounding States as well…
May 6, 2010, 3:04 pmSun Tzu's Nephew says:
How about we give everyone the same rights and responsibilities and let them carry as well?
May 6, 2010, 3:05 pmzippypinhead says:
The devil’s in the details, as usual. Prohibiting “terrorists” from purchasing or possessing firearms sounds like a no-brainer, until one actually sees how the proponents of the new law want to implement this idea. At least one of the actual proposals being floated not only prohibits firearms PURCHASES, but prohibits POSSESSION, even if the individual already owned firearms long before ending up on the list. In fact, that’s the only way the list could have been relevant to attempted Times Square bomber Shahzad – who legally purchasd the Kel-Tec found in his car weeks before he ever made the no-fly list.
The practical problem with using the terrorist watch list or no-fly list as an additional category of “prohibited person” under 18 U.S.C. §922(g) is that the list is inherently unreliable – there are a lot of false positives in airports every day from that list. Ironically, using the list in this way would also have turned the late Senator Ted Kennedy (whose name was on the list for a while) into a felon because he also owned a bird gun.
Unfortunately, the false positive problem can’t be fixed. The watch list is compiled from numerous sources, some of which are classified and the validity of which cannot directly be challenged, and some of which are extraordinarily vague – sweeping up relatively common names without more specific identifying information (see, e.g., “T. Kennedy,” supra). The information that gets on on the no-fly list is often anecdotal and of questionable reliability. By contrast, with the exception of 922(g)(3) (unlawful drug user), every prohibited person category requires a prior formal adjudication with at least some due process protections (e.g., convicted felon, adjudicated mental defective, dishonorable discharge, DV restraining order), of is an objectively-verifiable “status” offense (e.g., illegal alien or nonimmigrant visa holder, formally renounced citizenship). And unlike the other 922(g) categories, someone who ends up on the no-fly list almost never knows he is on the list unless he can’t board a plane, so he also would never know he’s already in a “prohibited person” category for firearms until he has a rude surprise at the airport.
While opponents of Mayor Bloomberg’s latest “common-sense gun control” may at first blush sound like rabid gun-nut whack-jobs, if one looks at the details of the actual proposal, concern about this particular expansion of “prohibited person” actually makes some sense.
May 6, 2010, 3:13 pmBruce Hayden says:
You are comparing apples and oranges – legally driven vehicles to illegally carried concealed weapons. Try comparing how many innocent people die from legally driven vehicles versus by legally carried concealed weapons. Also compare mixing the two with alcohol. The reality is that very few legally carried concealed weapons actually harm innocent victims. Not the case with legally driven vehicles. Now, illegally carried concealed weapons are a very, very different situation.
May 6, 2010, 3:22 pmWACollier says:
“How about we give everyone the same rights and responsibilities and let them carry as well?”
You know what, that’s my point. If its a fundamental right for me, then it should be for you as well. Works pretty well in Vermont. And it seems to work pretty well all over Colorado, so what is the justification for infringement on a college campus?
The idea of a “gun free zone” being a safe place by fiat seems to be a commonplace fantasy of collectivists and statists. Just like their visions of a perfectable man, or a perfectable pervasive government.
May 6, 2010, 3:29 pmmariner says:
OK. I’ll go with that.
I’m in my fifties. I’ve owned at least one handgun since I was 19, and I’ve had a concealed handgun permit for 16 years. I’ve never committed a crime with a handgun — in fact the most serious crime I’ve committed is speeding.
The consequences of everyone acting the way I act would be a nearly crime-free society.
To turn this back on you, you aren’t willing to accept that the vast majority of people don’t act as you irrationally fear they would.
May 6, 2010, 3:48 pmRR Ryan says:
I don’t know whether anyone has brought this up, but from the late seventies(I think) until around 1984, the legal drinking age was 18. It was the folks from MADD who got congress to blackmail states into raising it to 21. A friend of mine and I who are approximately the same age were talking about NY in the early 80′s and how much fun it was. And the law didn’t change back until we had turned 21. And as a bonus, we could get into 54 when we were 16 as a result. So sue me.
May 6, 2010, 3:49 pmMac says:
School children and college students and the university educated and graduated, at least in recent years.
May 6, 2010, 3:51 pmzippypinhead says:
You’re way low on your guesstimate. There have been a number of published statistical studies of the number of defensive uses of firearms in the U.S., including not only incidents involving discharges, but also the more numerous situations where mere display of a firearm was effective in defending against a crime. The estimates have been all over the place, ranging from a high of 2.5 million defensive uses per year, down to something like 94,000 per year in some other studies.
Several such studies were cited in the amicus briefs filed in the Supreme Court’s Heller case. One source that compiles and analyzes various studies is Gary Kleck’s and Don Kates’ 2001 work, Armed: New Perspectives on Gun Control, Chapter 6.
Clayton Cramer’s blog that’s currently called “The Armed Citizen” and the the “Armed Citizen” column in the American Rifleman both pick up only a small handful of the anecdotes, usually because they were particularly spectacular and were reported in the press.
May 6, 2010, 3:54 pmmariner says:
I’m calling bullshit on that. Please show us your work.
As far as New York’s statistics — they’re cooked. I suspect this is true in other large cities as well.
May 6, 2010, 3:56 pmMac says:
Also, our Founding Fathers had no great faith in government. They wanted us to have guns in case we needed to take out whatever government followed if it got as bad as they envisioned and knew government could get.
The devil is who will be defined as a terrorist? According to Napolitano, if you are a Military Veteran, Christian or pretty much anyone who may disagree with the Government, you may be a terrorist. Did she add Tea Partier or was that implied later? This concerns me as it seems the Government definition of terrorist is very elastic and broad. I would rather terrorists have guns, which they will if they want to anyway, than allow the Government to deprive citizens of their 2A rights merely by calling someone, anyone a terrorist.
May 6, 2010, 4:06 pmPersonFromPorlock says:
Well, if the vaccine in question has no significant therapeutic value but does have a significant mortality rate associated with it, the anti-vaccine crusaders might have a point.
May 6, 2010, 5:07 pmBlue Neponset says:
Your RIGHT should be infringed because it affects my safety. The more guns in the hands of 21 year old juniors on college campuses the greater the risk that I get shot on a college campus.
The argument that you aren’t a risk to me, while true, isn’t relevant. If we allow you to carry a weapon onto a campus we have to allow all comers to carry a weapon onto campus. Do I have a fundamental right not to get shot? If I do then the number of guns allowed on college campuses is directly relevant to that right.
May 6, 2010, 5:32 pmBlue Neponset says:
What I meant by everyone acting the way you act is everyone owning a firearm. If every student at Colorado State had a pistol there would be quite a lot more violence on campus. Drunken fights would turn into drunken murders, etc.
The vast majority aren’t the problem. The three college juniors who shoot someone else during the semester or the two college seniors who shoot themselves are the problem.
May 6, 2010, 5:39 pmSun Tzu's Nephew says:
Those people already exist, and are just as much of a danger now as they would be if everyone had the option to carry. Except now, if someone does start shooting, as we have seen time and time again, with nobody to shoot back the death toll just keeps rolling up.
May 6, 2010, 6:05 pmMac says:
Uh, doesn’t the past history as mentioned in the original post (below), put lie to what you are saying, Blue? It certainly seems if what you say is true, there should have been some incident since 2003 when they were given permission to carry.
May 6, 2010, 6:06 pmSun Tzu's Nephew says:
What about MY right to defend my life? Why should I have my rights abrogated because you refuse to defend your own life and instead depend on a provably incompetent state or law to defend you?
May 6, 2010, 6:06 pmSun Tzu's Nephew says:
Right. MADD lobbied to increase the drinking age, to save lives through reduced drinking. Guess what happens? More BINGE drinking on campuses by underaged individuals.
May 6, 2010, 6:09 pmSun Tzu's Nephew says:
Thats exactly right. Individual, personal defense is a human right. Not a ‘gun right’, not a ‘Constitutional right’. A human right.
May 6, 2010, 6:11 pmSun Tzu's Nephew says:
No doubt as irrationally as he fears HE would act. Most anti-gunners are simply so afraid that THEY are unable to control themselves that they project their fears onto others. “If I’m not mature/sane/capable/careful enough to handle a firearm, then NOBODY ELSE is, either…otherwise I might have my nose rubbed in my inability”.
May 6, 2010, 6:16 pmLarryA says:
Actually, that was Heinlein’s reason.
In my CHL class I teach that under Texas law:
1. The use of force is not justified on verbal provocation alone.
2. The use of force is not justified if you consent to the force used against you. (For instance by voluntarily participating in a fight.)
3. The use of force is not justified if you provoked the force used against you.
4. The use of deadly force is never justified unless the use of force is justified.
Therefore as a CHL you need to be more polite than those who are not armed.
From the article: “At the Fort Collins campus, firearms carry licensees (who must be 21 years or older, under Colorado law) had carried without incident ever since the enactment of the Concealed Handgun Act in 2003. The Fort Collins campus, which is the larger CSU campus, is located in north-central Colorado, in Larimer County.” That’s seven years actual experience to balance your “what if.” Add to that the fact that concealed carry is legal on Utah campuses, and has been for years. Add to that the fact that “21-year-old juniors in college” can carry legally almost everywhere but college campuses in 40 states, and do so without incident.
At my Alma mater, Texas A&M, carry is illegal only in school buildings. Many students and faculty members keep guns in their cars. This procedure has been in effect since 1997, and there have been no incidents of violence or accidents.
Your fear seems to be without merit.
May 6, 2010, 6:29 pmSun Tzu's Nephew says:
Facts to a hoplophobe are like kryptonite to superman…
May 6, 2010, 6:50 pmKatahdin says:
The greater the number of cars on campus, the greater the chance you will become a pedestrian victim. In 2007 4654 pedestrians were killed in the US. In 2004 (the last year in the graph I could find easily) there were approximately 8500 handgun murders (were talking about CCW, here, so long guns aren’t a factor). In general then people are twice as likely to be murdered with a handgun as to be killed as a pedestrian. What can we infer about the relative risks of CCW on the CSU campus? Unless permit holders commit more than half of the murders in the country, you are more at risk from vehicles on campus than permit holder’s guns on campus.
How should I feel about allowing you to drive on campus, given that it poses a greater risk to me than allowing permit holders to be armed on campus?
May 6, 2010, 9:09 pmStephen Lathrop says:
Nor was I trying to do so. You get a more-than-sufficient political problem if the firearm owner is merely AS likely to become a criminal as any other segment of the population. You can’t expect a general right to bear arms to arm only the virtuous. The population at large contains all kinds, including many who are innocent today, but headed for criminal deeds down the road.
Here, from this thread, is an example of how not to deal with that political problem:
May 6, 2010, 9:43 pmPersonFromPorlock says:
The idea is, we wait until after the crime to punish people.
May 6, 2010, 10:08 pmKatahdin says:
But, empirically, we can expect that shall issue CCW permit holders will be much more law abiding than the population at large. The theory that allowing CCW will cause rivers of blood to run in the streets is fine, until it collides with the facts.
May 6, 2010, 10:20 pmtom swift says:
No more than you can expect a more restricted right to do so. Gun ownership restricted to the police, the military, ATF, HUD or any other government agency can’t be expected to arm only the virtuous.
Fortunately, “the people” were believed in America’s founding days to have certain virtues, such as being able to determine questions of fact in jury trials, being able to fight to maintain the security of a free state, and a couple of others. Evidently those dead white guys thought that “the people” retained enough virtue to make all the difference. Unless, of course, one cares to argue that “the people” have declined in quality or capability since those days.
May 6, 2010, 11:24 pmBill Woods says:
“Of course he had a gun. This is Texas! Everybody has a gun. My florist has a gun!” (Miss Congeniality)
May 6, 2010, 11:46 pmmariner says:
That’s an outright lie, as proven by historical evidence. But people who insist on infringing our 2A rights keep spouting it anyway.
May 7, 2010, 1:04 amSuperlite27 says:
Yet, you can expect a general ban on the right to bear arms to disarm only the virtuous.
What good is a law or policy requiring one to voluntarily disarm?
How does one get a bloodthirsty killer who, by definition, has absolutely no regard for a law against murder to, altruistically volunteer to obey a policy?
Aren’t these policies more effective in disarming those inclined to follow it? Namely: Those who aren’t inclined to break the rules in the first place?
Why do you fear those who willingly obey the law, and enact policies which have absolutely no effect on those who willingly disregard them?
May 7, 2010, 9:35 amChris Travers says:
Seems like a good reason to lower the drinking age to me.
May 7, 2010, 11:40 amChris Travers says:
There’s a saying:
Computers make it possible to make more mistakes faster than any invention in history, with the possible exception of handguns and tequila.
Therefore I suggest we should deny folks the right to purchase, own, or operate a computer until the age of 21 just to be safe….
May 7, 2010, 11:43 amChris Travers says:
Sure, it’s relevant. But consider the failure cases too. If you don’t allow handguns on campus, then rule-abiding students most definitely will not have them. All it takes is one psychopath with a semiautomatic and you have major carnage as we saw at VA Tech. The response time of the police will simply be inadequate.
So, suppose you allow handguns on campus. Then rule-abiding students may or may not have them. It may increase modestly the chance of a shooting, but it will also decrease the severity.
I think there’s an open question (for which I don’t have a lot of empirical data at the moment) as to where the optimal point is. I would assume the optimal point would be with lots of guns on campus, with an alternative being a campus with airport-like security measures…..
May 7, 2010, 11:51 amMatthew says:
Go Rams!
May 7, 2010, 6:20 pmElliot says:
That was a plausible argument before Florida enacted concealed carry in the mid-nineties. However, since then we have had about 38(?) states enact concealed carry and have not seen the morphing of the virtouos to gun criminal. What’s the average incubation period?
If everybody acted like the hard-core gun rights crowd, we would have a very peaceful society with very few crimes.
The elephant in the room is that murder rates are much higher for males who qualify for affirmative action. Glad everyone doesn’t act like they do.
May 7, 2010, 7:11 pmGUNLEX » Coloradská státní univerzita odvolala zákaz zbraní says:
[...] http://volokh.com/…earms-carry/ [...]
May 8, 2010, 10:58 am