Also, for all this “YOU MUST BE READY TO KILL! KILL!!” advice…
Even if you are mentally prepared to accept being party to a homicide, the intent of defensive shooting it to STOP the attacker. Not to kill them.
I’m not a lawyer either, but I have to doubt that a public university could be compelled to allow students to carry guns. Just because it’s government owned doesn’t guarantee the right to bear arms on that property. How often are civilians allowed to take guns into courtrooms?
If they had a gun. AND were permitted to carry it. Loaded. AND had it within reach such that going for it wouldn’t cause the shooter to shoot them. AND would have the presence of mind to to all the same in the midst of chaos. :rolleyes:
Your logic is based on several seriously flawed assumptions. The chances of you dying in a car accident are much greater than they are of you being shot by a rampage killer. So do you wear your seatbelt, keep to the speed limit, drive defensively, and keep your car in optimum shape?
All perfectly sound arguments to sit and do nothing in just such a situation. :rolleyes:
But until the police force drastically changes their protocol in these situations (active engagement rather than passive perimeter establishment), there simply is no other solution.
It’s a very simple choice. Do SOMETHING, ANYTHING to confront the person with the weapon, or pray your number isn’t up. Two options. Die, or attempt to not die.
And you probably would be more likely to save your own life if you wore a helmet every time you were in the car versus carrying a gun. Would you be willing to wear a helmet in the car? Or install a 5 point harness? Statistically, those are far more important in the real world then carrying a gun. The drunk driving laws won’t stop all the accidents and seat belts aren’t enough to protect you in all cases.
The idea of being trapped in a classroom with a gunman is very frightening, and rightly so. But it is vanishingly rare. Car accidents are frequent and commonplace. They don’t raise the same level of fear, but they are much more likely to kill you. Where do you want to invest your efforts?
You also have a much bigger chance of being in a car accident or getting pulled over/hurting someone while drunk than you do of getting shot at. Personally (and this is just my reasoning, I don’t expect anyone else to agree with me), I feel a hell of a lot safer with fewer people concealed carrying and deciding to “protect” themselves when whatever issue arises; I’d rather not get caught in the crossfire. There was a case in the news recently where a man was threatening to kill his wife, and the police ended up killing her instead of him. Another very recent case involved some police (IIRC - might’ve been FBI) going after a criminal and shot one of their own in the commotion. If anyone’s trained in weapons use, police are, and even they run into problems where they shoot innocent people in a tense situation. I don’t trust Joe Average who decides he wants to fight off criminals to be all that great of a shot, much less a judge of a situation in which he should or shouldn’t shoot. And I sure as hell don’t want to be the idiot who blows away some mother or child or whatever instead of the gunman, and have to look that person’s family in the eye afterwards.
You are letting an unreasonable fear get the better of you. Stop it. Do you want to prove Michael Moore’s contention that America is full of scared people true?
There are dozens more hazards that are much more likely to kill you. Owning a gun will give you a false sense of security, it will not save you from the things that are likely to kill you. Drop the burger and fries and go jogging - that’ll add many more years than gun ownership will.
I’m not saying there’s a guarantee, I’m just not sure what the law says. If there was anything unconstitutional about making schools “gun-free zones,” I imagine the challenges would already have gone through the court system.
Soapbox Monkey, if the thought of being trapped and defenseless gives you nightmares and the only thing to do is get a gun, I guess you should do it, provided you take every precaution. But in reality, you’re just filling a need to “DO SOMETHING” and feel like you wouldn’t be powerless in a scary situation.
Yes, I’m being unreasonable, and fearful, because this shit is scary. Copy cats, or at least threats of copy cats are likely to emerge in the next month, and guess what! I’m a college student.
I’m sure the parents of the VT victims take great solace in knowing that their children were statistical anomalies. And I’m sure the parents of the next tragedy will wipe their brows in relief and proclaim, “Well, it could have just as easily been a car accident!”
I really have nothing to add. The people who are knowledgable about guns have given their input and advice, and the naysayers have accused me of becoming a victim of fear. I am. C’est la vie. Goodnight.
How sad. The gunman stepped into a room and started shooting. Anyone other than a trained Seal, Green Beret, or Commando would have been so astonished that they most likely wouldn’t have even gotten to their weapon before it was all over. That is, unless they were sitting in their seat with their gun drawn, expecting someone to come to the door and start shooting.
Who can live a normal life and always be ready for a one-in-a-million, potentially fatal event to happen in the next second?
Go ahead and buy the damn gun. It could very well turn out to be more dangerous to you than any possible attacker.
I’m kind of picturing the following if students were allowed to carry firearms:
“I know what you’re thinking, Prof. ‘Should I give this student the A he wants, or the C he deserves?’ Well, ask yourself this. Do you feel lucky, Prof? Do you?”
I don’t believe one should take loaded firearms to school for protection, or for any other reason. However, since the OP seems to have his mind made up, I would just ask that he take the time to learn about how to use the thing safely. Get some instruction. Practice at a range. Watch what the firearm can do, and what you can and cannot do with it. I grew up with firearms, belonged to shooting clubs, and have fired many, many rifles, handguns, and shotguns. It’s not like the movies–it takes a lot of work to learn how to hit what you’re shooting at. But you can learn such things, with lots of practice, lots of instruction, and lots of patience. Take the time to learn how to do it right. Don’t just buy a gun and think, “Now I’m safe.” It takes work to learn how to use one well.
Far as I know Soapbox, PA doesn’t require you to get the gun first and the license second.
If you live in Philly, the issuing agent is the chief of police. For every other place in PA, it’s the county sheriff’s office.
Go take classes. Go to a good range and try different pistols. There are ranges who will have people to help a novice shooter.
If you’re going to do this, do it right. You must verse yourself in every aspect of firearms ownership: safety, responsibility, laws, care, maintenance, securing your firearms, etc. This is a big responsibility, and since you’ve so recently had this conversion, I think you should take your time. Don’t rush into it and carry around a gun you aren’t comfortable with and don’t know how to use safely.
Be safe.
Amen. Amen, amen, amen.
Do not buy a weapon unless you learn how to use it. And you need to keep practicing with it. Plan on visiting the range at least once a month.
Read your own statement here. You need to sit down, calm down, and think about what really drives you to want to carry a firearm. Strong emotions and firearms are as a poor combination as gasoline and matches.
I’m not opposed to firearms; I think non-discresionary concealed carry, backed by a rigorous training requirement, is on the balance a positive thing (and claims of Wild West shootouts between CCW holders have failed to manifest themselves despite hysterical claims to the contrary) but you need to be committed to the responsibility of carrying a firearm. You also need to recognize, again, that’s it’s not a defensive shield; as David Simmons noted, in a surprise attack you may not have time to respond correctly. Although I’ve never been in armed combat (and hopefully never will) I’ve known several people who have been on a repeated basis (under the aspicies of the Department of Defense) and they uniformly report that in such a situation you don’t have time to think, even as you notice bizarrely insignficant details; you only have time to react. Even if you do, your first impulse, unless it is unavailable to you, should be to escape or seek cover, not engage in a firefight.
Give it a few days. Read the relevant statutes. Think about having to wear a jacket or coat all the time, not going to a bar or restaurant that serves alcohol while carrying, and spending hours of frustrating effort to learn basic competency in marksmanship. Think about the reprecussions of hitting a bystander, or someone getting pissed off at you and starting a fistfight, tempting you to display your weapon “just to scare him off.” (In a word, don’t do that, but that’s much easier to say than to live.) You’re scared of being a victim, but you should also be a little scared of being responsible for an accident.
Stranger
I was first exposed to firearms around the age of 8 or 9. I’ve attended firearms classes and field training. I’ve been a firearms instructor and a range coach for both military and civilian personnel. I’ve lived in environments where carrying a weapon was the norm. I have pretty much been away from that world for over 25 years. I currently own one operable firearm which is loaded and readily available. I would not even consider carrying a concealed weapon, in public, on a regular basis. I think that to do so carries far more negative possibilities than it does potential opportunities for protection.
If I were presented w/ a situation, such as the one at VT, I firmly believe that I would take some action. Most likely I would find a way to escape to a safe location. I’d like to think that I would include others in this endeavor, if necessary.
Maintaining composure and acting in a logical manner is much more likely to save you than constantly carrying a firearm. The illusion that having a weapon is going to give you an advantage is mostly wishful thinking.
My apologies if my information is redundant. I’ll avoid the rather obvious flamebait and stick to calm opinions and facts.
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The OP’s reason for buying a gun is, well, ill-advised. Guns aren’t useful in the VPI setting.
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Private gun ownership is best executed as a rational, planned experience. Ideally, study precedes training precedes purchase. As for carry issues, we’ll hit those in a bit.
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I can’t think of a single case where Concealed Carry extended to carry by private citizens on public/land grant US campuses. CCW laws are rather tricky about exactly where one can actually carry. Almost always off-limits are certain public events, bars, banks, government property(schools, parks, stadia, military bases, public mass transit,…). Additionally, private establishments can in many cases also “ban” carry on their premises, at least those by customers or clients. Cases are under review at the moment involving the carry rights versus the business rights to forbid carry at or on the worksite, including places like company parking lots/decks.
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The shooter at VPI was a permanent resident/foreign national (S. Korea): non-citizens cannot generally be issued carry permits, and I seriously doubt that the shooter could even legally own a firearm. Even so, carry/possession on campus at VPI is not legal, period. A bill enabling CC buy legal owners with CCW permits was in the works, but didn’t survive committee work in the Virginia legislature.
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The media know shit about weapons terminology, and even when they do, they cheerfully play loose with the terminology for dramatic effect. The 9mm Parabellum dates from the Luger trials circa 1900-1910, when the Luger people were trying to market the pistol in a ~7mm round. The military clients wanted a more potent round, hence the 9mm. Apparently, one of the pistols is a Glock Model 17, which is the standard service model chambered for police and military, and was the original glock in production. The G17 and its variants serve now, or have served as the issue side arms for many police departments, and in a number of military services. As a premium military and police round, it is dated. The .45ACP enjoys a resurgent interest, at least in certain special operations, police tactical and other settings. There is also the .40SW and .357Sig in the police markets, as well as the 5.7mm round used in the FN P90 and FN FiveSeven.
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The US media have rarely gotten the “semiauto versus auto” terms correct. Semiautomatic merely means that each squeeze of the trigger: fires a round, ejects the spent casing, cycles the action and reloads the weapon. Fully automatic weapons repeat the round-fire cycle until the trigger is released, or until the magazine is empty(whichever occurs first). What you see in modern weapons is “selective fire”, where you can pick a mode: safe, single-fire, fixed-multi-round burst(e.g., 3 rounds fired per squeeze) or fully-automatic. The media also likes to make “black”, or “military-style” weapons scarier, with liberal use of the term “assault weapon” whenever possible.
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In this most recent incident, none of the current laws could have helped, and while some argue that the police “let” the second wave of shootings occur by not acting earlier, we lack the facts to assess this.
Agreed, unless that advantage, as mentioned upthread, is situational awareness. Walking through the world in “Condition Orange” (that is with a loaded firearm on one’s person) changes a great deal about how you look at and interact with the world. There’s no more flipping the bird at somone in traffic, going to bars while carrying, frequenting odd parts of town at strange hours for whatever purpose, at all. Ever. It’s a life of avoidance of potential conflicts at all times.
You have to pay attention to everyone around you and always attempt to extract yourself from those threating situations before you get to the point of drawing a firearm. It’s a heavy burden and a rather taxing way to look at life for most people. However, situational awareness is in and of itself the key to not becoming involved in many potentially life threating situations.
As a college student, you’d be better off identifying exits and having an extraction plan than carrying a handgun in a situation like what happened at VT. Figuring out which window affords a quick and safe dissappearing act will ultimately serve you better. Make your way back to your room, bolt the door, and then, if you still feel the need, arm yourself. That’s real self defense and it’s only cost is situational awareness.
Get the gun Jack Bauer uses. It’s really tiny and just plain cool. I’m thinking of getting that one.
There are no foolproof precautions against dying in a car accident, either. I’m sure some of those people who were killed in car accidents were wearing seatbelts and did have airbags in their cars.
There are also other risks that we don’t have precautions against:
Your risk of dying in an asteroid impact each year is of order 1 in 1,000,000. I pretty much take that to mean- you’ll never reduce your risk of dying below that, so don’t sweat the stuff that’s less likely than that. And your chance of dying in a random shooting by a crazy person is much less than that.
I don’t really have an opinion on the gun thing. I have decided that I will never own a gun, because I have depression and anxiety (and might use the gun for something I wouldn’t have a chance to regret). I’m very glad my parents got rid of their gun when I was born- if they had had it when I was a teenager, I might very well not be here now. I’m against laws requiring everyone to own a gun for that reason. I think that people who want to have guns and don’t have a criminal record should be allowed to do so.
But I don’t like seeing people make major decisions based on fear as opposed to a rational consideration of what is a likely scenario. It’s kind of like seeing someone spend all their money on the lottery, because “I might win”.
This needed saying again.
Thanks for being the voice of reason. I’m anti-gun, but I respect those who appreciate guns. They are a fine piece of machinery, and a lot of people love to hunt. It scares the hell out of me that people think it’s going to make the USA a safer place by more people packing heat. How about carrying some pepper spray?