Clayton
Cramer's BLOG
http://www.claytoncramer.com/weblog/2007_04_15_archive.html#3902022118662746020
April 16, 2007
Clayton Cramer
There are no perfect solutions. Yes, as I mentioned earlier today, Virginia Tech's ban on concealed license holders being armed on campus meant that there was no chance that any of the killer's victims could shoot back. What would happen if such a law had not been in place? Most of the students, being under 21, are not eligible for carry permits. But most of the grad students, most of the staff, and pretty much all of the faculty would be eligible.
I know more than a few faculty, either full-time or adjuncts at various colleges around the country who have carry permits. In those states where the laws allows it, some of them carry on campus. Many of the others would do so, at least when teaching night classes.
Would this have prevented this tragedy? It's hard to say. In most states, about 3-5% of the population eventually get a concealed carry permit. A few carry all the time; some carry frequently; a few carry very seldom. I would not say that there was a strong chance that repealing Virginia Tech's rule, and similar ones around the country, would make a big difference. But it would make a big difference to anyone who survived because one victim could fight back!
Texas state rep. Suzanna Gratia-Hupp became a vigorous advocate of concealed carry because she sat in a Luby's, watching a monster murder her father and mother. Suzanna had been carrying a handgun--illegally, because Texas law did not allow it--for some time. When she walked into that Luby's for lunch, she wasn't carrying--too afraid that she might get arrested. She was in a position to shoot and save lives that day--but the law discouraged her.
At Standard Gravure Printing Plant in Memphis, Tennessee, in a celebrated mass murder in 1989, one of the victims was also illegally carrying a handgun--because Tennessee did not yet make provision for her to obtain a permit. Because she was breaking the law, she delayed pulling her gun until it was too late--and another opportunity to stop a murder spree early on was lost.
At Pearl High School, in Mississippi, the assistant principal brought an end to Luke Woodham's murders by retrieving a pistol from his vehicle. Similarly, a student at Appalachian Law School stopped another mass murder by retrieving a gun from his car.
UPDATE: A reminder: if someone commits mass murder with a weapon other than a gun, the national news media usually ignore it. For example, Hector Escudero started a fire at a casino in Puerto Rico in December 1987 as part of labor union activism, and killed 96 people. Julio Gonzalez threw $1 worth of gasoline into an illegal night club in New York City in April 1990 to get back at his girlfriend, and killed 87 people. These stories received almost no national news coverage at the time--while mass murders that were substantially smaller received vastly more coverage. Why? Gonzalez and Escudero's crimes didn't advance the cause of gun control. You can read my paper that was published by the Journal of Mass Media Ethics here for an examination of the role that excessive media coverage played in causing at least one of the mass murders of that era.
Mass Murder at Virginia Tech
The news coverage is, as you might expect, rather confused. This
account indicates that there were two separate shootings on opposite
sides of campus, about two hours apart--and that while the gunman is dead,
the police are searching the campus:
Investigators also say the gunman is dead... But they don't know if he was a student.Huh? I can see why two separate incidents on opposite sides of campus might lead them to wonder about this.
...
The university has also asked students to stay inside as police sweep through and try to determine if this person was acting alone.
This news story indicates that the lockdown was lifted after the first shooting:
Aimee Kanode, a freshman from Martinsville, said the shooting happened on the 4th floor of West Ambler Johnston dormitory, one floor above her room. Kanode's resident assistant knocked on her door about 8 a.m. to notify students to stay put.
"They had us under lockdown," Kanode said. "They temporarily lifted the lockdown, the gunman shot again."
This statement from Virginia Tech's website indicates that carry permit holders aren't allowed to be armed on campus:
2.2 Prohibition of WeaponsWhat a lot of good that did. The killer obviously didn't care about this rule; the victims were guaranteed to be disarmed.
The university’s employees, students, and volunteers, or any visitor or other third party attending a sporting, entertainment, or educational event, or visiting an academic or administrative office building or residence hall, are further prohibited from carrying, maintaining, or storing a firearm or weapon on any university facility, even if the owner has a valid permit, when it is not required by the individual’s job, or in accordance with the relevant University Student Life Policies.
Any such individual who is reported or discovered to possess a firearm or weapon on university property will be asked to remove it immediately. Failure to comply may result in a student judicial referral and/or arrest, or an employee disciplinary action and/or arrest.
UPDATE: Why would the police end the lockdown if they had not arrested the shooter from the first incident? Were there two shooters, which the continuing search would suggest? If this incident involved two bombs set off two hours apart to get first responders, I would assume al-Qaeda.
UPDATE 2: Hmmm. Two bomb threats against engineering buildings last week (where one of the massacres too place today). This is looking less and less like a conventional lone gunman.
UPDATE 3: This just gets weirder and weirder. This news report says:
University president Steger said that police have not officially tied together the two shootings.What are the chances that two people go on shooting rampages the same day on the same campus? If these aren't tied together, I would be very surprised.
UPDATE 4: This blogger at Virginia Tech discusses the distance between the two shootings, and reports what are probably just rumors now:
Apparently the gunman was looking for his girlfriend, couldn't find her in the dorm and 2 hours later went to Norris Hall to look for her. She wasn't there so he started killing students execution-style.This is why I try to be armed anywhere that I legally can be armed. This is exactly the situation where one armed student, faculty, or staff could have cut this short.