VA's Campus Gun Laws Punish Adults

Students carry many necessities with them to class each day, toting backpacks filled with everything from textbooks to virtual over-the-counter drug stores stocked with every pain reliever and stay-awake medication known to man. Most students look for ways to reduce the number of items they must carry across campus, but a determined group of college students in Virginia are making national headlines not for what they carry in their backpacks but for what they want to carry under the concealment of clothing: handguns.

The debate over a student’s legal right to carry concealed handguns on college campuses did not begin with the tragic Virginia Tech shooting spree in April, but that event more than any other has provided the impetus students needed to push this issue to the forefront of public awareness. While officials at various levels and parents of Virginia Tech students immediately engaged in the blame game over actions that might have minimized the death toll from Seung-hui Cho’s rampage, students at George Mason University organized Students for Concealed Carry on Campus and have worked to overturn the Virginia law that allows colleges to dictate whether students, faculty, or staff members with valid concealed-carry permits from carrying their firearms on campus.

Emotional levels skyrocket when conversations turn to guns on school campuses, and the debate over this issue in Virginia has been quite spirited. The initial reaction by schools nationwide has been to oppose any measures permitting concealed weapons on campuses, and Virginia’s colleges have, with the backing of Governor Timothy Kaine (D), reaffirmed their desire to retain authority to ban handguns from Virginia campuses. As this debate will likely escalate and venture into Supreme Court case territory, an analysis of the arguments on both sides should prove useful.

State and university administration arguments against allowing concealed handguns on campuses revolve around one central concern: safety. These concerns encompass a host of already dangerous and irresponsible behaviors by college students that administrators foresee as becoming even more potentially lethal with the introduction of concealed handguns to the mix: parties, alcohol, drugs, DUI, student fights or altercations, domestic disputes, grudges over grading issues, accidental discharges, and others.

From a law enforcement perspective, these are all valid concerns, but there is a significant flaw in the logic behind the safety concern, and that is the fact that at most universities and colleges, the majority of students live in off-campus housing, where by state law they are permitted to carry their concealed handguns to all of these types of activities. Very few students actually engage in the type of behaviors listed above while on campus because most campuses have behavioral restrictions and students seek to avoid running afoul of them. Thus, enforcing campus bans on handguns does nothing to prevent students from involving themselves in potentially dangerous behaviors while enrolled as students but performing them off campus.

I found the official position of The International Association of Campus Law Enforcement Administrators, which represents campus public-safety officials, very questionable from a 2nd Amendment viewpoint. The association claimed that:

…the presence of students carrying concealed weapons "has the potential to dramatically increase violence on our college and university campuses."

Allowing concealed weapons brings the potential for accidental gun discharge or misuse of firearms at parties, including those where alcohol or drugs are used, and the possibility for guns to be used to settle students' disputes, the group said.

That argument deserves careful scrutiny. In most states, campus police are POST certified police officers with full police powers in a limited jurisdictional area, within a university’s geographical boundaries. They naturally like to know who within their jurisdiction is known to possess weapons. Yet when those officers go home, off campus, and go out to dinner or to the store, they do not know who else in these establishments might be legally carrying a concealed weapon. If these campus police officers feel that the very presence of students carrying concealed weapons “has the potential to dramatically increase violence on our college and university campuses,” what is the basis of that conclusion or belief?

Do those same officers feel that the presence of concealed weapons among private citizens off campus dramatically increases violence among the general population? If a 21 year-old Virginia man who is not a college student obtains required training and a concealed-carry permit and carries his concealed handgun to the local mall, does this association feel that he “dramatically increases” the potential for violence in that mall? If so, the association may be the only law enforcement organization I am aware of that is uniformly opposed to the 2nd Amendment right to bear arms.

All of the risks that guns on campus would present as cited above by this association would be present in any population that permits concealed weapons, but what the association cannot or will not explain is why it believes college students who must be 21 years-old to obtain such a permit are considered potentially dangerous, while the 21 year-old non-college student can carry his gun onto any college campus simply because he is considered a citizen and not a student. That is the crux of the Virginia law. It does not provide equal treatment between students who meet all the criteria for a concealed weapons permit and those who meet the same criteria but are non-students. In essence, Virginia students are singled out for restrictions on handguns simply because they are enrolled in school, which should be considered a sign of their desire to be responsible rather than a label that marks them as too immature or potentially dangerous to safely carry their concealed handguns.

I understand the position of the International Association of Campus Law Enforcement Administrators. Law enforcement always, from a tactical perspective, wants to know who is carrying weapons in their jurisdiction, because that knowledge could prevent a tragic accidental shooting due to mistaken identity and is considered essential to officer safety. Yet it is not the law-abiding, permit holding, concealed carry-trained citizen or student that is likely to present a threat to police officers. Crime statistics do not support any argument that legally owned firearms increase crime. On the contrary, most crimes are committed using unlicensed and illegally acquired handguns, because using “anonymous” weapons reduces the risk of being caught later.

In the case of the Virginia Tech shootings, it is quite possible that students carrying concealed weapons might have killed Seung-hui Cho and reduced the number of his eventual victims. It is also possible that SWAT teams responding to the scene might have shot those students brandishing firearms. The key issue here, though, is not what might have happened in that one incident. The issue is much larger. The central point of this debate over campus firearms is the legal reasoning involved in allowing non-students to carry concealed weapons on campus, which Virginia state law currently permits, while denying students who hold the same concealed weapons permit from carrying their firearms on those same campuses.

Emotional appeals against permitting legal handguns on campuses seem to be the political weapons of choice for educators and Virginia Democrats. Dismissing the legal arguments raised by Students for Concealed Carry on Campus, Virginia Tech spokesman Larry Hincker clouded the issue with appeals to sentiment rather than logic:

We don't believe that guns have any place in the classroom," Mr. Hincker said. "We've experienced far more of guns in the classroom than any university should have to endure."

What Hincker refuses to address is that guns in the classroom was not what caused the Virginia Tech tragedy. The tragedy was that Seung-hui-Cho’s were the only guns present on that terrible April morning. Twenty-one year old students can vote; they can drive; they can drink legally; they can own handguns and qualify for concealed carry permits. They are, under the laws of all states, adults. Virginia’s legislators have only two legal options available to resolve this debate over the right to carry handguns on college campuses: Either the law needs to be changed to forbid anyone but campus police to possess firearms on campuses, or the law needs to be changed to give adult students the same right to carry firearms on campuses that non-students currently enjoy. Educators and Democratic legislators find both options unpalatable, as one would certainly be challenged constitutionally, and the other would increase the number of guns present on campuses. There is nothing more fearsome to these groups than lawsuits and an armed populace.

As these entities and campus law enforcement administrators have demonstrated through their statements, they do not trust 21 year-old college students to be responsible with their legal right to carry handguns on or off campus, but they do trust 21 year-olds who chose not to attend college to be responsible while carrying their firearms on campus. The disparity is stunning, but is overshadowed by emotional pleas from Virginia Tech administrators, who insist that guns, and not a mentally ill individual, were responsible for the tragedy on that campus. As a result, they hold hostage the right of adult students at all Virginia universities and colleges to be treated the same as non-student adults when it comes to firearms.


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Seung-hui Cho, Virginia Tech, School Shootings, Concealed Carry, Virginia, Students for Concealed Carry on Campus, International Association of Campus Law Enforcement Administrators, 2nd Amendment, Gun Control

O'Reilly Dead Wrong on Cho Manifesto

It gives me no pleasure to take issue with the nation’s #1 cable news personality, but when Bill O’Reilly is wrong, he can be spectacularly wrong. In defending the media’s (including the O’Reilly Factor’s) airing of Virginia Tech killer Cho Seung-hui’s videotaped “manifesto,” O’Reilly demonstrated an intellectual shallowness that was inconsistent with his usually erudite opinions.

O’Reilly would have done better to state the truth behind his decision to air portions of the “manifesto” provided by NBC: he was glad the killer sent the video to NBC rather than Fox, and relieved that NBC decided to air it, thus giving all other networks guilt-free reign to circulate the footage. I am sure the thought that viewers would be fascinated by the depraved ranting and disturbing images, thus leading to even higher ratings for his #1 rated program, never crossed O’Reilly’s mind!

It is difficult to describe O’Reilly’s Twister game-worthy contortions of logic while explaining why he chose to air the “manifesto” footage, so I will allow the following excerpt from his Talking Points to illustrate:

Many Americans believe the media was irresponsible, broadcasting the sick words of the Virginia Tech killer. They say that's what he wanted, that it might lead others to imitate him, that it brings even more pain to the families of the victims.

Now I respect and do not disagree with any of those points. But I ran the tape last night and I'd do it again. Here's why:

Evil must be exposed and Cho was evil. You can see it in his face, hear it in his voice. All of us who saw the tape will never forget it. And it made me and millions of others angry. Once evil is acknowledged, steps can be taken to contain it. And once anger is in the air, policy can change.

No matter how many laws we pass, you're never going to stop evil killers, they'll find a way. But public policy must make it more difficult for evil people. It's a lot harder for terrorists to kill Americans today than it was before 9/11. And that's because new laws and better security have been imposed. . . .

O’Reilly continued by demanding that two steps be taken due to the Cho case. The first, which will turn into a heated national debate over medical record privacy, was that anyone who has ever been deemed by a court as a “danger to himself or others” could never own a gun.

The second demand for action was even more controversial:

Second, any institution or work place that accepts a person for employment or education must have access to FBI records. Virginia Tech didn't tell Cho's roommates that he was considered dangerous, even though the university knew. Can you believe that?! What if you were the parents of his roommates?

Now I predict the Commonwealth of Virginia will have to pay a massive amount in damages, because it didn't protect the students from Cho. So if a videotape of this monster can spur Americans to demand Congress pass new laws to protect the folks, then the videotape accomplishes a positive thing.

His second demand was an apples-oranges comparison. Cho had no criminal history in the United States, thus checking FBI records would have yielded no information for the school or any employer. Additionally, having the ability to query criminal history databases (I don’t think O’Reilly actually meant “access”) maintained by the FBI, known as the National Crime Information Center (NCIC), has been available to employers for many years. Many thriving database companies, such as Integrascan or Intelius, offer criminal background checks for a fee, a portion of which is filtered back to the state agencies that maintain those criminal history records. Arrests and court dispositions are public record, and like property records, can be obtained directly from states for a fee. For example, for $23 any citizen can obtain a Florida criminal history. Thus, O’Reilly’s indignant huff that all employers must have the ability to check these records demonstrated that his staff did not research the issue even superficially.

The flawed logic of O’Reilly’s argument here deepens, however, when one considers that medical records, unlike arrest and court records, are NOT public record, and thus cannot be purchased for a nominal fee by citizens. That, most would agree, is a good thing. Would you want your neighbor, or a stalker, or your business competitor to have the ability to pay a database company $30 to gain access to your medical history? Millions of Americans suffer varying degrees of diagnosed mental illness, and a high percentage of these can function in society, marry, raise children, and hold responsible employment with the help of medication. Imagine how that would change if all employers could purchase access to applicant medical records. The discrimination against applicants diagnosed even with treatable and common forms of mental illness, such as manic depression, would be immeasurable. What employer would ever take a chance by hiring an applicant after paying a fee and discovering that psychiatric treatment was listed in the applicant’s medical records?

The information about Cho known by Virginia Tech officials was not public record. It related to his psychological condition and school counseling referral, which under law are governed differently than criminal background information. Both are confidential, and it is unlawful to distribute such information without a subpoena or other form of legal order. Had school officials informed Cho’s roommates that he had been referred to counseling and was dangerous, they would have been violating Cho’s right to privacy in counseling. What student needing counseling would ever seek it if he or she knew that the school might disclose information obtained in confidential counseling to roommates? The integrity of counseling as a profession would be lost forever. This would not exclude administrators and counselors from notifying law enforcement of their concerns, but law enforcement cannot take action on what a person thinks about but hasn’t declared intent to do (sorry, Minority Report fans, there is no PreCrime yet).

The argument that evil must be exposed is questionable at best, but exposing evil can be accomplished without giving evil prime time fame. Evil exposed, more often than not, leads to further, more widespread evil. As I write this post, there have been 12 threats to schools nationwide today, including threats of carnage greater than Virginia Tech in Yuba City, CA, for example. Copycat killers have quite a standard to live up to now that they have seen and heard Cho’s demeanor, ideas, and ultimate success. Thanks to the video, others sharing Cho’s alienation and rage now know what violent cult film Cho mimicked during his slaughter preparations. Expect downloads and purchases of that film to receive a big boost.

O’Reilly wrote that viewing Cho’s video made him angry, and that he hoped it would make all viewers angry at evil. O’Reilly mistakenly believed that this anger would lead to action to eradicate evil. Unfortunately, the anger stirred up by the video has thus far not been directed at the killer or his evil but has instead targeted law enforcement, Virginia Tech administrators, and other innocent people who were deeply impacted by the event but receive no sympathy. Anger leads to blame, not solutions. When experiencing anger, it is conventional wisdom to take a few deep breaths, and calm down before speaking, writing, or taking action.

O’Reilly should have followed that advice and let his anger recede before deciding to air the killer’s video, which did in fact give Cho exactly what he wanted, to live in infamy. O’Reilly made a business decision knowing that NBC would take the brunt of the criticism as the recipient of the video and that the O’Reilly Factor could not be left as the only cable news program NOT broadcasting the warped ranting of a sick man. Fox’s claim to be “Fair and Balanced” seemed disingenuous, as “balance” would have been achieved by not airing the “manifesto” and delineating the reasons why.

NBC cited giving viewers a glimpse into the mind of a killer as the compelling reason for airing Cho’s video, and sadly, O’Reilly parroted that logic under the guise of exposing evil. The truth is another matter. The “manifesto” could have been analyzed by the FBI’s criminal psychologists and profilers, and we would have learned what, if anything could have been done to prevent another such tragedy from occurring. As Spook86 at In From the Cold reminded on Tuesday (“Guns and Schools”), the Secret Service established the National Threat Assessment Center, which specializes in studying school shootings. A review of Cho’s video and a summary of his stated motives by one of these agencies would have sufficed to answer the question of why Cho did what he did, and appropriate steps to minimize the possibility of another such tragedy could have been recommended.

There was no need to hear Cho’s voice, or watch him arming himself, or mimicking scenes from a horribly bloody movie he was obsessed with while he blamed everyone but himself for what he was about to do. That video was sensationalist journalism at its worst, and NBC proved an all too willing co conspirator. The other networks, once the line had been crossed, acted as greedy accomplices, desperate for any portion of the media ratings windfall they could capture from the tragedy.

Cho’s craving for attention was exceeded only by the media’s craving for ratings. O’Reilly proved, at least in this instance, to desire ratings and shock value more than taking the moral high ground out of respect for the victims’ families. He could have scheduled all of them for the interviews they cancelled with NBC had he not wallowed in the mud with the Natural Born Cruelty network. Instead, he intentionally added to the pain of those families and attempted to purge his guilt by insisting that he was serving the greater good. O’Reilly should have selected his own defense of airing the video as his trademark Ridiculous Item of the Day.

Virginia Tech Blame Game

Who is to blame for the shooting massacre of 32 Virginia Tech students yesterday? At last count, the following had been blamed for the tragedy:

President Bush and Vice President Cheney - Although both were hard at work in D.C. battling Congress over funding Operation Iraqi Freedom when the shootings occurred, they were nonetheless blamed for using the incident for political points, and for not supporting nationwide gun control laws.

Charles Steger, President of Virginia Tech – Blamed for not “locking down” an entire sprawling university campus the size of a small city after the initial 2 murders were committed in a VaTech dormitory on one side of campus. Blamed for not cancelling all classes after the dormitory shooting, despite his being advised by law enforcement that it appeared to be a domestic incident between the shooter and an ex-girlfriend. VaTech parents are calling for him to be fired.

Commonwealth of Virginia’s Gun Control Laws – Blamed for being too liberal, making it easier for citizens to keep and bear arms.

Commonwealth of Virginia’s Gun Control Laws – Blamed for being too restrictive, making VaTech a gun free zone where students and faculty could not protect themselves.

VaTech PD, Blacksburg PD, Montgomery County Sheriffs – Blamed for sealing off a small perimeter around the dormitory where the initial 2 killings took place, but not ordering a campus-wide lockdown because they believed the first incident to be a domestic incident.

VaTech PD, Blacksburg PD, Montgomery County Sheriffs – Blamed for not immediately rushing, with guns blazing, into the classroom building where gunfire could be heard on the opposite side of campus from where the domestic shooting occurred earlier that morning.

VaTech PD, Blacksburg PD, Montgomery County Sheriffs – Blamed for not capturing the shooter alive so that he could explain his motives and help society prevent similar tragedies in the future.

Notice that someone is conspicuously absent from the blame list: the shooter. Much like the urge to blame America for terrorism in the wake of 9/11, broadcasters yesterday could not resist the urge to spend most of their air time speculating about how society needs to be kinder to outcasts (like the allegedly picked on Columbine killers) to prevent such massacres.

A Washington Post article addressed the issue of why, after the initial dormitory shootings, warnings were not issued:

Although the gunman in the dorm was at large, no warning was issued to the tens of thousands of students and staff at Virginia Tech until 9:26 a.m., more than two hours later.

"We concluded it was domestic in nature," Flinchum [VaTech PD Chief] said. "We had reason to believe the shooter had left campus and may have left the state." He declined to elaborate. But several law enforcement sources said investigators thought the shooter might have intended to kill a girl and her boyfriend Monday in what one of them described as a "lover's dispute." It was unclear whether the girl killed at the dorm was the intended target, they said.

The sources said police initially focused on the female student's boyfriend, a student at nearby Radford University, as a suspect. Police questioned the boyfriend, later termed "a person of interest," and were questioning him when they learned of the subsequent shootings at Norris Hall. A family friend of the boyfriend's said the boyfriend was stopped by police alongside Route 460 in Blacksburg, handcuffed and interrogated on the side of the road and later released.

However, VaTech students, affected by the emotional incident, were outraged over what they perceived as a failure by the university to warn them of a pending disaster no one knew was going to occur. Students interviewed by CNN expressed their initial observations:

Police said they were still investigating the shooting at the dorm when they got word of gunfire at the classroom building.

Some students bitterly questioned why the gunman was able to strike a second time.

"What happened today this was ridiculous," student Jason Piatt told CNN. "While they send out that e-mail, 20 more people got killed."

Students and Laura Wedin, a student programs manager at Virginia Tech, said the first notification they got of the shootings came in an e-mail at 9:26 a.m., more than two hours after the first shooting.

The e-mail had few details. It said: "A shooting incident occurred at West Amber Johnston earlier this morning. Police are on the scene and are investigating." The message warned students to be cautious and contact police about anything suspicious.

Student Maurice Hiller said he went to a 9 a.m. class two buildings away from the engineering building, and no warnings were coming over the outdoor public address system on campus at the time.

Everett Good, junior, said of the lack of warning: "I'm trying to figure that out. Someone's head is definitely going to roll over that."

"We were kept in the dark a lot about exactly what was going on," said Andrew Capers Thompson, a 22-year-old graduate student from Walhalla, S.C.

Clearly law enforcement and university officials had investigative leads pointing to an off campus suspect, and given the nature of domestic disputes, the decision not to lock down an entire university based on what they knew was appropriate. There was no investigative information that could have predicted that the dormitory shooter possessed multiple firearms, was a VaTech student, and had laid plans to massacre students on the opposite side of campus, carrying chains to lock students in, intending to execute them with no apparent emotion. Such behavior would have been incompatible with a domestic incident, which usually diffuses once action has been taken against the girlfriend/spouse.

The campus lockdown that occurred at VaTech on the first day of classes last fall was ordered because intelligence then indicated the escaped felon was at large on campus and had shot a sheriff’s deputy. That was not the case yesterday, as the initial domestic shooting at the dormitory pointed to an off-campus suspect. Comparisons of the handling of these two very different situations are not productive and lead to unfair conclusions about the decisions made yesterday.

The university administration and police department deserve the prayers and support of the community rather than finger pointing. When they responded to the first 911 call about the classroom shootings, they rushed to the scene, secured as many students as possible and then risked their lives entering the building to confront the gunman. After witnessing the shooter commit suicide, the responding officers swept the area, still without knowledge of the motive for the attack or whether there were multiple suspects. They rescued the barricaded students, provided first responder medical assessments and care, carried the wounded to safety, and witnessed a horrible scene of carnage while feeling helpless. There is no feeling more disturbing to someone who has worked in law enforcement than the helplessness when you cannot protect someone from harm. Yet for these brave officers there appears to be only insult added to injury with each criticism.

The Virginia Tech webmaster, tasked with updating the university’s web site throughout the ordeal and with a police scanner at his desk, shared the following assessment of emergency response with friends on the blog Wired:

This was a multiple-agency response and there is little interoperability -- but the police still got the job done. Virginia Tech Police Department was and is lead agency in the whole event, with Blacksburg PD right there with them. The Montgomery County Sheriff's Department is also involved and the Virginia State Police. Give all the various dispatchers credit for a great job, as they were the linchpins that kept all the communications straight between all the agencies. There was a massive response from all the local rescue squads, let by the student-run Virginia Tech Rescue Squad. A triage area was set up adjacent to Norris Hall and ambulances shuttled in and out of the area to transport victims to Montgomery Regional Hospital, the Carillion New River Valley Medical Center, and to hospitals in the Roanoke Valley. Carillion's helicopters and the State Police helicopters were unable to be used for transport due to the high winds we are experiencing.

The campus (and surrounding public schools) were locked down, since no one really knew what the situation was, how many shooters there might be, and where any more might be. The incident ended after 11 a.m. and people on that side of campus were released to go home. Other parts of the campus were released at 12:30. SWAT teams from various police agencies in the region are doing a sweep of campus and the crime scenes are being processed.

Without imposing martial law and a complete police state, college campuses cannot be protected from a shooting rampage like this one. Steps can be taken to reduce the possibility, but prevention is not possible. Gun control has never kept guns out of the hands of criminals. The university reportedly did not have a campus-wide surveillance camera system, and perhaps the Commonwealth of Virginia will include funding to install one in the next university budget. However, the absence of cameras cannot be blamed on the university president, and the initial decision not to lock down the campus was made in good faith based on available information.

To blame is human, to sympathize divine.