American Dinosaur

Virginia, like 39 other states, allows citizens with training and
legal permits to carry concealed weapons. That means that Virginians
regularly sit in movie theaters and eat in restaurants among armed
citizens. They walk, joke, and rub shoulders everyday with people who
responsibly carry firearms - and are far safer than they would be in
San Francisco, Oakland, Detroit, Chicago, New York City, or
Washington, D.C., where such permits are difficult or impossible to
obtain.

The statistics are clear. Communities that recognize and grant Second
Amendment rights to responsible adults have a significantly lower
incidence of violent crime than those that do not. More to the point,
incarcerated criminals tell criminologists that they consider local
gun laws when they decide what sort of crime they will commit, and
where they will do so.

Still, there are a lot of people who are just offended by the notion
that people can carry guns around. They view everybody, or at least
many of us, as potential murderers prevented only by the lack of a
convenient weapon. Virginia Tech administrators overrode Virginia
state law and threatened to expel or fire anybody who brings a weapon
onto campus.

In recent years, however, armed Americans - not on-duty police
officers - have successfully prevented a number of attempted mass
murders. Evidence from Israel, where many teachers have weapons and
have stopped serious terror attacks, has been documented. Supporting,
though contrary, evidence from Great Britain, where strict gun
controls have led to violent crime rates far higher than ours, is also
common knowledge.

So Virginians asked their legislators to change the university's
"concealed carry" policy to exempt people 21 years of age or older who
have passed background checks and taken training classes. The
university, however, lobbied against that bill, and a top
administrator subsequently praised the legislature for blocking the
measure.

The logic behind this attitude baffles me, but I suspect it has to do
with a basic difference in worldviews. Some people think that power
should exist only at the top, and everybody else should rely on "the
authorities" for protection.

Despite such attitudes, average Americans have always made up the
front line against crime. Through programs like Neighborhood Watch and
Amber Alert, we are stopping and catching criminals daily. Normal
people tackled "shoe bomber" Richard Reid as he was trying to blow up
an airliner. It was a truck driver who found the D.C. snipers.
Statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show
that civilians use firearms to prevent at least a half million crimes
annually.

When people capable of performing acts of heroism are discouraged or
denied the opportunity, our society is all the poorer. And from the
selfless examples of the passengers on Flight 93 on 9/11 to Virginia
Tech professor Liviu Librescu, a Holocaust survivor who sacrificed
himself to save his students earlier this week, we know what
extraordinary acts of heroism ordinary citizens are capable of.

Many other universities have been swayed by an anti-gun, anti-self
defense ideology. I respect their right to hold those views, but I
challenge their decision to deny Americans the right to protect
themselves on their campuses - and then proudly advertise that fact to
any and all.