The Detroit News: Commentary: Guns don't belong on campus
Bill Maxwell, who, being an adjunct teaching English at St. Petersberg College, seems to have a severe dose of both magical thinking and hoplophobia that only the finest of lefty academics can acquire.
On two occasions during my career as a college professor, I feared for my safety when students confronted me about their final grades.Because of the gun violence on our campuses and in other public spaces today, I think more and more about those confrontations.
Think upon this Mr. Maxwell - could such shootings possibly occur and rack up so many victims due to the lack of law-abiding people being allowed to carry firearms to protect themselves in such places?
In the first instance in Chicago, a young male student said to me that I would not "get away" with the grade I had given him. Even though I was in my 20s, athletic and a former Marine, I never again relaxed on campus.
When you read the rest of his emotion laden editorial you wonder why he should have been in any fear. After all, Chicago bans handguns, obviously bans concealed carry of aforesaid banned handguns, and the unnamed college in Chicago no doubt had a solidly written anti-weapons and violence policy. Printed. On Paper.
The second confrontation occurred in Fort Lauderdale, when a female student brought her father to my office to argue her case for a higher grade. The father became so angry and threatening that I telephoned security to escort him and his daughter from my office.
I teach writing as an adjunct at St. Petersburg College. I vowed that if Florida passed the concealed firearms law, I would not teach on another Florida campus. I still hold that vow. I refuse to stand in front of a classroom if students have the legal right to carry firearms. And I refuse to expose my students to the potential danger of concealed firearms in their presence.
Um, Mr. Maxwell? Florida has had shall issue CCW since 1987 and you're still teaching as an adjunct, yes? How ever have you managed to get to and from campus safely all these years?
Now 35 states have campus concealed-carry laws. The University of Colorado is the latest to join this gun-toting madness.
Instead of being hostages to the bullying of lawmakers obsessed with guns and paralyzed by their fear of the National Rifle Association, our colleges should be beacons of moral clarity and learning. They need to follow the findings of scholars and the observations and conclusions of physicians who treat the victims of gun violence, who are trying to develop a science-based, workable approach to dealing with the carnage.
So far Mr. Maxwell, the scholars using a science-based approach rather than your emotion-laden, fact-bereft screed seem to have a point that allowing law-abiding citizens to carry concealed firearms either has no effect on the overall crime rate or a positive effect. Think upon that for a moment.
Experts and scholars at our universities should lead this cause and not run away from it out of fear of political reprisals. And they should convince lawmakers that guns do not belong at our institutions of higher learning.
Political reprisals for being anti-gun at a university? Ahem. As If. When, Mr. Maxwell did a professor in the dominant leftist ideological environment that is the US College campus ever suffer political reprisals for their anti-NRA and anti-Second Amendment opinions?
I'm sure Mr. Maxwell would feel far safer at Virginia Tech, The Appalachian School of Law, and Oikos University -- all institutions of higher learning with no lawful carrying on campus, and strong anti-weapons and anti-violence policies. Printed. On Paper.
3 comments:
1. I think this is one case where we could say that someone is truly a *former* Marine, because real Marines, even when they are not on active duty, are not fearful of angry students. He should have docked those students two full grades for threatening him, and then dared them to take it up with administration. That's what a real Marine would have done. This guy is a faux-Marine.
2. As someone who has sat in the crosshairs at one of those Universities in question for 23 years, in a department where all the people who are in trouble are brought, I would like to inform the good professor that he is full of pre-composted bovine excretion. His academic self-righteousness ensures that if such troubled individuals go over the edge, all I have to fend him off with is a #2 pencil or a stapler. Or a policy manual telling me I can't bring my lawfully acquired firearm which I have been licensed by the State to carry.
One thing this article does prove, however, is that you don't have to be smart to be a professor.
One more question: Can we officially put the phrase "kowtowing to the NRA" and all it's variants into the same category of arguments that immediately cause you to lose whatever debate you are engaged in? Like when you compare someone you disagree with to Nazi's?
Well I really hate to tell you Bill Maxwell, but you have a group starting up that are fighting for their rights to conceal carry at your college. John Aaron a student at Saint Petersburg College is in the process of opening a new chapter of Students for Concealed Carry.
I personally think that as a Marine your fear shouldn’t be in guns, it should be in the fear of who is behind the guns! Would you rather have law biding citizens who have the right to conceal any place in your community with guns on campus, or just a criminal who isn’t going to think twice about the policies of the campus to ban guns?
If you’re going to live in a bubble in only “gun-free-zones” you’re going to have a very tough life. What about traveling between your home and the college campus? There are guns all over the US and I would personally rather have them in the hands of a licensed individual than a criminal!
When Bill was confronted by the student and her father he was lucky that the father wasn’t carrying an illegal handgun, because if he was he might not have had the chance to defend himself with anything other than his belief that the policies of the college is going to protect him from a criminal.
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