Guns don’t kill people. People ‘off their meds’ kill people.

It is a relevant today as it was last year.

http://pajamasmedia.com/2007/04/sanity_squad_what_went_wrong_a.php

Second thought: Although guns can make violent people more violent, they cannot make non-violent people more violent. Firing a weapon at tin cans and paper targets does not addict one to violence. Context and character are everything.

There simply is no satisfactory conclusion to this debate. We all know the issues inside and out and nobody’s really budging. The best we can do is mourn our losses and keep trying. Has life ever been any different?

We can’t? Yes, we can. Absolutely yes.

Liberty assumes the capacity to make rational decisions. Absent the capacity for rational thought, one has no claim to liberty and no moral responsibility.

A shark cannot be free, it simply swims, eats and makes baby sharks.

Leaving that aside, one’s right to be insane ends when they might become a danger to me. People who wish to be insane have no such right because they will inevitably impose costs on me in the forms of increased taxes to support and treat them, as welll as creating physical danger.

Someone armed could have stopped some of the killing, but not all (there are the moments of shock when this kind of thing happens - it’s human nature to freeze).

I’m waiting for a shooter to walk into one of these situations and a student who is carrying without permission, defends the class. It will be interesting to see the fall out from something like that.

In the meantime, I wonder if Vo-Tech schools are getting more kids enrolling. It would seem to be a far safer environment!

In our Sanity Squad podcast of April 18, 2007 we discuss the issues involved with the earlier shootings. Then, perhaps even more relevant to your comment, is this Sanity Squad podcast about involuntary commitment.

There’s a bit more than that involved in liberty. Liberty must also assume, absent due cause and process, a parity of rationality within the citizenry. We can’t just snatch someone up and see if they’re rational enough to suit us.

I’m not sure there is a right to be insane, and I’m pretty certain no one wishes to be insane. That’s nearly a contradiction of terms. But if you’re going to limit liberty on the basis of who might become a danger to you, you’re going to have to give up on the idea of liberty. For my part, I’ll side with Benjamin Franklin.

Were I to reconcile the real and the ideal, I’d need to admit that respect for civil liberties count for less than turkey snot when the therapist is in a courtroom with rapacious D.A.s demanding to know why this lunatic was allowed to run free. But as you and I both at least suspect, the courtroom has long been more governed by sophistry than rationality.

Also http://volokh.com/ and http://www.instapundit.com/

all of which are legal scholars on 2A issues.

Our desire for freedom and our quest for safety are always in an ever-shifting and somewhat uneasy equilibrium. We want both, and we need both. But people will continue to differ and argue about where to draw the line.

And we see which side you come down. The mass shootings of students in classrooms around the country on a fairly regular basis is of modest concern when compared to the fundamental “right” to own guns.

Does it bother anyone here at all that mass shootings are becoming a fairly regular occurrence? If terrorists could walk onto buses, blow themselves up and kill a six to ten people or so on a regular basis (say 2-3 times a year) can you imagine what commentators here would be saying we should do about that? And yet young men and women are killed on a regular basis by legally acquired handguns, and for that we shrug our shoulders and leap to a knee-jerk defense of the almighty Second Amendment?

I’m waiting for a shooter to walk into one of these situations and a student who is carrying without permission, defends the class. It will be interesting to see the fall out from something like that.

Interesting indeed. I’m sure many parents will be pleased to know that the only way their sons and daughters can possibly be safe in a campus setting is if they carry their own weapons. I can’t wait until the day my son grows up and I can send him off to school with his books, supplies…and a sidearm.

Are all the criminals have “insane” behaviors with their characters?

I wonder? Or this the common and formal claims quite often put forward about criminal to give them legal immunity of full punishment and sentence?

I wound if those US solders in Iraq have any insane” before so that they did torturing killing and raping Iraqis.

Godless people disseminating information for ratings value ruin a lot more lives than any nutcase with a handgun ever thought about.

And someone please tell me why the media still chooses to print the names of these attention seeking whackos.

“A well-educated electorate, being necessary to the self-governance of a free state, the right of the people to keep and
read books shall not be infringed.”

The primary grammatical and philosophical question about the Second Amendment remains the relationship between the first phrase and the second. What connection, if any, does the right of ‘the People to keep and bear arms’ have to ‘a well regulated militia’ and the ’security of a fee State’? To what degree do we attempt to understand the original intent of the Founding Fathers and the practical, legal and military situation at the time of its writing versus the bare language of the amendment itself? Unfortunately, Second Amendment absolutists have a tendency to ignore the first clause completely. Anyone suggesting, for example, that those who would ‘keep and bear arms’ should be ‘well regulated’ is accused of ‘infringing’ on that right.

Why shouldn’t we insist upon, at the very least, a degree of control similar to the one we expect from our Departments of Motor Vehicles regarding the licensing of drivers and registration of vehicles? We accept that a driver needs to be of a certain age and pass tests that demonstrate their proficiency behind the wheel and understanding of the laws pertaining to operating a motor vehicle before they can get a license, which must be kept current, that allow them to operate certain classes of motor vehicles. Drivers of different classes of vehicles need different licensing to assure that they have the knowledge and capability to operate them. Those vehicles must in turn be registered and maintained and are subject to periodic inspection. The types of vehicles allowed on our roads are also not unlimited. Where one can drive their vehicle is also subject to certain limitations. I’ve never heard anyone making the case that these regulations are an undue infringement on our right to own and drive cars.

Would you put people through that kind of regulation to cast a ballot in an election?

After all, in America, more can be changed with a vote than a bullet.

If you don’t trust Americans with guns, why do you trust them to vote, that is the crux of the matter.

Besides, Chris, your specious argument has been covered and recovered:

I ask, sir, what is the militia? It is the whole people, except for a few public officials.”
— George Mason, in Debates in Virginia Convention on
Ratification of the Constitution, Elliot, Vol. 3, June 16, 1788

What’s wrong with that?

That’s how I went to college. That’s how my son is going to go to college.

Grow up. You and the rest of the flaky lefties, just grow up: You are responsible for your own safety. Why is that so difficult to understand?

This is a dumb argument, anyhow. What are you going to do about the guns? Come get them?

Chris says: I was speaking of general principles. I don’t know if the shooter was obviously insane or on anti-psychotics. But, we do have every right to ensure that psychotic people take their medicine, for their own sake as well as ours.

> DuMaurier-Smith Says: “There’s a bit more than that involved in liberty.”

Chris says: I was naming a necessary, not sufficient, condition.

If I said that making a cake requires eggs, that doesn’t mean that only eggs are necessary.

> DuMaurier-Smith Says: “Liberty must also assume, absent due cause and process, a parity of rationality within the citizenry. We can’t just snatch someone up and see if they’re rational enough to suit us.”

Chris says: I would respond to that if I knew what it meant.

> DuMaurier-Smith Says: “’m not sure there is a right to be insane, and I’m pretty certain no one wishes to be insane.”

Chris says: Nonsense. There are 6+ billion people in the world. Some of them want to be crazy. Or, at the very least, they would rather be crazy than take certain medicines.

> DuMaurier-Smith Says: “But if you’re going to limit liberty on the basis of who might become a danger to you, you’re going to have to give up on the idea of liberty.”

Chris says: Again, nonsense. We already do it all the time. That is, we institutionalize people who are an imminent danger to themselves or others. Always have; I hope that we always will.

> DuMaurier-Smith Says: “For my part, I’ll side with Benjamin Franklin.”

Chris says: A great bumper sticker. Not very sound policy. We all sacrifice certain freedoms for security. Indeed, we cannot help but make such tradeoffs. The only question is: What tradeoffs do we make?

and Conservatives have shown themselves to be an imminent danger to themselves, the Iraqi people and the planet and must be locked up.

OR, you’ll like this one:

Anyone so crazy as to believe in Allah over Jesus is a danger to themselves and and the Homeland and must be locked up for their, and our, own good.

OR, you’ll totally dig this one:

Any woman going to an abortuary is a danger to her unborn child, as well as herself from the inhuman procedure, and must be locked up for the good of the child until she delivers.

So, what’s to prevent those from happening?

Which means: A policy requiring background checks to include psychiatric history might have prevented this guy from acquiring his firearms legally. Nobody can say whether the extra difficulty of buying an illegal gun (assuming it is more difficult) would have deterred him.

> DuMaurier-Smith Says: “But if you’re going to limit liberty on the basis of who might become a danger to you, you’re going to have to give up on the idea of liberty.”

>Chris says: Again, nonsense. We already do it all the time. That is, we institutionalize people who are an imminent danger to themselves or others. Always have; I hope that we always will.

Don’t change the terms Chris. You wrote “Leaving that aside, one’s right to be insane ends when they might become a danger to me.”

“Might become a danger” is light years away from being “an imminent danger.” And I leave aside the idea that a right to be insane makes any kind of sense.

What’s wrong with that?

That’s how I went to college. That’s how my son is going to go to college.

Grow up. You and the rest of the flaky lefties, just grow up: You are responsible for your own safety. Why is that so difficult to understand?

This is a dumb argument, anyhow. What are you going to do about the guns? Come get them?

“What’s wrong with that?”…sir, you answer your own question.

I’m glad that being worried about the safety of my children makes me a “flaky” lefty. That ought to put about 80% of America’s parents on my side of the aisle.

And how exactly are we all “responsible” for our own safety, when we all pay taxes for police and the military to protect us? Would you prefer we disband the military and police, hand the guns out to everybody and tell them they’re on their own?

Really, I don’t see why anybody has to buy a gun just to have a chance at defending themselves from a psycho mass murderer. That you think that’s an unreasonable proposition says a lot about the twisted discourse revolving around guns in this country.

And no, I don’t want your stupid guns. There appear to plenty in the world for the taking.

You seem to have much more attitude than information, much too much to be talking about knee-jerk reactions. You should do some research on the subject. For starters, class room shootings are quite rare, in spite of the media craze for such lurid events. Your son will be far more likely (perhaps 10,000 times more likely) to be killed in traffic than in a class room. That is why, though I and others think allowing licensed adult carry of firearms in schools is generally good policy, I wouldn’t argue for it; it doesn’t seem to me very necessary. Both of us might change our minds if one of our family were in a gun-free zone while some murderer safely moved about choosing and executing people at will.

I have plenty of both, thank you. Yes, class room shootings are “rare”, except when you happen to believe that such horrific killings shouldn’t happen at all. And yes, I’m quite aware that the odds of getting killed in traffic are greater than the odds of being killed in a mass shooting, die in a airplane crash, drown at sea…and be killed by a terrorist. And yet the very thought that we could be killed by terrorists prompts some on the right to propose that we invade other countries and actively kill other people (and our own people in the process) simply to prevent this possibility. But kids get killed in class, and we get stats on how much more likely it is to die in traffic. Count me among the non-comforted.

As for your scenario…well, there’s little doubt that were one of my family members trapped in that scenario, I’d wish very much for them to be armed. But I’d wish much more that the psycho shooting at them had never gotten that gun in the first place, since that removes all possibility of my loved one being killed by a nut.

No, of course you don’t.

Sorry there chief. Not changing terms. There are two questions: 1) Current policy on such involuntary commitments; 2) What policy on involuntary treatment should be.

I’ve commented on both of them.

1) What we do now: Lock people up who pose an imminent danger to themselves or others.

2) What we should do: Require sick people who might reasonably become a danger to take their medicine.

I am simply advocating a somewhat less strict standard than currently used, a standard that would allow us to protect society from the likes of the VT killer and perhaps the more recent case–although the relevant history there isn’t known.

You might leave aside the idea that there is a right to be insane but I assure you that many people do not. They think that it is a dandy idea.

> Gray Says: So, what’s to prevent those from
> happening?

The fact that society makes reasonable distinctions based on evidence. For example, self-defense laws typically require the threatened person to feel in imminent danger of death or serious bodily injury to use deadly force. (And be unable to retreat in most cases.) Deciding whether self-defense is justified is a judgement call and police, prosecutors and juries make it all the time.

We use judgement based on the facts.

Clearly liberals think conservatives are a danger and conservatives think liberals are a danger and they both agree that adolescent libertarians are a danger. (No offense intended.)

But making sick people get better isn’t the first step to a police state. It is the common sense that we lost about 40 years ago.

Now go clean the sand out of your shorts. It is making you irritable.

Worrying about your ideological purity instead of valuing the protection and safety of actual human lives, is what makes you a flaky leftist.

It is all about priorities. You have your priorities reversed.

And I leave aside the idea that a right to be insane makes any kind of sense.

That describes the entire triangle of National Socialism, Democratic Socialism, and Communism to a T. They have a right to be insane, so long as they don’t actually implement any of their programs. Of course in reality, they still have a right to insanity and to spreading insanity around just because.

And how exactly are we all “responsible” for our own safety, when we all pay taxes for police and the military to protect us?

The police ain’t around to protect you. There’s something called the Bill of Rights that prevents police from executing criminals and preventing crime, you know. The military is around to protect people from foreign enemies, not criminals. Which is kind of obvious given how many criminals have offed Marines and Army soldiers without a peep of retaliation from the military.

Really, I don’t see why anybody has to buy a gun just to have a chance at defending themselves from a psycho mass murderer.

You don’t need a gun. You need a spine for that.

But I’d wish much more that the psycho shooting at them had never gotten that gun in the first place, since that removes all possibility of my loved one being killed by a nut.

No, it doesn’t. You think just because you remove a gun from a person, he can’t kill you? Stop deceiving yourself. There is no 100% guarantee that you or anyone else will be safe. “Removes all possibility”, you just go on and keep thinking that. It’ll make it easier on the rest of us when you get targeted.

The problem we have with socialist utopia believers is that we don’t think wishing somehow that we can change the past so that we make sure they “had never gotten that gun in the first place” is something useful to protecting actual human lives. Wishing is not going to save anybody. Doing something, that will have a higher chance of saving somebody. And since we value human life more than we value ideological or political theories, X, we don’t really care what you say about your 100% guarantees. You ain’t going to 100% guarantee our life back if we lose it because of your flawed product.

That’s your problem. We think the only one we can trust with the protection of our life, in the end, is us. You think you can entrust somebody to “guarantee” your life. I don’t think so. Not even parents can guarantee that their children won’t be kidnapped and killed. I sure as heck ain’t accepting your guarantee for my life or the life of my loved ones. Same goes for the police and government.

Here’s a link for folks interested in getting a little something more effective than alarms and guarantees from the police and govmint.

Link

You won’t be interested in this, X, because frankly you were given the right to life but nobody said you had to take it.

You may even be on the verge of thinking that us having guns and the knowledge to use violence is a threat to you. When you get to that point, X, let us know.

Because the Faughey murder illustrates that where there’s a will, there’s a way; guns are quite unnecessary.

Quite obvious to folks that have studied how to kill with bare hands, Neo. Target Focus Training is just one of many training programs to help people do that. Although most of them are for the military and the Special Forces. They just don’t let the civilians have the good stuff. The real deal. Most self-defense programs are worried about getting sued, you know.

Check this google video out for some actual samples of the training

I don’t see you crying a river over people being killed by legally acquired cars and political slogans, X.

It is kind of obvious you really don’t give a damn about who gets killed, so long as someone promises that your life won’t be in danger. I am pretty sure we can take care of your problems without limiting anyone else’s right to their own life.

Why shouldn’t we insist upon, at the very least, a degree of control similar to the one we expect from our Departments of Motor Vehicles regarding the licensing of drivers and registration of vehicles?-Chris White

Guns are already licensed. They are called carry licenses or concealed carry licenses. Why are you making arguments based upon stuff that is totally irrelevant to what you really want to do?

The only real reason for you to do so is because you want more. Pro-gun restriction folks want more than the status quo, because they see that people can still choose amongst firearms that have been proven capable of equalizing the playing field between criminal and citizen. By ensuring that citizens have a harder time qualifying for self-protection, inevitably citizens will be forced to go along with your United Nations, International agreement and new world order plan, Chris White.

I, on the other, don’t believe people should be forced into making decisions and backing government policy because they have been intimidated into it with force by either the government or their supporters.

I’ve never heard anyone making the case that these regulations are an undue infringement on our right to own and drive cars.

That’s because you don’t care about whether anyone’s car actually gets confiscated or not. And of course, you haven’t been listening to Californian Mexican illegal alien driver license proponents, either. But none of that really matters, since you believe the government should have the right to decide for everyone how they should live their lives. That the US cannot just decide for themselves, amongst nations, how to defend themselves. That there must be communion and debate with everybody else. That I have to meet the government’s standards and thoughts for what I should or can do.

As a basic philosophy, it is not my cup of opc, ChrisW. And I suspect it will always be a fundamental dichotomy, like small states vs large states.

I’m betting on anti-psychotics, but why do we even have to bet?

Does anyone know what meds Cho was on?

Sergey Says:
February 16th, 2008 at 4:33 am
Even if concealed gun permits were easy to obtain, only small minority would use it, say, 5%.

You’re exactly right. I bought a handgun for home defense a few years ago, took a beginner’s firearms course, and applied for and received a concealed carry permit. Yet so far I have never carried in public, even though I can legally do so.

Bzzzzt. Not even close to what the question was about. We were talking about involuntary committment, not self defense.

Do you think you can defend yourself through involuntarily committing the people who want to hurt you?

How could you conflate self defense and involuntary committment!?

That’s just weird….

Molon labe.

I particularly appreciate the line of reasoning - seemingly supportive of the unrestricted (unregulated) right of the People to bear arms – that says these issues are now beyond question based on the fact that “constitutional law scholars are mostly agreed that the 2A protects an individual right.” It does leaves me a bit curious as to why similar arguments regarding, say, the way climate scientists are mostly agreed about anthropogenic climate change get such short shrift around here. And then there remains that grammatical/legalistic conundrum of equating “the People” a collective noun I believe, with “the individual.”

One wonders how British subjects survive the horrors of strict gun control laws and (perhaps worse) socialized medicine, not to mention public education through the University level. How do they stand it? After we’re finished in Iraq we should consider freeing the Brits from such tyranny. When we’re done we can liberate some other nations suffering this dire fate, like Sweden and Norway. I’m sure they’ll be happier when their murder rate (a sign of freedom) begins to rival ours.

And as an aside, Neo, as a therapist do you think that Ymasakar comments indicate a degree of paranoia and fantasy projection that might indicate he is in need of therapeutic assistance or intervention? It is both fascinating and a bit frightening to discover that in his mind I am an advocate for some kind of totalitarian new world order under the yoke of the U.N. because I am not a Second Amendment absolutist. I try not to assume that any given specific comment reveals an entire philosophical, political world-view. I figure there are a nearly as many individual world-views as there are individuals, not that there are a limited handful of all encompassing belief systems from which we must choose.

Again, the only thing that matters is what you want to force on people, ChrisW. What people think about the Supreme Court or you, doesn’t really matter to you. So why should it matter to us that you are complaining about them?

It is both fascinating and a bit frightening to discover that in his mind I am an advocate for some kind of totalitarian new world order under the yoke of the U.N. because I am not a Second Amendment absolutist.

Whether you like or don’t like the Second Amendment has nothing to do with it. If supporting it could help you out, you would do it. If not supporting it helps you out, you would do that too. I am under no illusion of having accused you of obtaining principles concerning America and the US Constitution, ChrisW.

Instead of addressing the factual and reasonable arguments put forth by folks, you choose to take it to another level and frame everything in terms of how it is wrong because you are the righteous and dignified party. You aren’t righteous, Chris, and there’s nothing in the US Constitution that will ever change what you are, either way.

I figure there are a nearly as many individual world-views as there are individuals, not that there are a limited handful of all encompassing belief systems from which we must choose.

You’ve been commenting here for awhile. It is pointless to act as if your beliefs aren’t transparent here.

You want to know what you really think about those “diverse” and global world-views you are talking about?

Why don’t we just suspend the Supreme Court, or at least remove certain questions regarding particular clauses and amendments, like the SA, from their consideration, since all their work has been definitively completed?-ChrisW

How do they stand it? After we’re finished in Iraq we should consider freeing the Brits from such tyranny.-ChrisW

For someone that thinks there are a multitude of views, you sure act like you know them all. Or maybe you only know your own views and extrapolate them to be everyone else’s.

Perhaps I can help you still more. Try to avoid these loose associative linkages that involve you in trying to argue Bill of Rights issues as parallel to problems of climate. You won’t believe this either, but there are those on the list who might take that as a deficiency in rational thought and want to lock you up for their safety.

I do, however, find your parsing of Bill of Rights terms fascinating in its implications. That the term “people” can only be a collective noun is a novel idea. Few would be brave enough to ignore all the historical evidence that the Bill of Rights was to protect individual rights. Consider: ” The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated . . . .” Think of what your discovery means! No individual right! All those cases dismissed because of illegal searches must be tried again! And since “people” is a collective noun, only those searches which were collective would be legal. Amazing. Of course, we might run into difficulty trying to define that collective–how many searches at a time must there be to be a collective: a town? a state? a nation? Never mind. It’ll put an end to criminals getting off on technicalities. Freedom of speech rights will be still more interesting. As freedom of speech can be protected only in instances of something like “choral speech.” Here again, problems of defining how many people define a collective arise, but I’m sure you’ll figure that out with the same cool logic and reason you’ve demonstrated in your posts. Still, it does nag at me a bit. Must they all be saying the same thing to be this collective organism “the people?” If they were saying different things, even while all talking together, wouldn’t protecting all them then be protecting individuals? Ah well, as I say. I’m sure you have it all worked out.

Finally, England ISN”T doing all that well. Haven’t you been following the exponential crime rate increase since the last draconian round of anti-gun laws? Australia’s experience has been the same.

But again, do try to stay focused; Brit medicine and education are different issues. As you’ve asked neo for an arm-chair diagnosis of Ymasakar, perhaps you can ask as well what it means when one’s logical train of thought keeps being broken up by irrelevant affective linkages.

Spoken like a true sheep. Gutless wonder. Back in your playpen, baby. Let the grownups handle this.

I’d say if the 2nd ammend words aren’t specific enough, then the actions of those who wrote the words might be a good place to fall back on.

It is always perplexing to consider where the optimal balance points ought to be between individual liberties and collective benefits such as security, especially in those areas explicitly discussed in the Constitution and the various Amendments. In light of the recent campus shootings it is being discussed here and elsewhere in terms of the Second Amendment. We also see it playing out in terms of warrant-less surveillance at the moment. There are individual rights absolutists who believe such warrant-less surveillance is never permissible and those whose concern for our collective security is such that they are strongly in favor of aggressive surveillance of all sorts without the impediments of warrants and judicial oversight. It would not be a surprise to find someone posting here who is a passionate Second Amendment rights advocate, who believes every individual’s right to bear arms should be total, yet who also believes that the threats we face from various enemies trumps the right of individuals ” to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures … ” Holding these two views simultaneously might be considered contradictory, but if comments I’ve read here are anything to go on, not beyond being plausible.

Whether the NIU or Virginia Tech shooters should (or could) have been denied access to the weapons they used, or whether a dozen students carrying concealed side arms might have cut them down before they could harm any innocent victims, are merely theoretical jumping off points for advancing the discussion. Points of balance shift with the times, public opinion, new legislation and the make-up of the Supreme Court; so count me among those who believe simultaneously in the right of individuals to bear arms, but who do not see that right as all encompassing and absolute.

Could it perhaps be that, 1] consensus has nothing at all to do with science, 2] that whatever consensus there is is actually against AGW science, because, 3] the ipcc Climate Scientists are not proceeding scientifically to begin with?

Chris, go check out how the ipcc does its “science” for yourself. But if you are not aware enough as to how science is actually done to make this evaluation, why even bother to wonder why those of us who are are acquainted with how science is done see and say that the ipcc is not doing it? Iow, this question simply might not be up your alley.

But apart from the horrendous flaws found in the ipcc’s practice of its “science” itself once you start to look at it, here’s one more-general scientific/rational argument, which nearly anyone can understand, which suggests that the controlling ipcc members, process, and their “conclusions” are deeply suspect from a scientific/rational point of view:

Why did the ipcc intentionally design its Kyoto Protocols so that they couldn’t possibly work - simply by excluding Countries containing 5 billion of the Earth’s 6.5 billion people from having to follow them?

Why allow Countries such as India and China to go hell-bent-for-leather towards producing as much coal-fired CO2 as possible, if the ipcc does in fact believe its own “science”, including, of course the necessary “disaster” from Global Warming?

One might even wonder if the ipcc isn’t essentially encouraging the very conditions it says it wants to prevent according to its own “science”.

But how is any of that “scientific”?

Those of us who believe in the 2A as an individual right have endured much of that same atmosphere for several decades. Blood will run in the streets if licenced carry is legal. It didn’t; quite the contrary, crime rates may have decreased. Blood will run on the campus if guns are allowed where all the drinking and carousing goes on. It didn’t; there are now several campuses where state courts have ruled that universities must follow state law regarding the carry of concealed weapons. Last I heard, there have now been all together sixty semesters of campus carry without a single incident.

No one I’ve known–and I’ve known some wild ones–believed that the 2A is absolute. Even the crazies get nervous about their neighbor with fissionable materials in the basement. But I think all do believe that to limit the 2A right requires the same rational demonstration of harm as any other civil right–and certainly not because someone has a dream of a gun free world or a phobia of guns.