4/16/14 –  7 Years After Virginia Tech

by @Gun_Carry

It’s been 7 years today, since Seung-Hui Cho decided to murder 32 people on the Virginia Tech campus. Absolutely nothing has been done to reduce the amount of target rich victims-in-waiting zones available to such criminals and madmen.

While I fully believe that a private business or home owner has every right to bar weapons from the premises, I do not understand why we continue to allow government institutions to do so. First and foremost the supreme law document of the land says that our right to bear arms shall not be infringed. This is a primary federal law, yet I can’t carry my federally protected sidearm into a post office? Isn’t that a little inconsistent? Federal law upholds this right only to limit it on federal property? I am willing to hear the argument for secure locations but I don’t think my rural post office is holding Top Secret files. Further, even if it was a secure location a criminal that plans an illegal act isn’t going to suddenly stop what he or she is doing because it’s illegal to bring a weapon. We all know criminals are just made that much more comfortable knowing they have peace through superior firepower.

The second and more disturbing situation is the restriction of firearms from certain state institutions. Public institutions of higher learning, such as Virginia Tech, The University of Virginia and nearly every community college know to man, ban firearms from campus. State employees are most often banned from carrying a weapon to work even though in their place of work it is perfectly legal for citizens to carry. I find it insane that a person can go through the training and extra scrutiny to receive a special license to carry a concealed firearm only to have that firearm banned from institutions or job sites involved with the very same government that issued the license to carry!

While others fight to limit our rights we have institutions such as the NRA and VCDL that push back. What I don’t see is a strong effort to eliminate gun free zones where we can. We can start with state governments and fighting to remove the hypocrisy discussed above. I’ve heard of legislation in congress to allow carry in post offices, lets contact our reps and push for that change as well. Also, we should push for tort reform. The major reason for no weapon signs on malls and retain stores is to avoid legal action if a criminal hurts someone on the premises. The store wants to be able to say “we did what we could, we posted a sign”. If victims couldn’t sue anyone other than the criminal for damages the store wouldn’t need the signs and we could all rest a little easier. Of course, these days the criminal is likely to sue the store as well because the police shot him while he was there. Tort reform would help us. This in no way means we should stop voting with dollars though; keep the pressure on. Until those signs come down I will continue to long for Buffalo Wild Wings and never be sated.

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