Virginia Tech Graduate Research Assistant Speaks Out
Date: Apr 30, 2007 6:45 AM
http://www.kansas.com/205/story/56957.html

Opinion

Posted on Sun, Apr. 29, 2007

PRO: ARMED CITIZEN MIGHT HAVE STOPPED SPREE

BY BRADFORD WILES
I cannot help but think that things could have been different at Virginia Tech. As a Tech student and a concealed-handgun permit holder, I have requested that the university allow me, and those who wish to be responsible for their own safety, the ability to carry a legally licensed firearm as a means of self-defense without fear of expulsion or termination from employment.

The associate vice president for university relations, Larry Hincker, responded to my plea, writing that “guns don’t belong in classrooms. They never will. Virginia Tech has a very sound policy preventing same.”

It is striking how this policy forces us — as students, faculty and staff — to believe that an individual who is bent on causing irreparable harm will not do so because it is against university policy.

This is what gun prohibitions do. They provide areas where only those who have total disregard for the laws or policies in place are armed.

If any one of the students or faculty in Norris Hall had been able to defend him- or herself with a gun, things could have been different. Who knows how many of the victims’ lives could have been saved. But wouldn’t just one have been enough?

A murderer does not care if having a gun is against the law. The killer at Virginia Tech broke university policy and state law by carrying his guns concealed on campus. Did the policy do anything to prevent those guns from being used in a classroom?

Can’t we all see how ridiculous that is? This policy asks Virginia Tech students, faculty and staff to choose between their education and their lives. Is that a choice we should be forced to make?

Opponents complain that there will be blood in the classrooms if students are armed. There were no students or faculty armed for their own defense, and yet the fact remains that there was blood in the classrooms. Had people been able to defend themselves, there could have been much less.

Bradford Wiles is a graduate research assistant at Virginia Tech.