Letter to a President

I have two children in College today. Until campus carry goes into effect in Texas I rely on the campus authorities to protect my children whenever they are at school. Given my preference, I would like someone with a gun to be in a position to protect my children if they should ever have their lives threatened while on campus. Ideally my children would have the option of defending themselves. For now that is against the law in Texas, and we are expected to leave the protection of our children in the hands of school administrations. To hear of a school that has taken on this responsibility, and then intentionally disarmed their own security personnel has introduced me to a new array of emotions. I wish we'd never met.

There is a common acknowledgement that some (most) schools do not allow guns on campus. It is an acknowledgement based on a false understanding of reality. The choice is not to allow or disallow the carrying of firearms on campus. The choice is only whether everyone will be allowed to carry firearms on campus, or only criminals. Criminals are currently allowed to carry on every campus in America. Non criminals are disallowed from carrying by the great majority of schools. Most left wing politicians, and most school administrations are comfortable with this status-quo. With that choice comes an obligation to protect the non-criminals that have been stripped of the means to defend themselves. That obligation can not be fulfilled by security guards armed with nothing more than the wishful thinking and good intentions of school administrators.

For those on the left, our personal security falls into the domain of the state, or some institutional authority. The fact that an appropriate agent is seldom actually present when needed is of little relevance to those that insist we must leave our protection in the hands of others. Yesterday's episode of violence in Oregon reveals the existence of a level of defense avoidance that I would have scoffed at yesterday morning. That there was apparently some discussion and debate within the last year regarding the arming of campus security, and that the debate resulted in a decision to disarm, is simply beyond my ability to process. Consider the idea that there were enough decision makers on campus for whom the stigma of a firearm in the possession of a security guard was of greater concern than the lives of the students on campus.

In the news reports today there is the story of Chris Mintz, the Army veteran that was shot seven times attempting to protect others from the Oregon shooter. There is also a story of other verterans who's teachers denied their requests to leave their classrooms to attempt to help. So my uncouth question for the day is why aren't we hearing about an unarmed security guard that was shot seven times? Why aren't we hearing stories about the school administrators that had to be restrained from charging to the sound of the gun? The shelter (cower) in place mentality