Thirty-three people dead on the campus of Virginia Tech, all shot by a single man. How could this happen? Easy. The "law-abidng" folks obeyed the gun-control laws, and the criminal broke them. 33 people are dead because they--and those around them--abdicated their responsibility to provide for their own security.
Virginia is an "open carry" state--you can walk around in public with a pistol strapped to your hip, ostensibly without being harassed by law enforcement. But Virginia state law, like most others, expressly forbids going armed on school property. In addition, Virginia Tech--again, like most other universities--has its own firearms prohibitions. According to Section 2.10 of Virginia Tech's Student Code of Conduct:
Unauthorized possession, storage (in vehicles on campus as well as in the residence halls), or control of firearms and weapons on university property is prohibited.... Firearms are defined as any gun, rifle, pistol, or handgun designed to fire bullets, BBs, pellets, or shots (including paint balls).... Other weapons are defined as any instrument...carried for the purpose of inflicting or threatening bodily injury.... Students who store weapons in residence hall rooms, who brandish weapons, or who use a weapon in a reckless manner may face disciplinary action that may include suspension or dismissal from the university.
What this means is that Virginia Tech, and the State of Virginia, created--on paper--a "gun-free zone" on the school campus, but did nothing to ensure that the zone was really gun-free; they simply relied on the well-known tendency of criminals to obey the law. Their inexcusable stupidity--and, thus, their culpability for these 33 murders--is clearly revealed by just one nut job with a pistol.
It's certainly good to know that the murderer, assuming he was a student, "may face disciplinary action that may include suspension or dismissal from the university." Posthumous expulsion is a powerful deterrent, isn't it? Either way, though, the fact remains that any student who had been prepared to effectively prevent the 33 murders--by carrying a gun themselves--would have faced the same disciplinary action.
The stark reality of the situation? If we obey the letter of the law, then only criminals can carry guns.
Virginia Tech and the State of Virginia should be held accountable for creating an atmoshpere that makes every law-abiding person on campus a sitting duck for any homicidal criminal that comes along.
The rest of us need to learn the lesson of Virginia Tech, and stop pretending that gun-control laws somehow make guns disappear. Given the obvious fact that these laws create environments that are dangerous for the law-abiding but safe for the criminal (ever wonder why "school" and "shooting" seem to go together?), the law-abiding citizen has a moral obligation to ignore those policies. Anyone who heard the shots should have been able to help. Someone in there should have been able to return fire and save some lives.
The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. The Second Amendment is there for a reason, and the Founders included it in the text so we wouldn't have to guess: security. Effective individual, group, local, state, and national security requires the use of firearms, by individuals...period. If you don't want to carry a gun, then don't. But, like it or not, you still reserve the right to do so...and so do I. Don't try to make me shirk my responsibility as did the folks at VA Tech.