Virginia Tech and gun laws

Other teachers and I have been talking a lot about the ramifications of the Virginia Tech shootings for schools. One teacher was convinced that it was a sign of the end days. Others are concerned about what it says about the culture. There is still much more to be said about the psychological dynamics that are involved with why someone feels driven to kill in a situation like this. We talked a lot, today, about students and people feeling powerless and turning to guns to have power over a life that feels out of their control and about feeling pushed too far, I think, particularly during a time when there is no point that is "too far" when it comes to pressuring and pushing and forcing the hand of others.

The debate I was waiting for was, of course, the gun debate.

This A.P. article frames this debate on terms positive to gun control advocates very well.

U.S. gun laws draw heat after massacre

But Ravenwood cites the Virginia Tech gun policy which pretty explicitly makes illegal the possession of the firearm in this situation.

"2.2 Prohibition of Weapons The university's employees, students, and volunteers, or any visitor or other third party attending a sporting, entertainment, or educational event, or visiting an academic or administrative office building or residence hall, are further prohibited from carrying, maintaining, or storing a firearm or weapon on any university facility, even if the owner has a valid permit, when it is not required by the individual's job, or in accordance with the relevant University Student Life Policies. Any individual who is reported or discovered to possess a firearm or weapon on university property will be asked to remove it immediately. Failure to comply may result in a student judicial referral and/or arrest, an employee disciplinary action and/or arrest, or arrest for trespass and/or violation of the appropriate state criminal statute."

As Ravenwood points out, this is a stricter policy than Virginia state law since it indicates that such firearms are prohibited even if they are in accordance with local and state laws and the gun owner has a valid permit.

Which really goes to the heart of my pretty straightforward critique of both gun and drug laws which is that they, as a rule, don't work. They create an obstacle to a one of many legal paths to owning a firearm and leave open any number of illegal paths to both gun and drug access. Worse, they create a taboo and cultures of folks obsessed with owning and using both, largely because of the prohibition and they're generally immature relationship to such prohibitions.

This killer violated those state, local, and university laws and policies, nevertheless the moral law against murder. That does not daunt those who say that with a new law, we could have prevented it.

There is no law that gun control advocates would consider strict enough after one of these such incidents. And the fact that the gun ownership and the murders, themselves, were illegal never deters those who look for any excuse to legally wish away a problem.

I don't even trust peoples' good intentions on such questions, anymore, because I so rarely find people who will engage in an intellectually honest discussion of whether their means are effective or not. They generally advocate regardless of the consequences. Most people engage in policy discussion without much attention to consequences, I'm learning. It almost makes such discussions fruitless, frankly.

Why do we have any freedoms at all, I wonder, when people will clearly use whatever freedom we afford them to do bad things to one another. Better to remove all that temptation and the freedom that offers it.

That's what more repressive regimes reason, at least. And given the direction of democracies, these days, maybe they have a point.

Maybe we've been going about this whole freedom thing all wrong. Perhaps, given the direction of our international discussions, generally, on such questions, at this point, we have conflict with Iran and North Korea because we envy just how pliant and submissive they have made their society. Perhaps we have come to end of the line when it comes to the expansion of freedom because we just cannot afford, anymore, to believe in our liberal values and virtues. They don't leave us as safe as more repressive regimes like Cuba and Syria. We just can't find the courage to admit that we think they're direction should be our direction.

Because we are too weak to admit just how effective repression really is to solving a cultures problems.

What we need is more of it. And soon, someday, our problems will float away with our rules and impositions.

Someone should pass a law. Come to think of it, I'm sure someone's on it.

Love,
Ben