College students conduct role-playing exercise to demonstrate need for concealed carry on campus

The Washington Post is reporting that a group of pro-concealed carry students at James Madison University attempted to educate their peers recently with a bit of roll-playing.

From the story:

Kyle Smith agreed to play the bad guy.

In a scenario eerily designed to imitate the Virginia Tech massacre, when a lone gunman shot and killed 32 people in the nine minutes it took for campus police to respond, Smith burst into a classroom here Saturday, his right index finger pointed as if it were a gun drawn, and immediately "shot" the teacher between the eyes.

...As the four students in the room screamed, hit the floor and crouched under desks, he methodically fired five more shots with his finger and "killed" them all. In 23 seconds, it was over.

"You're all dead," Shawn Deehan, a gun rights advocate from GunRightsWeek.org, told the jeans-clad James Madison University students crumpled on the floor and waiting for his cue that the reenactment was over. "A great rate of response from law enforcement is six minutes. Six minutes. If you don't care if you live or die, that's a suitable response. But if you're concerned about living another day, another minute, then that's too long."

Then the students reenacted the scenario the way they and other gun rights advocates would prefer: with the teacher and two students carrying concealed weapons.

For the second scenario, bad guy Smith again barged into the classroom and again whacked the teacher between the eyes. But this time, Kelly Clouston and Leah Sargent, students at James Madison, bounced up out of their seats, assumed a wide-legged stance and pointed their "gun" fingers at Smith, not forgetting to pull their hands back slightly to imitate a pistol's recoil after they fired. Smith fell to the floor four seconds after he'd entered.

The demonstration, in a classroom at the Top Gun Shooting Range in Harrisonburg, was just one of a number of Virginia Tech classroom shooting scenarios that gun rights advocates had been staging all week at JMU, using Nerf guns, plastic toy rifles and fingers. Organizers said more than 100 students and community members came to hear lectures about gun rights, watch the two Virginia Tech scenarios and spend a sunny day shooting actual pistols at the firing range.

"We want people to understand that guns can be safe and guns can be fun," Katie Cannon is quoted as saying. The College Republicans' event coordinator helped organize the gun rights week.

[Leah] Sargent, a senior music education major, donned thick plastic glasses and screwed bright orange earplugs into her ears. "The line is hot!" organizers called out. "Fire away!" She picked up a Glock 19 9mm and stared down its sights. Pa CHA. The gun discharged. Bull's-eye.

"This is really fun. I loved it," Sargent said after her target shooting session. "I'm really proud of this." She unfurled her target, with a cluster of holes directly in the center of the bull's-eye. "She's a natural," one of the instructors said admiringly. She tucked her long blond hair behind one ear and smiled.

Legislation that would restore student's Second Amendment rights on college campuses is pending in Indiana, Louisiana, North Dakota, and Texas. An bill in Oklahoma died recently after failing to be given a committee hearing or vote prior to deadline.