The Empty Holster Protest: What America Didn't See Is What's Newsworthy

Peter Hamm, spokesman for the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, contended in a Fox News report that self-defense advocates have no business on college campuses. Quite an education our kids are getting.

By John Longenecker

The entire anti-violence movement should know by now that disarming citizens cannot prevent violence. The anti-violence movement is a boondoggle.

October 26th was the week for the Empty Handgun Holster Protest, where college students wore their holsters to college campus to demonstrate several highlights about armed self-defense as the optimal answer to school shootings.

The Empty Holster protest showed: i) the person you see wearing the holster is another student, law-abiding, and not an aggressor; ii) students probably around often enough in large enough numbers on campus to stop a shooter; iii) that person is trained and has satisfied state requirements, and; iv) that person has a civil right to be armed wherever he/she goes, and no one else really has anything to say about it, least of all angry organizations seeking to dismantle a civil right.

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In an invective response, Hamm is reported by FOX News to have said, "You don't like the fact that you can't have a gun on your college campus? Drop out of school."

Hamm showcases the very ugly face of the entire anti-violence movement which, along with campuses, is itself becoming menacing: i) its activists defy the law, get anti-law laws passed which they got backed with unjust force, and ii) they force our kids to sue to get a ruling, only to defy the win the kids obtained from the court!!

BULLIES do this in an abuse of the law; it discredits their message and reduces them to gutter belligerents. It is time to understand that they are not anti-violence when they hold the coats of the violent by disarming the targeted communities.

The anti-violence movement has developed what prosecutors call A Pattern: initial belligerent defiance of the law, (state law in many cases) even when it's affirmed and handed down just for them (as in the Washington D.C. and New Orleans rulings); in ignoring case history (what Al Gore calls controlling authority), forcing plaintiffs to sue to get a ruling (Virginia Tech Panel and elsewhere), only to defy it. This smug abuse is bad for the country.

Now this is important for the non-gun owner households to know: This is the kind of abuse the Founders anticipated when they wrote 2A, not to meet greivance with violence, but to meet Crime and thus prevent politicians from using continuing crime as an excuse for policies they want to introduce.

The Pattern is to obfuscate citizen authority to act when facing grave danger; violence grows for lack of self-defense; officials point to violent crime and escalate anti-self-defense policies: result is increased dependencyon officials who cannot protect constituents.

Simple. Some call this Progressive. The fact of the matter is that if students could carry weapons, the campus would be safer from shooters, and this would spoil the political picnic of presiding over never-ending crisis.

Yes, friends, this is quite an education our kids are getting.

There is a third very ugly thing we dislike intensely in this, and it is what makes the issue completely non-partisan. After all, Liberty and citizen authority are non-partisan. That ugliness emanating from campus administrations is the un-American practice of punishing the student for opposing ideas. Retaliation. Silencing people by official Intimidation.

It is what you didn't see in the Empty Holster Protest that is newsworthy: students who have asked administrations to consider concealed carry of weapons by adult students with CCW permits are reported in weeks prior to the protest to be punished by way of suspension, by psychological counseling, or by expulsion. Reports show that students were warned in writing not even to bring it up - warned with an 'or-else' tone - and when one student or another became brave enough to ask why, or if they elected to exercise their student rights (not to mention civil rights), they were ordered suspended and ordered into counseling. Or worse.

'Worse' is this: students fear administrative action more than they do the murderers who may come onto campus. Though many did not fear administrative action following this protest, enough did. We know how many CCW students there are,a and it seems they sat this one out. Fearing officials more than fearing thugs is a bad sign for this country. Gun bans demonstrate that constituents fear their officials more than they fear murderers.

Who's the aggressor here?

Gun Control policy against crime fails because it obfuscates citizen authority to act in self-defense. Gun Control for politics succeeds in breeding unarmed dependency on agencies.

A White Paper presents the issue clearly and objectively for the inquiring student or 2008 Candidate, policy writer, physician or academician who wants to look at the solution intentionally not put on the table.

John Longenecker is President and CEO of Good For The Country Foundation, a patriotic non-profit organization.