A Delaware School Shooting Now: How Can Universities Teach When They Will Not Learn Basics?

Now it’s happened in Delaware. Another school shooting.

What is missing from campus defenses and policy?

Police want to do a good job, but they are a purely reactive force. They cannot swing into action until someone acts up and until they either observe it or have a request for aid. Even for the new Hi-Tech Emergency Alerts reaching all students — officers cannot be everywhere to observe for themselves and still carry out other duties. Shooters who see armed police can simply wait them out ... proving the concept that armed persons discourage killers. Meanwhile — and journalists should look into this — police have no duty to protect individuals. In the debate heads of household might eventually have on planning household safety and safety away from home, households need to understand that protecting people is not the job of the police. It never was. It is your job. Police further understand that the intended target is the first line of defense.

Nothing a university can utter philosophically can change these two important facts.

In fact, there’s a lot officials may not know about the subject, something universities need to learn.

Hm. What are administrators and educators missing here? Could it be that citizens already have the authority they have granted police? How can this personal authority be applied to the problem of school shootings? In fact, how can it be ignored, legally?

It cannot, legally. Police derive their authority from the People, and that includes adult students. At no time in delegating this authority did we constituents give up any of our own. School administrators, too, derive their authority from you and me; not just our ancestors who chartered them, but from us today, and they will derive their authority from our children tomorrow, the People. All officials do. The People can simply re-direct officials to ban the gun bans on the fact that school killers are rather discouraged when they’re uncertain as to who is armed and who might stop them before they can complete their killing. At the Appalachian Law School, two armed students held a shooter for police. After he’d shot the Dean to death. Other cases of armed citizen intervention are on record --- 2.5 million of them each year, by the way. 2.5 million times a year, armed citizens de-escalate a violent act from completion. 

I’ll say it again: gun freedom is the legal, lethal force which backs citizen authority in this country, and, as a parameter of liberty, gun freedom reflects the overall health of our nation by meeting bluff and scam of blaming crime; Answer Crime by meeting it, and you discredit a lot of political scams in this country. 

A most compelling warning to all is when citizens fear the official abuses and penalties for carrying a gun more than they fear the violence of criminals - the very reason for carrying. Quite a truth. For instance, when students fear being expelled more than being shot, or beaten or raped, you see an important clue. To students who know they are risking a campus rape, compared to an expulsion for stopping one, it may feel like they are simply evaluating the odds, but the truth is that they fear felony more than funeral.

Understanding that citizen authority trumps university policy can turn a Victim Disarmament Zone where our children are killed into a Refuse To Be A Victim Zone where they are not so likely. Instead of feeling safer, an illusion under gun bans, students would actually be safer armed, quite a difference. It wouldn’t be an armed camp any more than any other place in a free country is – it would simply be further evidence that we are a free country. A Victim Disarmament Zone isn’t free.

Past objections have been that officials don't want to see students settling disputes in anger. This is what you call a straw argument. My response to these public servants is this: why don’t you let us worry about that?

The motto of our patriotic foundation is, "You never know who may be hearing the liberty message for the very first time." Students may not be aware of their in fact being the first line of defense, of their right to use lethal force if they believe they are in grave danger, and of course, of their authority — something they are informed must be checked at the Admissions Office. When it’s all actively obfuscated and punished, truly, you never know who may be learning this news for the very first time.

University students are adult constituents. Victim Disarmament Zone, my foot.

When seconds count, Police are moments away. Time for the educators to take an education, to quit hiding and punishing citizen authority, and to quit defying the people in real authority over their duties and careers.

It would be good for the country.