The Sheep Look Up

Imagine this nightmare...you're glued to your chair as the slobbering flesh-eating zombie makes its inexorable way toward you. You can't move...you're paralyzed...you don't even get to scream as death takes you...

And so we have it again at Northern Illinois University, less than an hour from the Gun-Free Paradise of Chicago — the Man in Black, the Terminator, the Devil Himself come to collect souls. And what can you do? This from ugh Hewett:

“I heard this girl scream, ’Run, he’s reloading the gun!”’

Reloading the gun...all the time in the world...because no one in the lecture hall is armed...universities, those great halls of learning, don't allow adults to be armed.

Last night Glenn Reynolds from InstaPundit and Eugene Volokh from the Volokh Conspiracy were on Hugh Hewett last night. Here's part of the transcript:

HH: Whenever the subject turns to guns in America, and the chaos that can cause, I talk with a couple of law professors who you’ve heard here often, Eugene Volokh from the University of California at Los Angeles Law School, and Glenn Reynolds, the Instapundit, from the University of Tennessee Law School. Let me start with you, Glenn, your reaction to today’s shooting, and to the proposition, which my callers are urging on me, that college students ought to be carrying concealed weapons.

GR: I certainly think so. I actually have quite a few students who have permits to carry concealed weapons. One of them, in fact, was on the Springfield Armory National Pistol Team. And if they were armed in my classroom, I would feel enormously safe. And in fact, actually, after the Virginia Tech shooting, last year, one of those students came up to me and she asked if we could have class off-campus, because she’s not allowed to carry on campus.

HH: Now how widespread do you consider the ability to respond well with a weapon to be, Glenn Reynolds, among your students?

GR: I suppose it’s pretty significant. I mean, I haven’t surveyed them, but my advanced Constitutional law seminar covers the right to bear arms, and I take the class to the shooting range for that, and they seem to acquit themselves pretty well. I really don’t know how many have permits, because it’s only when they, you know, identify themselves to me that I know, but that’s a surprisingly large number.

HH: Eugene Volokh, what’s your reaction to the idea of college and law students carrying concealed weapons on campuses?

EV: You know, in principle, I think it’s probably a good idea, especially if you focus on 21 year olds and up. I also think it’s a good idea to have faculty do it. Even if you don’t trust college and law students, it’s a pretty fair bet that the faculty, for all we laugh at the university professors, but are generally a relatively sober bunch. At the same time, it’s important to realize that horrific as these events are, they represent maybe one in five thousand, one to two to five thousand murders in the country. So it’s like one, less than one tenth of one percent of all homicides. You have probably a ten thousand times greater chance of being killed in an auto accident than you do in a university or school shooting. The fact is that these are very rare things, and I’m not sure that it makes sense to make policy, even policy that I generally think is pretty good policy, based on such extraordinarily rare events.

There's an insight I first mentioned in my book, TRAIL SAFE — "Prey attracts predators." That is the way of life whether we're on the veldt in Africa or on an Illinois college campus. Driven by the false promises of antigun movement, we create gun-free zones, then announce them proudly to the world that at least in this one place, are the sheep are conveniently corralled and docile. Then we are shocked — shocked! — when the inevitable predator shows up to take advantage of that flock.

This is the year you're going to arm yourself, to take the responsibility for your and yours into your own hands. This is the year that you're going to leave the flock behind. The legacy of gun control is always the death of innocents! Protect yourself!