Suppose we were to grow up in a world where, through some unfortunate and catastrophic dysfunction of human reason, all the good guys outlawed and destroyed their arms on the basis that only bad guys use weapons. What sort of world would that be?
It would be a cosmic folly in which law was meaningless. The moment the bad guys threatened to use weapons, the good guys would find themselves powerless. Naturally, weapons bestow power because they allow for the greatest personal threat most people can imagine-grave injury or death to you or your loved ones.
To prevent our little hypothetical oversight, many governments today-on the same basis-arrogate the power of arms exclusively for themselves. But this is the path of tyrants, like Hitler who disarmed the Jews on the basis that guns in their hands were dangerous.
Do you remember the Virginia Tech massacre? It was a protracted two-hour slaughter in which 32 perished, perpetrated by a solitary man with two handguns on a campus of largely responsible adults. I've read eight instances of resistance at Virginia Tech, all involving barricading and fleeing, and none really working.
In my last two articles, I wrote at length about human life: destroying it, co-creating it, desecrating it and sanctifying it. Allow me now to speak of the moral obligation in defending it.
All people recognize the solemn duty to protect the gift of human life, which requires us to reasonably equip ourselves for its defense. Those unwilling to do so deserve neither the safety nor the liberty secured by that special equipment.
If I am unprepared to defend myself from an armed gunman, how dare I expect a police officer to risk his life for me? In our age, the reasonable instrument with which to defend imperiled life is the handgun.
Yet our universities deprive us of the inalienable right to bear arms, divesting us of the dignity and capability to stand up to those who would oppress and threaten life.
The real tragedy of Virginia Tech is not the 32 deaths. Thousands die every day under far more terrible circumstances, and death is not evil. Evil is a policy that forces its citizens to embrace the ignominy of cowardice over the valor of the righteous fight, and which maims its would-be heroes by cutting away their arms to satiate an irrational fear of guns.
Evil is a policy that allowed for two bloody hours at Virginia Tech, and without which the murderer would have been shot down, and not a tenth so many would have been killed.
I am reminded of a separate shooting in Pearl, Miss., in 1995. After shots broke out, the assistant principal incapacitated the shooter with a handgun he retrieved from his car. Two were killed in the intervening time.
This man's actions are not unusual. Some 550 rapes, 1,100 murders and 5,200 violent crimes are prevented every day just by showing a gun, and in less than 0.9 percent of the time is the gun ever fired, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. I realize there is a lot of hesitancy to allow guns on campus. But as we were reminded recently by an armed robbery at Whole Foods, the criminals have the advantage because the written law only restrains those willing to follow it. A rapist is not going to refrain from obtaining a gun because it's illegal, and the wall surrounding East Campus is not going to restrain him. He might restrain himself, however, if anyone could be carrying a gun.
University policies against Concealed Carry are irrational and unconstitutional, and they only prevent law-abiding citizens from equipping themselves for the moral duty to the defense of life.
Indeed, often a fear of handguns stems from an ignorance of the facts. The fact that, for instance, only 3 percent of rapes are completed when a woman is armed, compared to 32 percent when she isn't. The fact that the Florida homicide rate dropped from 36 percent above the national average to 4 percent below it after the passage of Florida's CC law. (Now Floridians are twice as likely to be attacked by an alligator as by a CC permit holder.) The fact that in Texas, CC permit holders are 14 times less likely to commit a crime than non-CC permit holders. The fact that the cities with the most restrictive gun laws consistently have the highest crime rates.
Finally, you may be wondering whether I, threatened as the victims were with immediate death, would have taken forceful action against the robber at Whole Foods. I should like to think so. I hope you would have too, lest he follow the natural course of thieves and reprobates, who care nothing for human life or dignity, and move by degrees into more horrifying crimes unless stopped.
Justin Noia is a Pratt junior. His column runs every other Thursday.
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.