Glenn Reynolds editorialized in the New York Daily News today on the subject of campus firearm bans, which did not deter the killer, but which could very possibly have prevented his being stopped a lot earlier.

On Monday, as the news of the Virginia Tech shootings was unfolding, I went into my advanced constitutional law seminar to find one of my students upset. My student, Tara Wyllie, has a permit to carry a gun in Tennessee, but she isn’t allowed to have a weapon on campus. That left her feeling unsafe. “Why couldn’t we meet off campus today?” she asked.

Virginia Tech graduate student Bradford Wiles also has a permit to carry a gun, in Virginia. But on the day of the shootings, he would have been unarmed for the same reason: Like the University of Tennessee, where I teach, Virginia Tech bans guns on campus.

In The Roanoke Times last year – after another campus incident, when a dangerous escaped inmate was roaming the campus – Wiles wrote that, when his class was evacuated, “Of all of the emotions and thoughts that were running through my head that morning, the most overwhelming one was of helplessness. That feeling of helplessness has been difficult to reconcile because I knew I would have been safer with a proper means to defend myself.”

Wiles reported that when he told a professor how he felt, the professor responded that she would have felt safer if he had had a gun, too.

What’s more, she would have been safer. That’s how I feel about my student (one of a few I know who have gun carry permits), as well. She’s a responsible adult; I trust her not to use her gun improperly, and if something bad happened, I’d want her to be armed because I trust her to respond appropriately, making the rest of us safer.

Virginia Tech doesn’t have that kind of trust in its students (or its faculty, for that matter). Neither does the University of Tennessee. Both think that by making their campuses “gun-free,” they’ll make people safer, when in fact they’re only disarming the people who follow rules, law-abiding people who are no danger at all.

This merely ensures that the murderers have a free hand. If there were more responsible, armed people on campuses, mass murder would be harder.

In fact, some mass shootings have been stopped by armed citizens. Though press accounts downplayed it, the 2002 shooting at Appalachian Law School was stopped when a student retrieved a gun from his car and confronted the shooter. Likewise, Pearl, Miss., school shooter Luke Woodham was stopped when the school’s vice principal took a .45 from his truck and ran to the scene. In February’s Utah mall shooting, it was an off-duty police officer who happened to be on the scene and carrying a gun.

Police can’t be everywhere, and as incidents from Columbine to Virginia Tech demonstrate, by the time they show up at a mass shooting, it’s usually too late. On the other hand, one group of people is, by definition, always on the scene: the victims. Only if they’re armed, they may wind up not being victims at all.

Murderous attacks like the recent homicides at Virginia Tech always produce demands for some sacrifice of liberty as part of a program of preventive measures intended to prevent their recurrence.

A PersonfromPolock, at the Volokh Conspiracy, observes (not entirely tongue-in-cheek) that slightly reducing the immunities supplied by the First Amendment would do a lot more to help than eviscerating the Second Amendment.

To the Editor:

A practical, commonsense way of reducing gun violence — especially in the schools — would be a federal law prohibiting, or at least seriously limiting, the interstate reporting of sensational gun crimes like Virginia Tech for five working days.

Such a law would not affect local coverage, where there is a need for the immediate dissemination of information, but would make the event ‘old news’ when it was finally reported nationally and therefore unlikely to get the massive publicity that invites further, copycat violence. Even a small reduction in today’s intense coverage of such events might, by not stimulating some potential gunman to action, save lives.

While ‘gun’ laws are hard to enforce because of the easy concealment of firearms, the public nature of ‘news’ would make enforcement of this law virtually automatic.

Because the delay would be short and serve a compelling government interest, it should pass constitutional muster; the Brady law serves admirably as a precedent here. While First Amendment absolutists will cavil, the simple fact is that it is as wrong to hold that the Press Clause protects a media ‘right’ to lethally endanger the public as it would be to hold that the Religion Clause protects human sacrifice.

Sincerely,

For some reason, even though the suggested law would clearly be ‘worth trying’ (a standard rationale of the Left), no ‘anti gun violence’ paper has ever published it.

Hat tip to Glenn Reynolds.

Afflicted North America from 8:00 PM last night to 10:00 AM this morning. The cause has not yet been identified.

But Popular Mechanics thinks it knows.

A recent USMC Challenge Coin

Hat tip to Rich Duff.

The Telegraph is commemorating Prince William’s break-up with his girl-friend, reportedly over class issues (the young lady was seen by the British Press chewing gum) with a quiz designed to identify your place in the British social system.

I found that I knew all the right answers, thus –in theory– entitling me to be Duke of Devonshire. But, if restricted to the facts, I’d have to settle for “having a coat of arms.”

American politics is often pretty embarassing, but the EU’s obliviousness to the understanding of Liberty achieved by the Enlightenment in America, and its contemptible readiness to surrender the rights of its unfortunate citizens to political correctness, does make one proud to be an American.

Laws that make denying or trivialising the Holocaust a criminal offence punishable by jail sentences will be introduced across the European Union, according to a proposal expecting to win backing from ministers Thursday.

Offenders will face up to three years in jail under the proposed legislation, which will also apply to inciting violence against ethnic, religious or national groups.

Diplomats in Brussels voiced confidence on Tuesday that the controversial plan, which has been the subject of heated debate for six years, will be endorsed by member states. However, the Baltic countries and Poland are still holding out for an inclusion of “Stalinist crimes” alongside the Holocaust in the text – a move that is being resisted by the majority of other EU countries.

The latest draft, seen by the Financial Times, will make it mandatory for all Union member states to punish public incitement “to violence or hatred directed against a group of persons or a member of such a group defined by reference to race, colour, religion, descent or national or ethnic origin”.

They will also have to criminalise “publicly condoning, denying or grossly trivialising crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes” when such statements incite hatred or violence against minorities.

Diplomats stressed the provision had been carefully worded to include only denial of the Holocaust – the Nazi mass murder of Jews during the second world war – and the genocide in Rwanda in 1994.

They also stressed that the wording was designed to avoid criminalising comical plays or films about the Holocaust such as the Italian comedian Roberto Benigni’s prize-winning Life is Beautiful . The text expressly upholds countries’ constitutional traditions relating to the freedom of expression.

Holocaust denial is already a criminal offence in several European countries, including Germany and Austria. It is not a specific crime in Britain, though UK officials said it could already be tackled under existing legislation.

In an attempt to assuage Turkish fears, several EU diplomats said the provisions would not penalise the denial of mass killing of Armenians by Ottoman troops in the aftermath of the 1915 collapse of the Ottoman empire. Turkey strongly rejects claims that this episode amounted to genocide.

The Daily Mail reports:

Polygamous husbands settling in Britain with multiple wives can claim extra benefits for their “harems” even though bigamy is a crime in the UK, it has emerged.

Opposition MPs are demanding an urgent change in the law, claiming that the Government is recognising and rewarding a custom which has no legal status and which is “alien” to this country’s cultural traditions.

Officials said yesterday a review was now under way into whether the state should continue to pay out income support, jobseeker’s allowance and housing and council tax benefits to ‘extra’ spouses.

Islamic law allows a man to take up to four wives, providing he can provide for them fairly and equally. But British law only ever recognises one spouse, while bigamy is punishable by up to seven years in jail.

However, if a husband and his wives arrive and settle in Britain having wed in a country where polygamy is legal, then the UK benefits system recognises his extra wives as dependents and pays them accordingly.

The Department of Work and Pensions admitted yesterday it had no figures on how many families are claiming for multiple wives.

ABC News reports that the Virginia Tech killer apparently acquired both of his weapons quite recently and perfectly legally.

Cho Seung-Hui bought his first gun, a 9 mm handgun, on March 13 and his second weapon, a 22 caliber handgun, within the last week, law enforcement officials tell ABCNews.com.

“This was no spur of the moment crime. He’s been thinking about this since at least the time he bought the first gun,” said former FBI agent Brad Garrett, an ABC News consultant.

Both guns were bought in Virginia, according to the officials.

Under Virginia law, state residents can only buy one handgun in any 30 day period, suggesting Cho bought his second weapon after April 13, or sometime over the weekend.

“He clearly spent some time figuring out how he was going to take care of business once classes began on Monday morning,” said Garrett.

The date of the first gun purchase will likely serve as the time of “some triggering mechanism that was very important” to Cho said Garrett, an expert on profiling murderers.

The article illustrates a Walther PPK, not a Glock.

There is still a great deal needing to be explained about all this.

Neither a 9mm nor a .22 represent the last word in lethality. So how is it possible for one 23-year-old student to shoot 47 people and actually kill 32 (totals from latest NY Times report)?

in 1999, four highly trained plainclothes members of an elite New York City crime squad fired 41 shots at Amadou Diallo hitting him with only 19 shots, most of which were not considered lethal by the coroner.

In another New York City shooting incident, this February, five police officers opened fire on Sean Bell who was driving away from his bachelor party. They fired 50 rounds and struck Bell only 4 times, although two passengers (who survived!) were hit respectively 4 times and 16 times by police fire.

So, how is that a 23-year-old Korean college student was able to so dramatically outperform police professionals in accomplishing lethal hits on human targets? He was obviously not using any more potent, or more intrinsically accurate, a weapon.

He apparently bought his first gun on March 13th. Where did he acquire such shooting skills?

Or is it possible that roughly 30 people obediently lined up and just stood there, so that one man could shoot them all in the back of the neck execution-style? I’d hate to think that was what happened.

Take an MSM holiday advises Sheldon Droby, at the Huffington Post:

If you want to get through the aftermath of the Virginia Tech massacre in a healthier way, don’t watch the news for about a week. If you did not need an anti-depressant before this event, you may have to start if you decide to listen, watch, or read the news. These vultures will do you in.

Spend a week with your family and hug them everyday to appreciate them. Take some time off from work and connect with the people you love. Go to the movies or a museum or do anything that interests you to divert your attention from the toxic doses of media poisoning that is about to follow. The MSM will spend endless hours talking about the “why did he do it” or “why did this happen” routines that they always go through. And the answer is there is no answer or rational explanation for this. Given the state of our society, I would ask why this does not happen more often here.

Yesterday’s tragedy is a daily event in many other places in the world.

Then, alas, he starts blaming Bush over Iraq, so I’d stop there, and not bother reading the whole thing.

Liviu Librescu, Professor of Engineering Science and Mechanics

Jerusalem Post:

a 76-year-old (Holocaust) survivor sacrificed his life to save his students in Monday’s shooting at Virginia Tech College that left 33 dead and over two dozen wounded.

Professor Liviu Librescu, 76, threw himself in front of the shooter when the man attempted to enter his classroom. The Israeli mechanics and engineering lecturer was shot to death, “but all the students lived – because of him,” Virginia Tech student Asael Arad – also an Israeli – told Army Radio.

Several of Librescu’s other students sent e-mails to his wife, Marlena, telling of how he had blocked the gunman’s way and saved their lives.

Read the whole thing.

Predictably, the European press is blaming the lack of a state monopoly of force for the killings at Virginia Tech. With characteristic incompetence, too, many of these European editorialists blame the expiration of the (so-called) Assault Weapon Ban, which, of course, had nothing whatsoever to do with events at Blacksburg.

The killer evidently used an ordinary 9mm Glock semi-automatic pistol and some kind of .22 pistol. There was no authentic, or even mislabeled, assault weapon involved.

In the strongest editorialized image of the day, German cable news broadcaster NTV flashed an image of the former head of the National Rifle Association, the US gun lobby: In other words, blame rifle-wielding Charlton Heston for the 33 dead.

The German Bild offers a typical example of the journalist’s failure to acquaint himself with the actual facts.

Now we will probably begin discussing the overly lax gun laws in the United States. There, buying a machine gun is often easier than getting a driver’s license.

He must be thinking of Iraq, not the United States. Americans have needed a costly federal license, involving lots of paperwork, since passage of the National Firearms Act of 1934, to own a fully automatic weapon, and a number of states do not allow private ownership of full-auto weapons, period.

A Marine Corps Drill Team performs at a basketball half-time.

6:07 video

When I was a small boy, my father (who had served in the Marine Corps in WWII) would sometimes entertain me by performing the Manual of Arms, culminating in the same Queen Anne Salute you see performed here, in which the rifle is spun several times, smoothly returned to the position of Order Arms, and then to Parade Rest.