VA Tech, 10 months later

It was the VA Tech massacre that brought me out of my previous hiatus. It's almost been a year since then, and since I've been gone from the Campus Attitudes Towards RKBA scene for a while, I'm curious as to what the discussions have been in Blacksburg since then.

For starters, we have a Feb 6 article lamenting Virginia's low Brady grade.

I missed the latest round of Brady report cards. From what I understand, they've revamped their system--slightly. Lemme check and see how my state did...we got an F in 2006.

Under their new system, Alaska scored 4 out of 100 points, and is ranked 44 out of 50.

Heh. We did better than the last time I reported on the Brady grades. But I'll focus on that in another post.

Virginia ranked 14, something that the president of VA's chapter of the Million Moonbat March is disappointed about, but not terribly surprised. She blames the so-called "gun show loophole" for VA's lackluster performance.

No additional commentary from the article's author, but it drew a spate of reactions from the pro-2A crowd (you have to love online papers that allow comments), calling the piece a nice, unbiased bit of reporting on behalf of the Brady Campaign.

I do remember immediately following the shootings how some pointed to the Appalachian Law School situation, and how allowing Concealed Carry could have significantly lowered the damage PsyCho did. Around February 8, this debate was revived by students and faculty visiting Richmond to help support legislation being discussed which they supported. One of the issues standing out was concealed carry on campus.

Well, someone didn't like the idea, and is his right, he wrote about it. And with it, the usual symptoms that this person probably needs his Thioridazine prescription refilled. Fears about concealed carry have been proven time and again to be nothing more than tales of the boogie-man. But unfortunately, when you're short on facts, what do you use to fill your argument's void? Emotion coming out of vain imagination.

In reality, Concealed Carry has with it a price tag that by and large screens out the riff-raff. The states that license it requires some sort of training--basic gun handling skills, situation awareness, and awareness of legal responsibilities and consequences. Furthermore, you are fingerprinted, subjected to a background check, and the cost of all this can run you half a month's pay and several nights' worth of classes. All of these factors pretty much insure that your licensees are solid citizens.

Happily, there are a few students on VT's campus who know this, and attempt to explain how things really work with CCW (as well as the Brady Bunch's campaign of misinformation). And this one's a freshman, to boot.