Monday, October 5, 2009

A Brush with the Headlines

So today was gonna be like any other day. Well not like EVERY other day. I mean. I was driving from my parents' home in Ocala to my apartment in Tampa. And from there I went to class. Got on campus and waited dutifully for the very very slow on-campus traffic to move along so I could find parking. And just as I got out of my car, that was when it happened.

Air raid sirens and a crackly announcer's voice stating that all students should remain indoors. Keep the doors locked. Get to a building and basically barricade themselves in. I was only half a dozen steps from my car.

Then the text message came to my cell phone. "Alert Tampa Campus - EMERGENCY: Armed Intruder on Campus. Stay Inside. Lock Doors. Emergency Personnel Responding."

That text message came at 1:49 pm.

The all clear was never given until 5:57 pm.

Now... Me being the sensible sort of person I am, I turned around, got back into my car, locked the doors, shut off the radio, pulled my handgun out of the center console, checked the clip, and set it right there beside me. One hand on the wheel. One hand resting on my protection. I refuse to be a victim.

But it got me thinking... Many many questions, not the least of which that ran through my head, was "Why am I not allowed to carry my gun on campus?" "Why does it take 4 hours for the police department to clear campus and give us the OK?" "Why does it take the police department 10 minutes to call in outside help and get officers to the scene when there are not one, but multiple armed persons on campus?"

Yeah. Apparently it wasn't just one. It was two or possibly three.

So that's my school. Yep. Great university.

But the biggest question on my mind is still unanswered. "Why does the left wing believe that guns must be the problem, when the University of South Florida experiences this sort of emergency on a semi-regular basis, and yet none of the students or faculty are allowed to carry weapons? (Including the ROTC guys)" In a little utopian microcosm of liberality, where Marxism is a required subject that everyone must read and learn and write a little paper on 'why Marxism is relevant' (Yep. I had to write one of those in grad school here.), and guns do not exist except for the criminals who bring them on campus, why is there so much of a problem?

Ok so I get the whole "We want to avoid a Columbine/Virginia Tech shooting where a student goes postal." Ok. Cool. That's fine. I can grock that sort of backwards logic (both Columbine and the Virginia Tech students used weapons that they hadn't acquired in a legal fashion and were both utterly mentally unstable). But why penalize the normal law abiding students, such as myself, and demand that we sit on campus locked in classrooms for 4-5 hours while the police take their time showing up and doing a job? Are we supposed to quietly and politely ask these people "Please don't shoot us?" Perhaps in the egalitarian Marxist theory, there would be no crime because these people simply don't exist? I don't know. I don't pretend to know. But it's a creepy place when I'm going to school and I have to fear for my life.

By the way. For those of you who read the article? I park at the library EVERY TIME that I go to class. Closest parking to the building I need to be at. The second notice about the guy with the hunting knife? Yeah. Cooper Hall. A 1.5 minute leisurely walk to the Social Sciences building (Where all my classes are).

My logic as I climbed back into my car? "No class is worth dying over. If the prof. doesn't like it? Tough." Thankfully my professor understood and even emailed all of those of us who couldn't make it to class.

So just remember. Guns are a problem. They cause violence and death. Just like porn causes carpal tunnel and tennis elbow.

Until next time!

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