In his weekly column, Rep. Ron Paul of Texas observes that while increased gun control may result from the tragedy at Virginia Tech, increased “people control” almost certainly will.

Rep. Paul observes that too many Americans look to government rather than themselves for protection and security. This is in direct contradiction of the principles upon which our nation was founded.

It is impossible for government to protect its citizens from all threats, yet many rights and freedoms will be infringed or discarded completely as our leaders try to reach that goal.

I am reminded of Benjamin Franklin’s observation: “They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety”.

As copy-cat shooters keep raising their heads and threats of attacks and bombings continue to be reported, we are in a very dangerous and precarious position. Especially with Democrats in control in Washington, almost anything could happen.

Rep. Ron Paul:

Freedom is not defined by safety. Freedom is defined by the ability of citizens to live without government interference. Government cannot create a world without risks, nor would we really wish to live in such a fictional place. Only a totalitarian society would even claim absolute safety as a worthy ideal, because it would require total state control over its citizens’ lives. Liberty has meaning only if we still believe in it when terrible things happen and a false government security blanket beckons.

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When we are presented with two very similar crime stories, separated only by a few years in occurrence, it is critical that we compare them and learn any inherent lessons in order to protect innocent lives in the future. WorldNetDaily.com reminds us of the difference one small law can make.

Situation 1: on January 16, 2002, legal alien student Peter Odighizuwa set out to murder students and faculty on the campus of Appalachian Law School in Grundy, VA. Odighizuwa entered the offices of several professors and shot them at close range, killing them. He also shot and killed a female student, and wounded three more. However, before he could kill others, he was stopped by 2 students who had rushed to their cars to retrieve their guns. The two students were able to disarm Odighizuwa and subdue him until law enforcement arrived.

Situation 2: on April 16, 2007, legal alien student Cho Seung-Hui set out to murder students and faculty on the campus of Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, VA. Several hours after murdering 2 in a dorm room, Cho entered a school building and opened fire on faculty and students. Cho killed 32, wounded 15, and finally killed himself, all before law enforcement showed up on the scene.

Both situations occurred in the state of Virginia. In the five intervening years, the Virginia General Assembly passed a law banning legally possessed and carried weapons from all university campuses. One year ago, a bill was introduced to allow guns back on campus, but failed. A Virginia Tech spokesman said,

“I’m sure the university community is appreciative of the General Assembly’s actions because this will help parents, students, faculty and visitors feel safe on our campus.”

Lessons learned?

1. Law enforcement cannot protect students or anyone else from a deranged madman intent on murder.

2. Laws prohibiting guns on campus are obeyed by law-abiding citizens, not deranged madmen, and are unenforceable.

3. Feel-good legislation and rhetoric doesn’t protect anyone.

4. Legally armed students and/or faculty can and do stop armed killers.

Read the previous posts on this subject, Virginia Tech: Gun Control Fails…Again, and Guest Post: Second Amendment, Designed for Virginia Tech.

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Chances are increasing that your family, immediate or extended, will be touched in some way by school violence. Whether it’s an attack on a teacher, a bomb threat, a stabbing in the hall between classes, or a shooting, most schools are seeing an up-tick in such occurrences, or at least the threat of violence.

Take my little granddaughter, Anna, for instance. She’s in the first grade in an unincorporated area of Arizona where her family lives. The area is experiencing explosive growth. Most of the area schools for the lower grades have Kindergarten through 8th grade. That’s quite an age span, but it usually doesn’t cause many problems.

Almost two weeks ago on Friday, April 6th, long before the massacre on the Virginia Tech campus, a bomb threat for April 20th was found scrawled on a wall of Anna’s school. (Note that the date coincides with the eighth anniversary of the Columbine shooting.) Since the weekend was upon them, school officials waited until Monday to send home a note warning of the event.

Of course, a number of parents were angry that they weren’t notified earlier, with the use of the school’s mass-phone-call system. However, most felt almost two weeks was sufficient warning.

Without knowing everything that has transpired as April 20th has approached, I can say that there has been a sharp increase in law enforcement activity at the school. Both the sheriff’s office and the state police have responded. Awards assemblies and similar events scheduled for that day have been postponed. Teachers anxious to know how and what to plan asked children in their classes to raise their hands if they were planning to attend Friday.

The new district superintendent held an open meeting in the library of Anna’s school to get acquainted with district patrons – and to answer questions about the bomb threat. Anna’s mother, my daughter-in-law, reported that the meeting was sparsely IBattended. However, she was interested to learn that the school janitorial staff was conducting sweeps of the entire school at the end of each day. When a parent questioned the custodians’ credentials for such an assignment, the superintendent responded that they were the ones most familiar with the school, with all its nooks and crannies, and would be the first to recognize anything out of the ordinary.

On Friday, April 20th, with law enforcement present, all entrances to the school will be locked except for two, through which all the children must pass as they arrive. Every bag and back pack will be thoroughly searched. Bomb-sniffing dogs will be present and the school day will proceed – not quite as normal – while the faculty, staff and parents hold their breath and pray nothing happens. But those are the adults, who know and understand that very few bomb threats have any substance to them. Of course, tit’s the students who are thoroughly traumatized.

Little Anna brought home the school note about the threat with as much interest as she usually regards such announcements from the principal – she threw it on the table with a wad of corrected papers and homework. It didn’t take her mother long to discover it, however, and though she was careful not to alarm Anna any more than necessary, Anna soon deduced that something scary was afoot.

When my daughter-in-law called her husband, my son, she was surprised at his strong reaction as he expressed anger that anyone would threaten not only a public school, but his own darling daughter.

At school the next day, there was talk of little else among the students. Anna is normally a confident, happy girl, but she has a worry-wart side to her sunny personality that kicked into high gear. It soon became apparent that Anna was not going to go to school willingly on April 20th. In order to avert an inevitable battle of wills and further traumatization for their terrified little girl, my son and his wife wisely decided to let her stay home and play with her younger siblings tomorrow.

In all likelihood, nothing at all will happen at this rural Arizona elementary school. But plenty of damage has been done without an actual explosion.

The perpetrator of the threat had no knowledge (I hope) of the coming Virginia Tech massacre, but that tragedy has done nothing to comfort parents, grandparents and friends of the students and staff at this school, who are watching, praying and assessing.

For the hundreds of children who attend the school, the bomb threat has meant shock and terror. They are not old enough to rationally process the situation (are any of us?) and may experience lasting effects such as nightmares, distrust of others and fear of school far into the future.

As the worried grandmother, I hope and pray that the school staff and law enforcement handle the situation for the best outcome. I hope little Anna is looking forward to honing her double Dutch jump rope skills at home tomorrow, and not focussed on events at the school. I hope her parents feel the calm that comes from doing all they can to protect her. I hope that on Monday school will return to normal without further interruption.

And I hope the perpetrator is discovered, appropriately punished, and removed forever from Arizona public schools.

My daughter-in-law expressed a sentiment that many of us are feeling: a desire to hide away her little family in a safe haven, far from any thing or any one who could harm them. Unfortunately, no such shelter exists, but we can do our best.

The first step is realizing that, ultimately, it isn’t schools, teachers, superintendents, the sheriff, babysitters or anyone else who will keep our children safe.

I feel as if I’m revealing a well-kept and guarded secret:
PARENTS HAVE THE PRIME RESPONSIBILITY FOR PROTECTING AND SAFEKEEPING THEIR CHILDREN.

Within the law, parents must do what it takes. I applaud my son and his wife for taking a stand.

If all parents would accept and act on that responsibility, a tiny bit of precious sanity would return to our world. All children would be safer.

And perhaps we would see less school violence.

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From Idaho Values Alliance

With great pleasure, we welcome Bryan Fischer, executive director of Idaho Values Alliance, who’s guest posts will appear on TrishAndHalli.com. Please browse through his excellent site for other to-the-point articles.

The Second Amendment unequivocally protects the right of individuals to keep and bear arms, both for their own self-protection and for defense against the tyranny of an autocratic central government.

The American war for independence began when the Crown tried to disarm the colonials, and when the Bill of Rights was created, the Founders wanted to make sure that the central government in the new nation would be forbidden to do what the Crown had tried to do.

However, the trendiness of gun control laws has disarmed one American after another, in the guise of making our streets, cities, and schools “safe” from gun violence. But as the Virginia Tech tragedy illustrates, disarmed Americans are defenseless Americans.

The school president, trying lamely to defend the university’s response, said that it is impossible to have an armed guard at the door of every classroom. Well, that’s exactly the point.

According to columnist Alan Caruba, the Second Amendment Foundation says that firearms are used defensively an estimated 2.5 million times every year, four times more than the criminal use of firearms. Overall, this represents about 2,575 lives saved and protected through the responsible use of firearms for every life lost to a gun. The loss of life due to accidental firearm death is at its lowest point since records were begun nearly100 years ago.

However, according the Virginia Tech website, even citizens with right to carry permits are not allowed to be armed on campus, under threat of arrest. But as historian Clayton Cramer points out, speaking of the Virginia Tech massacre, “This is exactly the situation where one armed student, faculty, or staff could have cut this short.”

A virtually unreported story in the old media’s coverage of the Virginia Tech tragedy is that, according to the January 31, 2006 edition of the Roanoke Times (hat tip: Brandon Stoker), Virginia lawmakers voted down a bill that would have allowed permit holders to carry concealed handguns on campus. The bill was generated in response to the campus arrest of a Virginia Tech student despite the fact he had a state-issued concealed handgun permit.

When the bill was voted down, Virginia Tech spokesman Larry Hinckler chortled, “I’m sure the university community is appreciative of the General Assembly’s actions, because this will help parents, students, faculty and visitors feel safe on campus.” Mr. Hinckler has been strangely silent since yesterday morning.

Utah is the only state which has a statute specifically authorizing law-abiding individuals with carry permits to possess firearms on state university property.

At least two school shootings have been stopped by armed civilians before police arrived, one in Virginia in 2002 (three deaths) at the Appalachian School of Law, and another at Pearl High School in Mississippi (two deaths). Armed citizens in these two circumstances were able to apprehend the gunmen and hold them until police arrived. In both cases, however, the guns had to be retrieved from vehicles, giving the shooters more time than necessary to work their mayhem.

Commenting on the fact that it is unlikely that lawmakers will learn from this tragedy, a spokesman for a Second Amendment organization said, “The only schools and universities where these tragedies have been stopped abruptly were the places where law-abiding citizens had a gun that was accessible to them and they were able to stop the shooter. The schools and universities that had to wait for the police to arrive, those are the ones that find these high death tolls. It’s just a real shame that these guys never get it.”

Boise engineer and Virginia Tech grad Doug Batten drew my attention to the story of Professor Liviu Librescu, a Holocaust survivor who was on the faculty at Virginia Tech when Batten was a student there. Librescu died yesterday by throwing himself in front of the shooter as he attempted to enter his classroom. All the students in his classroom lived because of his selfless act.

As Batten pointed out, Prof. Librescu gave us a remarkable example of the teaching of Jesus, who said, “Greater love hath no man than this: that he lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13). It is certainly unfortunate and tragic that the professor had only his body but no weapon with which to defend himself and his students.

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As the story of the tragedy at Virginia Tech unfolds, the gun control nazis will emerge again, more virulent and self-righteous than ever.

And a few lone voices will observe the truth: When guns are criminalized, only criminals will have guns.

In fact, that is exactly what happened at Virginia Tech.

As Virginia law stands now, lawfully carried and concealed guns are prohibited on the campus of Virginia Tech. To be fair, we can assume that illegally carried guns are also prohibited.

Yet one man with criminal intent carried at least two guns on campus and killed 32 innocent people, with nary an armed soul to oppose him before he had killed two, then hours later, many more.

As WorldNetDaily.com reports today, about a year ago the Virginia General Assembly defeated a bill which would have allowed permit holders to carry guns on campus. A spokesman for VT heaved a sigh of relief at the time as he said:

“I’m sure the university community is appreciative of the General Assembly’s actions because this will help parents, students, faculty and visitors feel safe on our campus.”

I’ll bet he wishes he had never uttered those words.

Del. Todd Gilbert, of Shenendoah, sponsored the bill to allow legal guns on campus. He was naturally reticent to comment today, but he did observe:

“The one thing that this tragic event does illustrate is that there is not a single gun law, rule or regulation that will stop someone with this kind of evil intent from going about their business and taking life at will, if they are committed to doing that… Had I been on campus today, and otherwise been entitled to carry firearms for protection and been deprived of that, I don’t think words can describe how I would have felt, knowing I could have stopped something like this.”

If some students and faculty had been carrying their legally permitted guns today, it is likely that a few deaths would have occurred. However, in at least two instances the murderer chained classroom doors closed and proceeded to fire at students. In all likelihood an armed student would have stopped him before 32 people had been executed.

It has never made sense to me that we designate certain areas where we educate, care for, and/or house our children, our most treasured possessions, as free of lawfully possessed guns. In essence we say, “Hey, you murderous scum, there are our kids. The folks there don’t have any guns. Have at ‘em!” And sure enough, the murderous scum show up and kill the innocent, in far too many instances.

As Gomer Pyle would say, surprise, surprise,

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