Is it snark time alrady?
Meanwhile, my state legislature, in its infinite wisdom, considers various proposals to allow concealed weapons on university campuses. It is the doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction come to our classrooms, reduced to the interpersonal scale. I don’t think a bill has been introduced yet. I have heard these rumblings before. I hope it is only bluster again.
No, it’s the doctrine of being able to defend one’s self in any setting. Apparently any gun owner is likely to go berserk at any moment because of that lump of metal in his holster. This from a person who is supposed to be an educator.
I have no delusions. It won’t matter if I quit. A hundred applicants will line up for my job. And there is nothing easier for a politician to ignore or dismiss than the principled stand of a nobody constituent. But I will quit.
No, I think it will matter if you quit. Maybe your replacement will be a logical, thinking person, not a sheep.
The gun doesn’t ever need to go off in order to ruin everything for me. Everything is ruined the moment the gun arrives. At least for me.
This is because you have no logic or common sense in you. Not. One. Ounce.
I don’t fear guns. I fear the person who wants, for any reason, lawful or otherwise, to bring one into my classroom.
What you should fear is the person who brings any implement into your classroom with the intent to harm you. The firearm is not the weapon, the mind of the attacker is the weapon. You’d be just as vulnerable, hiding there under your desk, to a knife, baseball bat, hammer, or scissors. Maybe even more so because you’d think that those, in the hands of a criminal, are less of a weapon.
I first shot a gun when I was in kindergarten, under the supervision of my father and grandfather and great-uncle. I’m not sure I was even old enough to spell my own last name at the time. I am comfortable with guns, which is why I could carry one through the woods at the time I contemplated what I would do if my state condones sending them into my classroom.
Have you ever gone skeet shooting with President Obama? Do you have any tasty skeet recipes? A gun in your hand is OK, but in anyone else’s is dangerous.
I will quit. I hope I will quit.
Me too. The sooner the better.
What makes me angriest is that nothing I or anyone else says will have any bearing on the state or national conversations. Everything in the political system is broken and no politician will really listen to the people who gathered in a living room to talk about a real and terrifying and problem.
I think that the problem is precisely the opposite. Politicians are listening to the people, it’s just that they aren’t listening to YOU. The people are telling politicians that they don’t want bans on guns, they want criminals to be punished, they want the broken mental health system to be fixed. Not by expanding data bases, but by funding outpatient and inpatient facilities. By institutionalizing dangerous mentally ill people. They telling the politicians this by emails, phone calls, letters, and most of all by purchasing record numbers of firearms for self defense and other purposes. Oh, and by record numbers of people applying for concealed carry permits.
I think Mr. Kreuter, you are missing the point. You are credentialed and educated, but not very smart.
Please quit and improve higher education.
Better ask him if any of his students have been off duty or retired LEOS… who, in many states, can carry in his precious little self-defense free zone.
No doubt, he’d feel safer in his little cocoon if they couldn’t carry.
I’m going to go ahead and assume he’s never had to commute to college after dark in a shady part of a shady city, and then park in a dimly lit parking lot, where student parking is farthest (read 50+ yards, depending on how lucky you are to find a space) from the school entrance. I guess I can’t speak for everyone, but having had to make the aforementioned journey under the aforementioned circumstances several times a week, I would have felt a hell of a lot safer if I could carry a concealed weapon…or a weapon in general.
I would only assume that he isn’t a female who has to do any of the above. Also, if he’s faculty chances are he’s going to have preferred parking. I’m neither faculty nor a young female, but I have a daughter in her 20′s who is both at a nearby state college. I’d feel better if she could carry a concealed weapon on campus.
From reading his one post, it’s pretty obvious that it’s all about him, not his students, especially not the young female ones. As I said in the post, I think we’d all be better off if he quit.
OR how about a crosstown commute on largely empty ‘light rail’ trains and busses after getting out of class at 11 PM?
That would do it too. Any commute or travel late at night in not well lit and sparsely populated places. I’m the furthest thing from an attractive young woman there is, but those make me nervous as well.