Depending on what state you reside in, you may be a member of the militia.

Many states (I'm away from home and using a borrowed computer, so don't have research time) have codes which define the militia as all able-bodied males between the ages of 18 and some number, 45 or 50 is common. Ticks me off that I'm excluded, but I carry everywhere I may, legally, anyway.

Be very careful in the discussion of SCCC and in other discussions of students (or faculty, or staff, or visitors, etc.) carrying weapons. This would NOT be a barrier. No law-abiding citizen carrying a gun would fire before believing a person is in mortal danger - that is, that the shooter has already fired or is about to.

At VT, had someone CHOSEN (it's always about choice - no one should be required to carry) to be armed, it's likely (not 100%) there would have been fewer fatalities. I can't imagine anyone arguing no one would have died. Guns are not bullet-stoppers.

At NIU, given the number hit and the speed with which it ended, it's not likely anyone's life would have been saved. But as it was, the students were fish in a barrel.

At Columbine, had a teacher or staff member been armed, fewer would LIKELY have died.

I recall one of my first experiences after I started learning to shoot - my father, who carried always, whether legally or not, I don't think he cared, reminding me of the McDonald's shootings years ago in San Diego. I remember him saying "If someone like me had been there, there would not have been 12 deaths. Some would have died, but not 12."

Ask Suzanna Hupp what she thinks.

He didn't buy his guns over the internet; he bought accessories (magazines)

Any handgun sold via the internet (for that matter in a state-to-state transfer) must be handled through a Federally Licensed Firearms dealer (FFL), as most of the unwashed masses do not have access to the appropriate databases to perform the required background checks. Even transshipping (I sent a handgun to my daughter in another state, for example) must be done (to be legal) from FFL to FFL, with sender responsible for safe shipment and receiver responsible for the background check.

Correct about FFL's. Buying over the internet is no different from buying in a store...except that it takes longer.

See, under most circumstances I agree with the bolded part. If you were to scan the internet for boards on concealed carry, a huge portion of the discussion is when to do nothing. Unfortunately for these school shootings, you're dealing with someone who is already indiscriminately taking life, and obviously doesn't even value his own. I think it is a much different situation where there is an armed robbery in process or a hostage situation. But for those who feel they're capable, I don't think many would hesitate if the situation was right in a NIU type scenario.

From my perspective, I have no idea how I'd handle myself in that situation. I strongly suspect my target acquisition would be pretty impaired, but I also (perhaps wrongly) think that from a normal distance I could make contact with the assailant. Thinking as an unarmed student, If I'm stuck in a room with a shooting gunman, I'd certainly rather someone try and take him down, nerves or not. In my situation, I also have confidence in a few people I take classes with that they'd be up for the task (I also have had the benefit of seeing these people shoot and knowing their life experience). I have little doubt that at VT or NIU, the killers wanted to take as many people as they could. Thus, aggravating the assailant wouldn't be a concern of mine, and if someone had a weapon in such a scenario, I'd rather them use it if they were willing.

Thanks Kevlar. Really, it's been put through MRI. So, I doubt I can improve my targeting anytime soon.

As far as what to do for untrained folks, what would you suggest? Just asking?

I remember a shooting at a McDonald's in San Ysidro, CA in the early 1980s. After that, "powers that be" put closed circuit TV into all stores. Don't know if it changed anything in the long-term, however, it did take a sharp shooter to take the lunatic down...

I guess, once this kind of thing happens, it will not happen ever again on that campus. There must be "FBI profilers" who can give the taletell signs of someone on the "brink". But, you never know...

The government can restrict folks who are mentally ill to obtain guns... I don't know how well that would work.

I think restricting firearm sales to mentally impaired people seems obvious. However, my problems are feasibility and the slippery slope argument. Having a couple of mental health professionals in my family, they're constantly concerned about the lack of some sort of comprehensive database and the lack of institutional space.

Another question that comes to mind in this: if there are mental impairments that are so volatile that we need to restrict their access to firearms, should they be walking around unmonitored anyway? There are certainly other dangerous weapons, cars for example, that are likely to remain available. Frankly, I'm not sure we'll be able to make much of a dent in crime committed by the mentally impaired, because I'm not convinced our sense of humanity will allow the things that would truly make a difference.

Since my opinions regarding 2nd Amendment rights are vastly different from yours Tess, I fully expected to disagree with everything you said. However, you proved me wrong... I completely agree with this statement:

Exactly.

I think it's possible (not, as you've claimed, "likely") that some deaths (at VT and NIU) may have been prevented had someone chosen to break the law and carry. It's also possible that more deaths would have resulted. It's all speculation. We'll never know what could have happened differently on those days. All we know is that, on these two days in particular, guns on campus resulted in many deaths.

And I'm not ready to say that more guns on campus will result in fewer deaths.

The day guns are allowed on my campus is the day I quit my job.

Nobody is going to change anyone's mind about carrying weapons. However, to keep the record straight, at Columbine, there was a serving, veteran Jefferson County Sheriff's Deputy assigned to, and at the school, who exchanged gunfire with one of the shooters as the incident began just outside before losing him when he went into the school building proper.

The scene was total chaos, as this link shows:

http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2000/col...UTIES_TEXT.htm

I'm sorry, but I just can't imagine that additional armed students or faculty might not have caused more damage than good.

In addition, if you watch the news coverage of the event, you will see that as the students were evacuated, they had their hands on their heads so that officers on the scene would not have to consider them as potentially dangerous.

Police made mistakes at Columbine, resulting in the "Active Shooter" training they now receive, but can you imagine what the reaction might be if an officer came upon an innocent student or faculty member with a pistol in her/his hand in this kind of chaos? Or if the untrained person with the gun had shot the wrong person or persons? Frankly, I think that is more "likely" than saving lives, unless the student/faculty member was highly trained.

Well, we'll know soon, I guess. The Supreme Court is set to decide that very question this term. The question presented in District of Columbia v Heller is: "Whether the [D.C. laws] violate the Second Amendment rights of individuals who are not affiliated with any state-regulated militia, but who wish to keep handguns and other firearms for private use in their homes?"

If not I'm not mistaken, the "all able-bodies males" definition in 10 U.S.C. 311 is, essentially, the definition of the "unorganized" militia. The "organized" militia is the National Guard and the naval Militia.

Perhaps I'm leaning toward strict constructionism, but I think you have to consider "militia" as understood by the framers of the Constitution. The reality is that few people today think "National Guard" when they hear "militia," although it is the present-day incarnation of what the framers were talking about. You're right that they think of the nut-jobs that call themselves "militias."

I'm not sure what the "federal ties" have to do with anything, given that the militia clauses of Article 1, § 8, of the Constitution, which was ratified before the Second Amendment, clearly give Congress broad authority to organize and call up the states' militias for the militias' traditional purposes: defense and emergency law enforcement. Likewise, Article 2, § 2, again ratified before the Second Amendment, makes the President the Commander-in-Chief "of the Militias of the Several States." If the underlying purpose of the Second Amendment is destroyed by limiting its application to the National Guard due to "federal ties," then it could be argued that the underlying purpose of the Second Amendment is undermined by the Constitution itself.

I think a reasonable argument can be made that because the Second Amendment speaks specifically of the "well-ordered militia" as the reason for the right to bear arms, the right to protect your home is not encompassed within the Second Amendment. Whether it falls under the "penumbra" of that or some other amendment, I don't know (although I think it unlikely that the current Court will take to "penumbras" too much), but I can see a constitutional determination that whether one has a right to own firearms for reasons other than militia service is (1) not encompassed in the Second Amendment, and therefore (2) left to the determination of the individual states.

Again, maybe SCOTUS will sort it all out for us by this summer. Maybe.

I don't have many strong feelings on the larger subject. I wouldn't call myself pro- or anti-gun. I don't own one and don't want one, but it doesn't threaten me if my neighbor does have one. What, I suppose, I do have strong feelings about is the simplistic arguments made by both sides. Neither banning guns nor having the widest possible conceal-carry laws are the answers -- it is all, I think, more complicated than the bumper-sticker arguments one sometimes hears. I'm glad to see your posts and the other posts in this thread go beyond those simplistic arguments -- it makes the discussion more interesting and thought-provoking for me.

Heller will be huge. Unfortunately, I think the Court will find against the District, but probably without requiring strict scrutiny and keeping the opinion narrowly focused on the DC law. From the common sense perspective, the DC law basically bans people from any feasible attempts at self-defense, and thus I think the Court will come down at least partially opposed to it.

You're right about the organized/unorganized distinction. I mentioned that in my original post but it may have been misleading. You're also right about the state militias around the time of the founding, although I suspect some would argue that the "ties" are stronger now than before.

Even if it were resolved that the National Guard is the definitive modern day militia, the argument that the Second applies only to those entities is still tenuous at best. It would seem ironic that a constitutional right to gun ownership would be so severely limited in a time when so many individuals owned and cherished their arms. Further, you still have the classic law school interpretation conundrum of whether the RKBA is simply supported by the need for a well regulated militia, or whether the inclusion of the militia provision was intended to define the scope of the right.

I don't really think the right to self-defense arises from the Second Amendment. I do think such a right could be crafted from other sources, probably in a much more convincing fashion than even the right to privacy. I realized when I wrote that paragraph that people would probably read it together, but it was really just a stream of one-line supports for the right to gun ownership. Protecting your family in a situation where the police may not be available should be a right, but it is more a practical consideration for why gun ownership is essential. Frankly, I don't think many of us would pause to consider whether the Constitution guarantees us such a right if faced with that precarious dilemma.

I'm not confident we'll get that much resolution this year from Heller.

My argument doesn't have anything to do with what the answer is. I have no idea whether broader concealed carry regulations will have an impact on violence. I strongly suspect that it won't result in rise asserted by anti-gun advocates, but I'm not sure whether it will result in less violence either. My approach is more common sense, at least with respect to the more narrow subject of where concealed weapons are to be permitted. Why should students who can carry in churches, banks, supermarkets, gas stations, etc...have to give up their ability to protect themselves to go to school? This is a group that commits very, very little gun violence in all of the other places they frequent, why would that change if they were allowed the same right on campus? Not only that, but the arrogant advertising of gun free zones simply informs criminals about the location of easy targets. This isn't directed at you, I'm just stating my approach.

http://photos-b.ak.facebook.com/phot...96957_9196.jpg

Except, of course, that at the time of the Amendment, all adult male citizens were indeed part of the militia and could be called up for service.

That of course leads to:

I think its going to be very interesting to see what happens in Heller, given the current composition of the Court.

In the meantime, I love the cartoon.

the "militia" as originally defined and understood were members of the civilian public who were not holding public office

Let me throw this out: many counties in my state have mandatory weaponry classes in high schools, usually taught by members of the NRA. The students have the option of not going to the firing range (which is usually in the school itself), but they do need to know how to handle & clean a few types of guns correctly. Also, since these school districts are usually near where the Amish live, they are permitted to forego the class. One more thing I've noticed about these school districts is that drivers education is also mandatory.

Any thoughts?

Umm, the school boards are deep in the pocket of the NRA???
Driver's ed (classroom & behind the wheel) was mandatory when I was in school too. Is that not the norm anymore?