Concealed Carry On Campus...workplace...airports..public buildings...

Keep Your Hands Off My . . . Burdens.

By John Longenecker

Numerous articles are surfacing in support of concealed carry of handguns for students, faculty and visitors. I support Concealed Carry Of Weapons [CCW] for students and visitors, but not for faculty.

Faculty is too ever-present and recognizable. All a shooter need do is identify them and avoid them. Liberty enthusiasts observe that it is yet another freezing out of the individual citizen – the supreme authority in all things in this country – and a return to centralization of power collected away from the constituent. It just means more dependency on officials and a denial of our carrying our own burdens.

Articles oppose CCW for the silliest of reasons, namely how uncomfortable they feel, how they fear shootings from drunk or otherwise impaired students, accusations of settling dispute sin anger. Even the Virginia Tech Review Panel gets it wrong when it cites intoxicated police as its best evidence example of how guns and alcohol don't mix. They don't, but armed citizens do mix with any human endeavor. Virginia Tech is hardly the model of how to complete the assignment and hand it in. Since when is discomfort a measure of a civil right? Since Independence impeaches the need for liberals and earns them the social disrespect they suffer.

Since it seems increasingly likely that CCW will become a common reality across America because it makes sense to more and more trustees – no one can take your place as the first line of defense — steering it somewhat seems to be the second-best choice for opponents, controlling it, shaping it, and it could wind up watered down and looking like the Peacock that entered committee and emerged looking like a plucked chicken – a great idea hosed down and torn to pieces. No, thanks.

In America, citizens don't really need permission to carry anymore than we need permission to assume other burdens in our way of life: but try it, and the cost of arrest and a good defense can bankrupt you. This may change this Summer when the Supreme Court hands down its decision on D.C. v. Heller. It could totally repeal all gun laws, a repeal, which in my opinion would also discredit a great meany boondoggles based on anti-crime theory and coerced policy. I say, fiat justicia, ruat coelum.

Until then, there are encouraging signs that many are coming to accept CCW for employees, students and visitors as being in the public interest.

For those looking at CCW for workers, students and visitors, here's my analysis: When it comes to all the advice non-gun owners want to give to standards for concealed carry, it's like single, childless individuals giving out advice on parenting. What is missing here? I'll give you a clue: it involves their fear of guns in the hands of others. Translation: no need for Liberals and their anti-crime policy. Being unneeded is a Liberal's greatest neurotic fear, and nothing symbolizes it more than carrying one's burden of self-defense.

When I was a Paramedic training rookies and ride-alongs, I taught that 95% of good driving is good judgment, 5% being how to drive the vehicle. Anybody can aim and steer, but emergency situations demand training and thinking from one case to the next. The same thing is true about handguns: 5% is the weapon itself, how to take care of it, how to aim it, load it, unload it and carry it, but the actual use of the weapon in armed self-defense is 95% training and good judgment.

Leave it to the anti-gun activists to forget the most important component: good judgment in the Average Reasonable Person or TARP, something lacking in the minds of the anti-gun activists because it would impeach them and everything they stand for. And it is this which makes them anti-American, anti-freedom. Anti-gun nuts want your burdens and they are taking the force which backs citizen authority in this country in that process.

Armed self-defense is at the core of the Republic because carrying our own burdens is at the core of Independence, citizen authority and oath of office. It is the recognition that no one can carry your burdens better than you can. Nor should they. In all things. That would be usurpation of Authority.

Understand that judgment is not missing from CCW courses, but the anti-gun nuts have forgotten to mention it as part of their government parenting, or paternalism. Instead, they want more restrictions. But Judgment is a word not in their vocabulary, because it means Independence — Independence from them. As Dr. Suzanne Hupp testified before Congress (before becoming a U.S. Representative) "..The purpose of the Second Amendment is not duck hunting... it is to protect us from all of you guys up there."

Let me put it my own words: I don't care how well-meaning you are, don't impose your well-intentioned paternalism of lifting our burdens on us against our protest. You take our Independence, and we object. Hands off our burdens.

Understand that articles against CCW offer criticism, with nothing to take your place, including campus police. No one can take your place as the first line of defense in the most critical first moments, and no one has the right or authority to take on that burden by excluding you as these policies have done to the detriment of our kids. No one – no one – has found anything better than the armed citizen in authority in this country. Authority.

Every step toward respecting the good judgment and advocating not the taking of burdens, but the carrying of one's own burdens, is what makes us a Republic, and another step away from Dependency. It puts the Self back in self-governance. For officials, it takes the Self out of self-appointed.

Insisting on carrying our own burdens so that officials may not substitute their methods for ours begins with armed self-defense, and this is what the Second Amendment is all about.

And that is good for the country. It is best for the country.

John Longenecker is President and CEO of Good For The Country Foundation, a patriotic non-profit organization.