Professor Explains Why He Carries a Gun on Campus
“I refuse to let myself and my students be victims.”
Timothy H. Hsiao is a professor at Grantham University, Park University, and Johnson County Community College.
He writes at the Federalist:
I’m A Professor, And I Carry A Gun On Campus. Here’s Why
I am an ethics professor, and I carry a concealed handgun in the classroom. In the event of a mass shooting, I am the first line of defense between my students and an attacker. I refuse to let myself and my students be victims.
I’m sure many of my fellow professors would disagree with my actions. In fact, many would probably brand me as a traitor to academia for admitting such a thing. For them, it is inconceivable that a member of the intelligentsia — an ethics professor, of all people — could support the right to carry a so-called instrument of death.
So in what follows, let me make the moral case for campus carry. Those wanting a more rigorous statement of my argument may be interested in reading one of my academic journal articles on the topic.
The Moral Case for Campus Carry
Campus carry is simply an extension of our natural right of self-defense. Our right to life follows us wherever we go, so the right to defend our lives must also accompany us. Whether I am at home, in my car, at work, or in the classroom, I possess the absolute and unrelenting right to defend myself against unjust aggression. Because firearms enhance that right, there exists a strong presumption in favor of being allowed to own and carry a firearm as I go about my daily business.
That presumption may sometimes be overcome (such as in courthouses, prisons, or airports), but only if the government assumes the special responsibility of protecting those citizens whom it disarms through the coercive power of the law. In other words, if the government is going to tell us we can’t carry guns in a specific area, thus impairing our ability to defend ourselves, it must assume a special responsibility to protect us. It must serve the function our guns would provide had we been allowed to carry them.
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Comments
I thought he was going to say something like, “The students these days are crazy!”
The best protection against a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. If a mentally ill person wants to commit “suicide with a bang” by going into a gun-free school and shooting a bunch of students, I bet he will avoid this prof’s classes.
All this hysteria about mass shootings is an opportunity to enforce the 2nd and 14th Amendments. Make “gun free zones” illegal because they are denying citizens their constitutional rights.
I fail to see the difference between designating a business a gun-free zone and Woolworth designating their lunch counter a Negro-free zone. Both are unconstitutional deprivations of civil rights.
Bullsh*t. Neither one is unconstitutional. A negro-free lunch counter is illegal, because federal state and local legislatures have made it so. Nothing in the constitution compelled them to do that, and before they did it the lunch counters were perfectly legal. I suppose a legislature could require businesses to allow customers to carry weapons; but none have yet done so. There is no inherent or constitutional right to carry weapons on someone else’s property.
Hear Hear!