Welcome back to school!
It’s time for Ivory Tower lefties to get more facts wrong, continue undercutting individual rights, and insult those who believe in them!
-- Which just happened at the University of Utah, a tax-subsidized school where an unidentified instructor last Monday handed out the syllabus for an unnamed class, including in it her oh-so-pleasant statement:
Concealed carry is protected under your second amendment rights! However, because the University of Utah reserves the right to restrict elements of the first amendment on campus to specifically sanctioned ‘free speech zones’ I am reserving the right to restrict elements of the second amendment in my own classroom…
Which is factually wrong on a number of fronts. First, it’s not “her own classroom.” It’s partially funded by the taxpayers, which makes it a public area, which means she, nor anyone else, can restrict the right to keep and bear arms there.
Second, The University of Utah rescinded its “free speech zones” policy in 2017. One might assume that this instructor was at the school last year to discover the change, or, even if she transferred this year, she might have wanted to support her claims, yet she decided to march over embarrassment cliff without bothering to check on the status of the rule.
Great to think a person so devoted to factual statements will be teaching young adults.
And it’s great to see more of her tub-thumping proclamation, as provided by Frances Floresca, of Campus Reform:
If you feel that it is somehow at all appropriate to bring a gun to class (hint: it is not—this is absurd, antisocial, and frightening behavior), you are restricted to spending your time in class in my ‘second amendment zone’ a 3x3 taped square on the floor in the very back of the classroom, that will be shared with all other gun carriers… This zone also does not include a desk, because desks are reserved for students who respect the personal and psychological safety of their classmates and instructor.
Classy. Create a taped-off ghetto for people exercising their individual right to self-defense in a public venue. Make it difficult for paying students thrown into the ghetto to take notes or even suffer through “her class” without chairs or desks. Pile on insults that carrying firearms is “absurd, antisocial, and frightening behavior”… Then top it off by claiming the Delphic knowledge that the presence of armed people in class will be disrespectful of the personal safety of classmates and instructor.
Choice lessons in conceit and arrogant disregard for rights. In fact, the instructor is the one who is not respecting the safety of the students. By trying to decrease the likelihood that students will bring guns into school, she is increasing the likelihood that an armed person with ill intent will not only target the school – because of the lower probability of armed resistance – but that such a criminally-minded attacker will hurt more people than if an armed defender were present to end any rampage.
As John Lott has pointed out, criminally-minded people change their behavior when considering the potential that a targeted locale might contain armed individuals. They avoid such locations and try to attack “soft targets” – particularly ones where firearms are banned by statute contrary to the Second Amendment, or frowned upon and penalized by self-appointed arbiters of “antisocial behavior”.
The record of so-called “gun control” measures in nations such as the United Kingdom and Canada is clear: violent crime increases when peacefully-minded people are threatened with punishment should they carry firearms. As this chart shows, not only did violent crime increase in the UK after the infamous 1997 government “handgun ban”, gun crime increased as well.
Oh, and in Canada, as GunFacts.org reports, this was the sorry reality of gun “control” laws that stepped on the individual right to self-protection:
In Canada around 1920, before there was any form of gun control, their homicide rate was 7% of the U.S rate. By 1986, and after significant gun control legislation, Canada’s homicide rate was 35% of the U.S. rate – a significant increase. 10 In 2003, Canada had a violent crime rate more than double that of the U.S. (963 vs. 475 per 100,000). 11
And, lest this princess of the college pulpit in Utah should go unaware, FBI Uniform Crime stats show that, as opposed to the UK, which saw violent crime increase for ten years after their “gun ban”, in the US, where gun purchases were soaring, violent crime, including gun-crime, decreased.
And one of the sickly ironic backstories to this college idiocy is the fact that Utah State Representative Karianne Lisonbee, who is aware of gun facts and who respects the right to self-protection, last year proposed and got passed a bill to lower the age of legal concealed-carry in the state to eighteen. She did it specifically to help vulnerable women on college campuses live safer.
As FoxNews notes, Lisonbee posted the insulting syllabus on her Facebook page and offered:
I am livid. A University of Utah Professor doesn’t understand the Bill of Rights and University policy on free speech – which is disturbing enough. But even more egregious, she is seeking to break state law and deprive students of their rights.
Yep.
If this were a private school, that would be a different matter. But since this is a public, tax-funded college, people are supposed to be able to exercise their rights there, any time. The fact that one instructor finds that problematic is an indication of the problem inherent in public institutions. They trend towards shutting down more and more rights, because they can only exist by breaching the property rights of taxpayers in the first place.
The university has amended the syllabus and removed the instructor from the class. But not after shedding light on important principles and how collectivism tends to crush them.
So it's back to school, kids! Enjoy the lessons!
Altered Photo. Original:wiz722