VA-ALERT: Norfolk audio/pictures, VT Panel report

[W.E.G.]

From: VCDL President
Sent: Thursday, August 30, 2007 12:19 PM
Subject: VA-ALERT: Norfolk audio/pictures, VT Panel report out



1. Norfolk City Council meeting audio and pictures available
2. VT Panel report - predictably suggests useless gun control
3. Reminder - Richmond VCDL membership meeting tonight!

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www.vcdl.org/index.html#DefenseFund
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VCDL's meeting schedule: http://www.vcdl.org/meetings.html
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1. Norfolk City Council meeting audio and pictures available
2. VT Panel report - predictably suggests useless gun control
3. Reminder - Richmond VCDL membership meeting tonight!

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1. Norfolk City Council meeting audio and pictures available
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Many thanks to Glenn Weaver for capturing the audio from the Norfolk City Council meeting on Tuesday!

I learned something shocking that night - they stopped broadcasting the cable coverage of the meeting as soon as the public starts speaking! So that means that Norfolk residents never get to hear the complaints of things like police harassment.

How very, very convenient.

But, we have the audio so you, and maybe if the word gets around, other Norfolk citizens can listen in.

I also found some pictures and more details on the meeting from a blog site owned by VCDL member Curtis Stone. Curtis has a nice panorama of the meeting room so that you can get an idea of how many people were there.

The audio has **all** comments made by citizens that evening. It starts with Dan Moore and includes non-VCDL citizens speaking about harassment, which augmented what we were saying. A few spoke about other things, but their comments tended to be short.

Audio:

http://www.vcdl.org/Norfolk/NorfolkCityCouncil082907.mp3

Blog:

http://tinyurl.com/2dk8gj

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2. VT Panel report - predictably suggests useless gun control
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Here is a link to the Virginia Tech Panel's report:

http://tinyurl.com/yqc4hz

Here's the Cliff's Notes:

* The report suggests that ALL gun sales have a background check and that if a gun didn't go through the background check and is used in a crime, that the seller will be in trouble. This would not have changed the outcome at Virginia Tech at all - Cho had passed the federal and state background checks.

* The report discusses, but not make a formal recommendation on the regulation of ammunition sales. Again, it would not have changed anything, as Cho had passed federal and state background checks.

* The report admits that banning higher-capacity magazines would not have made a difference, thus the report seems to be NOT supporting an 'assault weapon' ban.

* The report argues that allowing students to carry would not be justified since such shooting events are so rare. YET, the report goes on and on, page after page, about elaborate and expensive security measures. If such things are so rare that we don't need to arm ourselves, then why bother with all the expensive security measures? The Panel fails to see that Cho planned his attack carefully, even doing a dry-run. Whatever security is in place, one can get around.

* To justify that students can't be trusted with a gun, the report
lists a news story about mixing of guns and alcohol on campus. The
report admits that most students are not killed by guns, but by car accident and drug and alcohol overdoses. Hmmm - perhaps illegal drugs and alcohol should not be tolerated on campus, while leaving
the lawfully carried guns alone. That combination would REALLY save
lives! Again, the report doesn't address that it will be ADULTS with concealed handgun permits that will be carrying.

* The report suggests that either the Attorney General or the General Assembly needs to completely clarify what a college or university can or cannot do in regards to banning lawfully carried guns. We agree and we are working on getting just such a clarification.

* The report suggests that colleges and universities be allowed to set their own policies on guns. NO! Unelected individuals telling me if I can or cannot defend myself in a life-and-death emergency?!?
We don't even allow LOCAL ELECTED politicians to do that, thanks to firearms preemption laws. The Commonwealth needs to deal with this by making it clear that permit holders, be they students, employees, or visitors, can carry everywhere on campus.

* The report also states, "GMU did not know they could have established a policy to stop the weapons from being carried into the building" referring the VCDL's attendance at the GMU part of the Virginia Tech Panel hearings. Sheesh - all those armed gun owners at the hearing and it was totally uneventful. No shoot-outs or other violence. Nice and quiet. But poor little GMU didn't get to practice tyranny that day because it didn't know that it could, the Panel pouts. VCDL does not believe what the report said to be a true statement anyway, as there is no statutory authority for such a ban, just a vague Attorney General's opinion.

I predicted a few days ago that the report would come to the wrong conclusions about the necessity for gun control on campuses and I was right. No big surprise, the makeup of the panel and statements telegraphed to the press seemed pretty clear.

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3. Reminder - Richmond VCDL membership meeting tonight!
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VCDL is having a membership meeting in the Henrico/Richmond area on Thursday, August 30th, from 7 to 8:30 PM at the Tuckahoe Library.
Like all membership meetings, the public is welcome - so bring along some friends and family members!

VCDL member George Marchenko, who is running against Henrico Board of Supervisor member Patricia O'Bannon, will address the group briefly and answer any questions about his candidacy.

Also, VCDL member Matt Martin, who is also running for the Henrico Board of Supervisors will also talk about his candidacy.

The address for the library is:

Tuckahoe Area Library
1901 Starling Drive
Richmond VA 23229
Ph: (804) 270-9578

After the meeting we will adjourn to a local restaurant for continued fellowship.

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VA-ALERT is a project of the Virginia Citizens Defense League, Inc.
(VCDL). VCDL is an all-volunteer, non-partisan grassroots organization dedicated to defending the human rights of all Virginians. The Right to Keep and Bear Arms is a fundamental human right.

VCDL web page: http://www.vcdl.org
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[Robert Hairless]

One major problem with this report and with every other analysis supporting colleges as so-called "Gun Free Zones" is that all of them ignore some of the most obvious and vital realities of higher education today: the "non traditional student" and the graduate or professional student.

Non traditional students are defined as those age 25 and older. Colleges actively court them, especially retirees and senior citizens. As a group they are among the most stable in our society. They have worked, earned paychecks, and raised families.

But the moment those older students step foot on a college campus they are considered to be potentially unstable, careless, and irresponsible, and they are denied the ability to carry a firearm when the state has licensed them to do so in other places.

Graduate students and those studying at a professional level also are older and more focused than undergraduates but all of them are lumped together and treated as infants with respect to the ability to carry defensive firearms when licensed to do so elsewhere by the state.

Inevitably the dialogue is cast in irrational terms such as "More guns on campus?" That question makes no more sense than "More football players on campus?" or "More women on campus?" or "More bearded, T-shirt wearing, semi-alcoholic professors on campus?" or "More lecherous, pornography collecting, megalomaniac, embezzling college presidents on campus?"

None of those questions have any relevance at all to education and all of them are loaded. One might better ask "More self-serving, pandering politicians and consultants who have biases or financial interests in the outcome of their reports on campus?"

The much more intelligent and relevant question to ask is what there is about colleges today that give their managers the belief that perfectly normal, stable people who are trustworthy off campus will turn into crazed killers once they enter the college environment. I am open to the possibility that the proposition is true, but if it is true the solution is to fix colleges so that they do not destroy people and make them crazy. The obvious way to begin solving that problem is to rid colleges of presidents and all other administrators who are incapable of operating the instution properly. They should not be allowed to shift the burden of their administrative failings to the students. Parents of those students, in turn, must come to their senses and recognize what all such policies as "Gun Free Zones" tell them about the incompetence of college presidents and administrators who boast of those policies.

American colleges were not always "Gun Free Zones." That concept is quite recent. It is insulting to mature people of all ages and it is a complete and utter failure. Because the concept itself is symptomatic of the college administrators' own incompetence they of course insist that it must be continued and even broadened. How could they do otherwise.