{"id":2484,"date":"2008-04-24T12:05:27","date_gmt":"2008-04-24T17:05:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=2484"},"modified":"2008-04-24T12:05:27","modified_gmt":"2008-04-24T17:05:27","slug":"empty-holsters-full-preconceptions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=2484","title":{"rendered":"Empty Holsters.  Full Preconceptions."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In the mania of this week, I&#8217;ve not been able to devote the full breadth I&#8217;ve wanted to to the &#8220;Empty Holsters&#8221; protest by Students for Concealed Carry on Campus &#8211; the group that&#8217;s protesting against the forced disarmament of law-abiding, carry-permit-holding college students and staff while on most American college campuses.<\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s an active protest going on at Saint Cloud State, though, and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.scsuscholars.com\/2008\/04\/empty-holsters-at-scsu.html\">King Banaian covers not only it<\/a>, but some of the deeply-deranged response from part of the SCSU community.\u00a0<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>These were before the President&#8217;s letter, and all were thinking that somehow it could and should be stopped. Afterwards, the comments turned to:<br \/>\n<span \/><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>It is unfortunate that people believe simple slogans like &#8220;Guns don&#8217;t&#8217; kill people&#8211;People do&#8221; to answer complex questions about guns, freedom, and safety!<\/li>\n<li>the fact that there are people who are lobbying for the right to bring guns to a university campus &#8212; into classrooms and university buildings, no less &#8212; fills me with extreme terror.<\/li>\n<li>Nothing about these arguments so far even acknowledges that the tragedies at Virginia tech, Recori, columbine, and numerous others ever happened.<\/li>\n<li>I know that the opposition would say that &#8220;dangerous criminals and armed killers&#8221; would still be armed, but I like the odds better if fewer students are &#8220;carrying&#8221;&#8211;especially those young people whose good judgment is not yet in full blossom.<\/li>\n<li>I can just see it now: a grading complaint. Both the professor and the student put their guns on the table, and then begin the conversation.<\/li>\n<li>I accept the rights of the holster wearers to illustrate their opinions, but I hope our elected officials have the good sense to not change the laws to their liking. I\u2019d be more comfortable if the holstered protestors also wore their marksmanship merit badges, military sharpshooter rankings, or any other evidence of requisite skill and composure.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/blockquote>\n<blockquote><p>I did not participate much in this discussion, as I realized how little I knew, but one would have to say that if the purpose of an Empty Holster Protest was to start a dialogue, they certainly got that. The question is, what happens after starting it?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>That&#8217;s always a good question.\u00a0 I&#8217;ve felt for years that post-secondary academics are particularly ill-suited to &#8220;dialog&#8221;; too many of them are used to carrying on extended monologues; for too many, it seems, &#8220;dialog&#8221; and its requisite &#8220;listening&#8221; (even to those who are not academic peers!) stopped about the time they had to defend their PhD.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the mania of this week, I&#8217;ve not been able to devote the full breadth I&#8217;ve wanted to to the &#8220;Empty Holsters&#8221; protest by Students for Concealed Carry on Campus &#8211; the group that&#8217;s protesting against the forced disarmament of law-abiding, carry-permit-holding college students and staff while on most American college campuses. There&#8217;s an active [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,18,22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2484","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education","category-pc","category-victim-disarmament"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2484","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2484"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2484\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2484"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2484"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}