Potemkin Liberty
By Mitch Berg
A neighbor of mine points me to the same article Ann Althouse hit today, at the U of Wisconsin paper. Students in the U of W system are allowed to keep their hunting guns on campus, albeit secured by campus security:
Kooi loves to hunt and didn’t want to give up the sport at college. He’s one of about 115 UW-Stevens Point students who store their weapons — guns, knives, bows and arrows — on campus at a secure site controlled by campus police.
Six of the UW-System’s 13 four-year colleges, including UW-Madison, operate such sites, a nod to the prevalence and intensity of the state’s hunting culture. The storage sites are at their busiest right now with this weekend’s opening of the gun deer season.
Ann was sanguine about the news:
The University of Wisconsin is not a gun-free zone.
Wish I could share Ann’s enthusiasm. The next graf highlights why:
Heightened security concerns following a shooting massacre in April at Virginia Tech have not derailed the storage sites. In fact, supporters say they are needed now more than ever to keep campuses safe.
While I’m happy that the U of W system has stuck a thumb in the eye of political correctness, that last bit makes no sense. A shotgun locked in a police storage locker does absolutely no good against a Virginia-Tech-style shooting.
Perhaps worse, it’s persuading at least one group of kids that there’s a little liberty – the actual possession of your firearms – that it’s perfectly acceptable to give up if you’re a law-abiding citizen.
One or two steps up, one step back. We can hope.
