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Jill Nance/The News & Advance
Robert Dowlut, General Counsel for the NRA, speaks to Liberty University students, faculty and members of the community on Friday.
With a “Guns Save Lives” sticker on his breast pocket, Philip Van Cleave, president of the Virginia Citizens Defense League, made the case Friday for why students should be allowed to carry concealed firearms on college campuses during
the “To Keep and Bear” Second Amendment symposium at Liberty University School of Law.
“At the end of the day, I don’t think there should be restrictions of firearms. Period,” Van Cleave said during the question and answer period.
“There are always going to be criminals; they will always get guns. But the key is, can you protect yourself? God gave you one life and I think he wants you to protect it.”
Guest speakers Van Cleave and Robert Dowlut, general counsel for the National Rifle Association, took center stage during the two-hour dialogue in the law school’s Supreme Courtroom — a full-scale replica of the U.S. Supreme Court, complete with a nine-member bench and Roman columns.
More than 100 students, faculty and community members attended the event, which was sponsored by the Liberty chapter of the Federalist Society, a national organization that advocates a legal system based on individual liberty, traditional values and the rule of law.
The brainchild behind the symposium was third-year law student Jeremy Morris, who believes in a strict interpretation of the Second Amendment.
“Especially in this time of Comrade Obama, excuse me, President Obama, we want to make sure our gun rights are protected,” Morris said during his introductory remarks, eliciting some chuckles from the audience.
Dowlut’s speech focused on the status of gun rights on the state and national levels. He drew on his experience with the NRA and court cases old and new to show how gun law has been shaped over the past century.
“State courts are a very important bulwark of freedom,” Dowlut said.
“The national Constitution is a floor, not a ceiling,” he said, adding that broader gun rights may be achieved on the state level.
Van Cleave, a former police officer, heads up the Virginia Citizens Defense League, a grassroots organization devoted to advancing Second Amendment rights in Virginia.
He argued that lives might have been saved during the Virginia Tech massacre if students and faculty with concealed firearms permits had been allowed to arm themselves while on campus. Van Cleave said he believes that future shootings can be prevented or mitigated with looser gun laws, and cites colleges in Utah and Colorado as leaders in allowing guns on campus.
Self-defense with firearms is a basic right, he said.
“The worst crimes we have, when you think back to all those massacres, they happen in gun- free zones.”
The symposium was rounded out with comments from Virginia Tech student Ken Stanton, who founded the VT chapter of Students for Concealed Carry on Campus (SCCC). Stanton, who lost a friend in the shootings, said he was compelled to start the chapter as a way to make his campus safer.
Liberty University also has a chapter of SCCC, headed by Clint Armstrong, a student and full-time IT employee at the school. Last spring, Liberty’s board of directors decided that the school should stay gun-free, after Armstrong and others approached the school about allowing people with concealed handgun permits to carry weapons on campus.
Armstrong, who attended the symposium, said he hopes Liberty will change its policy on concealed handguns.
“I have my concealed carry permit and I carry a gun everywhere else I go, but I work here five days a week, full-time,” he said.
“It just never made sense that the place where I spend the most amount of time I have to be disarmed. I’m not as safe as I am when I go to Walmart or a restaurant.”
Morris is also a strong proponent for allowing guns on campus.
“We live in a violent society, a society where a seemingly peaceful, safe community, like here in Southern Virginia, can see tremendous violence.
“I have a natural right to protect myself that’s guaranteed to me in the Constitution, and derivatively through the Bill of Rights.”
Federalist Society president Benjamin Boyd said that the symposium was a good fit for university.
“Liberty University is well known for its conservative positions. We have an automatic appeal in that most conservatives and many evangelicals are emphatically supporting gun rights.”
He said he hopes the speakers’ messages reached some anti-gun people in the audience, even if they were in the minority.
“It’s good just to see people coming together and speaking about gun rights.”
Reader Reactions
OK Cosmo, I’ll type slowly for you.
In Tombstone of the day, like many western towns trying to improve their image, it was considered vulgar and uncivilized to wear a gun out in the open - as most cowboys and such did. On the other hand, it was normal and accepted that town-folk commonly carried concealed firearms. The laws were very classist.
Had the Clantons kept their guns concealed, the Earps would not have had an excuse to accost them because they would not have been in violation of the town’s rules.
The Earps were roundly criticized for forcing a major confrontation over such a minor issue.
By the way, I received my first rifle when I was 9, have been shooting all my life and carrying routinely for over 25 years - all without the slightest mishap or problem.
JeffKnox…. Can you please tell me how this makes ANY sense at all?
...“there was no rule against concealed guns. Most importantly, the excuse for starting the “Shootout at the OK Corral” was enforcing the gun law. The Clantons and their friends were not engaging in any criminal activity, they simply failed to disarm.“...
But, you said there was no rule against concealed guns…?
You see, this kind of sloppy reasoning is EXACTLY why people like me get nervous when people like you get near sharp objects… GUNS? You must be kidding!
Cosmo, I imagine that if you were arrested it was for trespass and refusing to do what your hosts – the property owners – asked you to do. As to your question: It was Tombstone, not Dodge City, and the rule was “No Visible Guns” there was no rule against concealed guns. Most importantly, the excuse for starting the “Shootout at the OK Corral” was enforcing the gun law. The Clantons and their friends were not engaging in any criminal activity, they simply failed to disarm. So this was a case of “Make yourself defenseless or we will kill you!” How is that reasonable?
NatureLover & JediHunter; You’re absolutely right, numbers can be manipulated and should always be suspect. That’s why Gary Kleck, a liberal professor at Florida, has consistently released his raw data for peer review – something most anti-rights “researchers” consistently refuse to do. The general consensus has always been that Kleck’s estimates are in the ball park. By the way, most of those defensive uses don’t involve killing anyone, or even shooting. In most cases the assailant abandons his activity when he realizes he could be shot.
Ken: What if the guy next to you in class was a cop? Would you think that the gun under his coat was interfering with the “life of the mind?” The debate isn’t about “allowing guns on campus,” that’s not something that can actually be controlled. The question is about forcing qualified people who accept responsibility for their own security to abdicate that responsibility and disarm just because they choose to work or attend classes at a college. I carried a gun routinely when I was in college with no problems at all. It never bothered anyone or interfered with their learning experience.
I was arrested the other day for attempting to set up a movie screen at Liberty. It was my intention to show excerpts from Kevin Kostner’s portrayal of “Wyatt Earp”. They were having a “Gun-Fun Festival” with the NRA at the Academy of Legal Shenanigans over there. It was my intention to get some of the experts to comment on where Wyatt, Doc Holiday and the rest of the Earp boys went wrong in their thinking that Dodge City would be a safer place if they “confiscated” all the guns, as apposed to handing out guns to everybody who wasn’t already carrying a firearm. It’s something I had always wondered about, you know?
Most of Kleck’s numbers are suspect. Numbers can always be used anyway they want them to be.
After reading this, one has to ask yourself what kind of society are we becoming? It is difficult to imagine a classroom environment pursuing the “life of the mind” concept of higher education while the students are packing heat! Strange indeed, but this August showed that we are, to a degree, a nation of crazies!
Not much news coverage about those 7,000 incidents of self-defense each day. Must be pretty routine. Seems mighty unusual to me, and a highly suspect number.
Guns are used in this country 2.5 MILLION times a year for self defense (google Dr Gary Kleck). That is almost 7000 times a day. Any place there are people you need the option of self defense. Guns do not restrict the free speech at our colleges and universities. They are the force that has kept it free for over 200 years. Go VCDL! Go Philip!
It would seem that the N & A has once again moved back into the “anything that happens at LU is news” mode.
These people running this symposium define themselves as conservatives, but they are on the far-right fringe of that broad description. This is more the same reporting that had the smirking George Allen as some sort of hero telling the 45 million uninsured to their hands off of his free insurance.
These stories are not news but merely cheerleading for a big advertiser.
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