UPDATED: Viriginia Tech and security rationing: a left market anarchist analysis
So much for “Gun Free Zones”. Today, the Virginia Tech Massacre took 32 innocent lives. Yet in 2002 the Appalachian Law School shooting, also in Virginia, resulted in only three deaths as it was stopped by armed students. Note carefully the joy with which the Virginia Tech establishment greeted the prospect of continued student disarmament last year:
Virginia Tech spokesman Larry Hincker was happy to hear the bill was defeated. “I’m sure the university community is appreciative of the General Assembly’s actions because this will help parents, students, faculty and visitors feel safe on our campus.”
Yet one armed student on the Virginia Tech campus could have made the difference between 32 dead and perhaps 3, as the Appalachian Law School shooting demonstrates. Whose interests are at
stake here, in light of Hincker’s comment above? Larry Hincker is an example of the mixed “business & state” managerial class of statist corporatism, with its Orwellian “Human Resources” departments and government policy wonkery. The managerial class always prefers to keep students and workers in a state of authority-dependent false consciousness, mentally unable to take initiative lest they potentially organize and get uppity.
“No one knew what to do. No one knew where to go.”
One of the key artificial psychological impediments this neo-liberal establishment uses to keep us regular folk in line is “security rationing“. By prohibiting individuals from attempting to make reasonable provisions for their own security, security service provision is restricted on the supply side (in terms of supply and demand). That is, after the manner of all monopolists and cartelists backed by coercive government-doled privilege, supply is not allowed to grow, despite the price of security services being kept artificially high (you ever try to hire a bodyguard?), as a consequence of suppliers being restricted to only approved service providers — police and corporate security organs. Do-It-Yourself, the typical market response of the lower classes to temporary unaffordability of important services, is not allowed at all or is severely curtailed by means of statist restrictions both blatant and subtle. Even in states where concealed carry licenses are doled out to the most trusted and subservient sheep, for example, corporate human resources and legal departments typically choose to restrict the ability of workers to carry arms in the workplace. The monopolists themselves, of course, are front and center in the effort to restrict supply via protecting the exclusivity of their own state-granted privilege:
“Some gun owners questioned the university’s authority, while the Virginia Association of Chiefs of Police came out against the presence of guns on campus.”
By allowing provision of security services only by establishment controlled sources, we are kept in a perpetual state of helpless infantile dependency — unaccustomed to notions of independence and personal responsibility the ruling class might find inconvenient. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is turned by the ruling classes toward the end of keeping the exploited classes in a constant state of anxiety. Like a monopolistic drug dealer with a safe turf protected by bribed cops, the product of security is doled out solely at the convenience of the people in charge, so as to keep the junkies enslaved. The result is a systematic inculcation of learned helplessness of the sort domestic violence opponents would surely recognize. Its impact on the oppressed is not confined to strictly the issue of arms and crime, as this security rationing induced helplessness shapes the overall attitude of the oppressed.
The right to bear arms is an aspect of the basic, fundamental human right of self-defense. The Virginia Tech administration has blood on its hands by reason of its disallowal of student carry. I hope they get sued into oblivion.
See also: Uncivil Defense, Disloyal Opposition, Independent Country, End the War on Freedom, Winter Patriot, Black Krishna, Guerillas in the Matrix, Paul Craig Roberts and (for the anti-war angle, in particular) No Quarter.
UPDATE: The news story and quote from Larry Hincker above are dated January 31, 2006. We now learn that after the August 2006 escaped inmate security scare at the Virginia Tech campus, a student gun-owner published an editorial begging for students to be allowed to carry firearms in the future. The editorial was met with a rebuttal published in the same paper just a few days later by the same Larry Hincker from the Virginia Tech administration. Quoth Larry:
The writer would have us believe that a university campus, with tens of thousands of young people, is safer with everyone packing heat. Imagine the continual fear of students in that scenario. We’ve seen that fear here, and we don’t want to see it again.
…
Guns don’t belong in classrooms. They never will. Virginia Tech has a very sound policy preventing same.
The only thing Larry Hincker has “prevented” by his opposition to student self-defense is student survival in at least 32 cases. Mr. Hincker is the Virginia Tech Associate Vice President for University Relations. If you’d like to politely let him know how you feel, his work phone number can be found here.
Hat tip to: Kent McManigal
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Like you, I hope the Virginia Tech administration gets sued. However, even if they do I’d not expect those efforts to center around retribution for stripping firearms from students. Instead, I expect a focus on their “poor handling” of “the situation” which has been “buzzing” in the media.
I really like your analysis above. I wonder what information “the authorities” might suppress.
I’ve read some reports that state the shooter was Chinese, here on a visa. That’s moderately interesting. If true, I also wonder how long before the “close the borders” whoop goes up. That will work about as well as “gun free zones” do.
It seems like there must be more information which the media either can’t get or won’t share.
[…] Brad Spangler […]
Good post Brad. I would hope that people who choose to carry a gun are those that are well trained and practiced in using them (like the two people from Appalachian Law School - a cop and a well trained enthusiast) and not just any slack-jawed yokel deciding he or she can keep a rusty revolver in their room and use it whenever they want.
I’m hoping that those who want to carry are responsible. I could easily have seen both shootings having a WORSE turn out - The two guys in the Appalachian Law School shooing each other or the VT shooting having armed, scared and adrenaline filled students shooing other armed, scared and adrenaline filled students, thinking they were the shooter. Or shooting other innocent students by mistake. Or being shot by the first police on the scene.
I don’t know how to socially enforce that idea of being responsible about carrying (because I sure wouldn’t advocate any law to do it), but it has to be said that if you are not responsible about it, you aren’t going to help. You may even make the situation worse.
Perhaps the SDS or some other campus groups could organized volunteers or a private campus club who would carry (and be known to carry), that way letting some of the lazier kids off the hook and ensuring armed students are probably well trained.
I don’t know how to approach my concern about untrained, immature and stressed out students carrying guns. Maybe they just won’t…
[…] Besides that whole VPI thingy with the nutcase with the guns and the disarmed victims without the guns and such, but all the smart people have commented on that already (Brad Spangler’s post once again stands out). […]
Gun safety training is not a terribly difficult thing to acquire, and it is basically a lot of common sense. Now, I used to feel the same way you do, but having shot guns more often lately I really feel like they’re not hard to control. And I think a high school student who can be trusted with a car can certainly be trusted with a gun, let alone a college student.
Besides, the question isn’t whether people should be allowed to carry guns - it’s whether there is an authority that can legitimately prohibit it.
“Besides, the question isn’t whether people should be allowed to carry guns - it’s whether there is an authority that can legitimately prohibit it.”
Yeah I agree. And that’s not really the point was trying to make either.
What I’m getting at I guess is that merely allowing guns to be carried is not some panacea that would have prevented this tragedy. I think that a gun in an untrained and irresponsible hand could easily have made this worse, not better. I think its allowing those who wish to act responsibly to do so, to allow students and staff to rely on themselves, not just the official sanctioned security forces.
But it could have easily made things worse not better. That’s not to say people shouldn’t be allowed to carry, so long as they aren’t harming others. Of course they should. But I don’t know if that would have made any real difference in VA..it may have made things worse.
I would hope that only those well trained in the use of guns would want to carry them, making the kind of distributed protection work well.
“And I think a high school student who can be trusted with a car can certainly be trusted with a gun, let alone a college student.”
You spend much time with high school students lately? There must be ways of minimizing threats posed by firearms other than strapping every kid with a gun.
What kind of social network is being built when the individuals of a society walk around armed on a regular basis, always wary of threats around the corner? You wanna generate more paranoid nuts who eventually crack and go on school shooting sprees? Start by encouraging their sense of alienation and environmental hostility when you throw a holster on everyone they see around them. For every individual you protect this way you will be killing a dozen more.
Lets take a step back from the knee-jerk ideological response and try to think what would actually happen in the circumstances we propose. Lets admit that sometimes horrible things happen that we can’t prevent and not rush to a cure that is destined to generate a lot more fatality over time.
Sure, we feel a bit helpless when we imagine that some wacko has a gun and we don’t. That is a natural concern, but lets temper our concern with reason. In the context of a society consisting of millions of individuals you are statistically FAR safer when you encourage people to refrain from carrying weapons routinely. School shootings are horrible, but statistically they are an anomaly.
If you think two people are less likely to shoot each other when they both have guns, try visiting the ER of any major city next weekend and tell me how the experiment is working so far. People who carry guns use them, even the most level headed ones are more likely to make fatal mistakes than heroically save the day.
Making gun possession illegal isn’t going to stop people from shooting each other. Neither is encouraging everyone to run straight to the source of the problem for a convenient solution. If you want to encourage people to do something to avoid school shootings, how about encouraging people to participate in more community activities and seek therapy when they feel full of angst? Lets tone down the testosterone and turn on our social awareness.
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[…] I simply do not see any campus firearms opponents offering concrete reasons why students shouldn’t be allowed to defend themselves with weapons. Where is the substance to their arguments? Are we now prizing our emotional innocence over our physical well-being? Or are we just so drunk with the illusion of managed security, where we pay certain people to do the dirty work of armed defense for us, that we can’t even acknowledge when the system fails? That’s the argument Brad Spangler makes: By allowing provision of security services only by establishment controlled sources, we are kept in a perpetual state of helpless infantile dependency — unaccustomed to notions of independence and personal responsibility the ruling class might find inconvenient. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is turned by the ruling classes toward the end of keeping the exploited classes in a constant state of anxiety. Like a monopolistic drug dealer with a safe turf protected by bribed cops, the product of security is doled out solely at the convenience of the people in charge, so as to keep the junkies enslaved. The result is a systematic inculcation of learned helplessness of the sort domestic violence opponents would surely recognize. Its impact on the oppressed is not confined to strictly the issue of arms and crime, as this security rationing induced helplessness shapes the overall attitude of the oppressed. […]
I’m almost certain there are. In fact, there’s no need for universal firearms carrying. But, after all, that wasn’t my point.
I’m fully willing to admit that. That’s a different thing than wondering whether anything could be done differently. But I’m certainly willing to talk about it.
Yes, inner city crime is JUST LIKE campus crime!
Please, when you’re ready to talk about this with me, and not some strawman NRA loon, let me know. And when you’re ready to offer concrete reasons to prohibit guns on campus - not just vague fears, breathless predictions, and hyperbole - I’ll be more than happy to continue this conversation.
Given your characterization of my response, I don’t see anything approaching a constructive conversation happening here. I’ll happily admit that I don’t have anything other than “vague fears, breathless predictions, and hyperbole” to match your concrete reasoning skills, and take my leave.
[…] in their right mind is in favor of general mayhem. In contrast with the Virginia Tech shooting, I’m not so sure more widespread civilian concealed carry could have done much to help those […]
[…] the perceived injured party? The school is, at best, incidental to the event, and may even hold some responsibility for it. But all I see are flags, bumper stickers, etc. with VT logos, colors, etc. - as if […]