FITS,
USC students for concealed carry are participating in the empty holster protest again this year. It runs all of this week. We have seen quite a few students around campus wearing empty holsters to show that law abiding citizens are defenseless at school.
Many states allow campus carry and have not seen any increase in violence, in fact many have seen a marked decrease in violence. South Carolina pretends that it is a leader in personal freedom, yet we have some of the most restrictive gun laws in the south.
We are just asking for the same right to defend ourselves that we exercise almost anywhere else in the state.
There are a number of empty holster pictures on our Facebook page, feel free to use any we’ve shared.
Sincerely,
Kenny Adamson
USC SCC President
SIC SEZ
Kenny thank you for reaching out! As you know FITS is hard core pro-Second Amendment and we support your efforts 100 percent.
49 comments
Nice idea, unfortunately the legislature won’t give a damn. Gotta vote for people who do.
Handguns aren’t enough. They need open carry M16’s with full auto. That way, when a firefight breaks out, the victims will have parity.
ISRAEL has a lot fewer college muggings and beat-downs than USC….I suppose it has nothing to do with its armed population…
Will we get to bomb busses too?
Do college kids (except Arabs of course) routinely get to carry their assault rifles to Biol 101 class in Tel Aviv? I kind of doubt it.
Not to mention the tops of buildings continually patrolled by the military with uzis.
Notice that, at least as of now, all of those kids in Pa are still alive. Wouldn’t be if a gun had been involved.
Oh, horse shit!
I have a semi-auto hammer that I’m converting to full auto, with a night scope.
Excellent point. We’ll have to see how Fox News and NRA contort to politicize this one.
Perhaps 22 students wouldn’t have been wounded if a gun had been involved by a CWP citizen.
Perhaps if there were no gun free zones, mass shooters would always choose venues where there were lots of amateurs with guns who would shoot each other in a panic.
There will always be places.where liberals are gathered, but a lot of them are hypocrites and actually carry guns.
I’ll separate into two posts, because there are two points I’d like to use to counter your argument.
Point number 1: Knife attacks can be very deadly, and occur a lot more in places where guns are hard to get.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osaka_school_massacre
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mamoru_Takuma
8 dead, 15 wounded, using only a kitchen knife.
http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/01/world/asia/china-railway-attack/
29 dead, 130 wounded.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanping_school_massacre
8 dead, 5 wounded.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_attacks_in_China_%282010%E2%80%9312%29
A listing of various knife attacks in China, with varying ranges of injured versus killed.
I could go on, but I believe the point has been made.
Point number 2: The right to carry on campus is not necessarily to stop school shootings, knife attacks, or any psychotic mass murderers whatsoever.
This is a really difficult concept for some people to grasp, but the right to defend oneself is not tied to becoming some kind of hero and saving tens of lives from some random, crazed bad guy. It is for general self-defense.
It’s the same reason some carry a tazer, or mace, except that a tazer or a can of pepper spray may not be appropriate in all situations. For instance, if someone tries to strong-arm you with brute strength, a tazer may take them down. If someone is trying to grab a woman and wrestle her down, a can of pepper spray can disable them and allow an escape.
If someone breaks into your dorm room or apartment and is armed, or if someone tries to mug you on the street, or if someone tries to carjack you, or rob your business, or point their gun at someone else out of rage, or perhaps to commit one of the previous offenses, or any other number of scenarios like them, tazers and pepper spray won’t do jack shit to save your life or the life of some other person(s). Deadly force must be met with deadly force.
These are somewhat common scenarios with gun-related crimes, and in Columbia, they are a bit more likely to happen.
The point of campus carry is not to prevent some horrific event from being carried out by a psychotic killer (which may or may not happen), it is for people who want to protect themselves from common crimes, ones that happen frequently here in the capital city even.
We let people carry nonlethal protection because it helps stop assaults, rapes, kidnappings, and other crimes. People should be able to protect themselves from criminals wielding deadly weapons, too.
USC is a “gun free zone” that means a criminal can shoot up the place without fear some CWP holder can stop him. WOW now that really makes sense. How many innocent people have to suffer and die before the politicians figure out what Wayne LaPierre said is right? ” The only cure for a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.”
“The only problem with a good guy with a gun is an idiot with a gun.” – Euwe Max
With liberty comes responsibility. TJ I think.
What this country needs is a good ten cent bullet proof vest.
There are a bunch of idiots at gun shows. Never heard of a mass shooting. In fact many mass shooters have high intelligence.
high intelligence
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when a shooting breaks out, if everyone is armed with M16’s with full auto… are you telling me everyone will flip the safety off and shoot the perp.. and no one will see anyone shooting at the perp and mistake him *for* the perp?
I mean, toast falls on the floor butter down… didn’t anyone teach you how things actually work?
No. I’m saying the per will pick a gun free place.
No. I’m saying he will pick a gun free place. He is not an idiot. Just evil or sick.
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In cases in Washington and Texas in 2005, would-be heroes who tried to take action with licensed firearms were gravely wounded and killed. In the Tucson mass shooting in 2011, an armed citizen admitted to coming within a split second of gunning down the wrong person—one of the bystanders who’d helped tackle and subdue the actual killer.
If more guns in more places is a solution to the bloodshed, then why did we just witness the worst year for mass shootings in recent history?
With more guns in more hands than ever, not a single mass shooting has been stopped by an armed civilian… and there is not a single piece of evidence that any shooters deliberately chose to target locations where guns were prohibited.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/05/07/181998015/rate-of-u-s-gun-violence-has-fallen-since-1993-study-says
NPR no less. Not known as right wing. Pew Research and CDC say gun ownership up. Gun violence and homicides down dramatically since 1990. Very clever the limit your argument to mass killings. You must have known this.
Momma didn’t raise no fools.
Fools? Plural? Your siblings may not be fools. Still leaves the question open about you.
“no fools” is Southern slang (familiar with it?) for “any fools” – that is, she “didn’t raise any fools”… so that covers both my half brothers, and myself… which was your premise to begin with – that I cleverly avoided the slings and arrows of “normal gun violence statistics.”
“Highly trained” is a bit of a stretch considering that NYC has one of the worst police shooting accuracy states in recent years.
As far as amateur, a very large percentage of the CWP holders on campus are combat veterans who are better with a gun under stressful situations than most cops will ever be. Argue all you want, crime statistics are on my side. Do you want to see how average citizens perform under stress? Look at Detroit where there have been over a dozen self defense shootings so far this year, none resulting in accidental shootings of unintended targets.
I would encourage you to find evidence that shows how gun-free zones promote safety. Let me help you: try DC or Chicago, tell me how those stats work out for you.
NYC has one of the worst police shooting accuracy states in recent years.
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I imagine the NRA solution to this problem is to give them more guns.
I think at every Clemson vs. Carolina athletic event that every person (yes, the persons competing too!) must be armed to be admitted to the arena.
Someone is not understanding the meaning of “concealed”.
Otherwise a bunch of monkeys are just climbing the tree a little higher.
We are talking about the dirt peckers here…aim low as it were.
Oh, no, I think the message is indeed a good one. It displays how many students actually support campus carry, which was generally the point they wanted to make. However, it also gives you a glimpse into what campus carry could look like.
Sure, you wouldn’t see the gun if it was being concealed properly, but I find it interesting because such demonstrations can tell you just how likely it is to be around someone who may actually carry a concealed weapon with them if given the chance. It would be interesting to study in any case. (How many empty holsters could you see from a street corner in Five Points? How many in a USC parking lot?)
Kenny, I wish you and your group the best. Unfortunately, as you can see from some of the ignorant, knee-jerk, comments on here, the “blood will flow in the streets” and “it’ll be the wild West”, crowd never seems to get it or catch on. They just continue their blissful ignorance and beliefs that Gun Free Zones are safe places, never opening their eyes to the way things really work.
That…or they actually do work. Here’s a list of countries by per capita gun crime. Notice the ones that have gun control (not gun bans mind you) are the ones with fewer instances…and yours truly (the USA) is right up there with the worst of them.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-related_death_rate
and yours truly (the USA) is right up there with the worst of them.
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Not quite. The US isn’t even in the top 10 over all or in homicides, and 75 countries are missing from the report. Mexico has much stricter gun laws than the USA and they are much higher up the list. Your point is not well taken.
What are you talking about? Mexico is ranked 12th worst and the US is right behind it at 13th on the list. You need to re-sort the column under “Total”.
Total is not a valid statistic though we are not in the top ten there either. Homicides are all I really care about, since the total number contains suicide and I really would rather have someone put a bullet in their head than decide they want to take themselves out by driving head first in to me at 80 MPH going the wrong way on the interstate.
Since on seventy one countries are listed over half the countries in the world are missing, which means the sample is tainted anyway. Most of the middle east is missing as is Russia and most former Soviet Republics, all of which are likely to have higher gun related deaths than the United States.
I love guns but this is Hella Gay!
I never understood why as a graduate student I wasn’t able to legally carry in and out of the building. Some days I would have to park several blocks from the building, which was open and did not have regular security or cameras. It was not unusual to be out by myself after dark, and Columbia is not known as an especially safe city to begin with. I fully support concealed carry by any student with a CWP. I don’t know why we would think that a student with a CWP is any less responsible than a non-student with a CWP (who is allowed to carry where they are).
“Many states allow campus carry and have not seen any increase in violence, in fact many have seen a marked decrease in violence.”
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Yes, but their universities are not one-third filled with us South Carolinians.
Disgusting.
Why this obsession with the right to carry a concealed weapon? All of the defenses of the NRA are amplified if we go to non-concealed weapons. Register them and let people carry them openly. Then everyone can decide whether they trust the guy next to them with a gun or choose to stay away from him.
The problem is that makes it easier for people who are trying to commit crimes to steal guns. It also freaks out anti-2nd Amendment people and they end up calling the cops over a legally owned weapon.
Not good enough reasons. People have a right to know if someone is approaching them with a gun. Especially people who work in a cash business, and that includes restaurants and bars. Securing the gun should be the responsibility of the owner.
Where do you get this utter horse shit about a “right” to know if someone is approaching you with a gun????? Can you please tell me where this is written? You are around people every day that you leave your house who are armed. Thankfully, most are good guys. Occasionally, you will be around criminals who are armed but for whatever reason, have no compelling reason to harm you. That is life. Deal with it.
Typical liberal progressive nanny state BS. I was by someone with a gun and I was denied my right to be scared of it. I wasn’t killed by the CWP holder that was by me with a gun. Part of the culture of victimhood. I could be a victim and not even know it, and not have the chance to show outrage.
It also takes away the protection of uncertainty in criminals generated by those who carry, from sheeple like James. Many criminals don’t just pick someone at random and walk up to them to rob or otherwise abuse. They observe that person for a little while, calculating body language, appearance, and other factors, in trying to decide if a given person would make a good “mark” or not. They want someone who is likely to have what they want (money, jewelry, etc), who is not likely to resist, or who is unlikely to be able to put up a successful fight if they do resist. An elderly person who walks with a cane might in many cases might look like a good mark in that they would be unlikely to escape by outrunning the criminal or to put up much of a fight. Add a gun to that elderly person and proficiency with it, and the criminal has something to genuinely fear.
If they think there is a chance their mark is armed, they will not attack, as most criminals are cowards who just want to get something for nothing and get away without spilling a drop of their own blood, victim be damned.
I recall reading years ago when in school, about a species of butterfly that birds like to eat. I forget whether it was another species of butterfly or the same one, but it had members which looked identical to the ones that birds loved to eat, only that this species or sub-species had a revolting taste or made any bird that ate one deathly ill for a while. Supposedly, scientists who studied such things found that after eating one of the not-so-tasty butterflies, the birds never harmed any of the former group or its offshoots again. It was a form of protection for the species. Likewise, if a criminal or any of his buds had run up on an armed citizen by mistake, he will likely not be so quick to rob another citizen again. Depending on the psychological makeup of the criminal (hardened or experimenting with a life of crime) sometimes just showing him the gun may be enough to discourage him from doing such again. Others will necessarily be shot to stop them. Either way, the good guy usually goes home in one piece and that is how it should be.
geez, like the unarmed victim zones in all state facilities… maybe the empty holster protest should extend to government employees, contractors and folks that peaceably use our rest areas, state parks and other zones that are an invitation to perps that don’t care if guns are banned there or not.