Virginia Tech shooting

[Seamus Fermanagh]

Is this generally adhered too? (rules are too often broken)

Having taught for 7 different colleges over the course of 20 years, I can say that the answer is, for the most part, yes.

Numerous small pocket knives/nail clippers are carried and nobody ran around prohibiting people from having decorative letter openers, so the ban wasn't absolute, but I was aware of only one gun on campus (and that was carried unloaded with a trigger lock in place by an off-duty police officer who'd forgotten to put it in her lock-box in the trunk of her car).


Rabbit:

I'm not sure that weapons in the hands of students would have helped (though the ones with the discipline to get the concealed permits are often the most responsible owners). Shooting is one thing, shooting accurately under high-stress situations is another, and all the guns in the world are pretty valueless unless the shooter can hit a target under those conditions.

Of course, my solution would be to make gun ownership and training mandatory, so our USA gun-haters wouldn't like my solution.

EDIT: just read your latest post. The quick-thinking chap in the front of the room should have about 20 other sets of parents chipping in for his education for the next year or two til he graduates. Lacking a gun, he did everything right during a crisis.

Okay, yeah, maybe if that one had been armed, the shots going back out through the door might have ended it earlier.