from the Investor's Business Daily of April 20, 2007, page A14:
Unarmed And Dangerous
Gun Control: Five years ago, armed college students subdued a gunman embarking on a college killing spree.
Last year, Virginia Tech applauded the fact that its students couldn’t do the same.
On Jan. 16, 2002, a killer stalked the campus of the Appalachian School of Law in Grundy, Va., not far from the site of Monday’s massacre at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg. A disgruntled former student killed Law Dean L. Anthony Sutin, associate professor Thomas Blackwell and a student.
Two of the three law students who overpowered Peter Odighizuwa before he could kill more innocent victims were armed. Mikael Gross and Tracy Bridges, seeing the killing spree begin, went to their cars, retrieved their guns and used them to disarm the shooter.
As John Lott Jr. tells it in his book, “The Bias Against Guns” (Regnery, 2003), while most were fleeing the gunman, “Mikael and Tracy were prepared to do something quite different: Both immediately ran to their cars and got their guns. Mikael had to run about one hundred yards to get to his car.”
Lott continues: “Along with Ted Besen (who was unarmed), they approacheci Peter from different sides. As Tracy explains it, “I stopped at my vehicle and got a handgun, a revolver. Ted went toward Peter, and I aimed the gun at (Peter), and Peter tossed his gun down.” Then the three jumped on the gunman and the killing stopped.
Bernard Goldberg, in his book “Arrogance” (Warner, 2003), reports how the media reported the tragic events of that day. He notes that Lott did a LexisNexk search and found that only four of 208 news reports mentioned the rescuers had guns. James Eaves-Johnson did his own LexkNexis search for the Daily Iowan (University of Iowa) and found that only two of 88 stories mentioned that armed students subdued the killer and prevented more deaths.
Similarly, few media outlets have mentioned that, in the right-to-carry state of Virginia - whose freshman senator, James Webb, packs heat, and whose aide was caught carrying that gun in a bag onto Senate grounds - the Virginia Tech campus was a gun-free zone. At least for the prey, if not the predators. And Virginia Tech officials wanted it that way.
Last year, House Bill l572 died in the Virginia General Assembly, failing to even get out of the Committee on Militia, Police and Public Safety. The legislation was designed, as the Roanoke Times reported, to prohibit public universities from making “rules or regulations limiting or abridging the ability of a student who possesses a valid concealed handgun permit . . . from lawfully carrying a concealed handgun.”
On hearing of the bill’s defeat, Virginia Tech spokesman Larry Hincker said: “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 campus.” And predators like Cho Seung-Hui.
One wonders if Cho Seung-Hui would have even walked on campus with a gun if he knew his victims were able to defend themselves. Or how the story would have been different had Prof. Liviu Librescu, a Holocaust survivor who lost his life barricading a classroom door so his students could escape, had been able to fire back.
