Feeling safe yet?
This morning while I was enjoying some breakfast with fellow activists at the Keene State College dining commons, we noticed two men in military olive-green walking quickly across campus. One appeared to have a machine gun. Quickly we learned the school was on lockdown as rumor was that a man had used a gun in a “domestic incident” that happened somewhere off-campus.
Apparently the fact that someone used a gun somewhere in the vicinity of a college is now reason to shut down an entire campus. Perhaps that’s because weapons are banned from on campus, meaning that all law-abiding people are disarmed and would be easy targets for a gun-toting madman, who would not give a damn about the school’s gun restrictions.
New Hampshire is a very safe place because of its relative gun freedom compared to other states. It’s a shame that the good people on campus are not free to defend themselves. The law really needs to change on this matter, to restore the right to self-defense on school property. This police state stuff is getting ridiculous. Don’t the cops understand that this is New Hampshire and people have guns everywhere off campus?
The suspect, known as a local white supremacist scumbag.
Just because some local white supremacist loser fires a gun in a domestic dispute doesn’t mean the campus is in jeopardy. Even if it was in jeopardy, their current safety measures will most certainly result in bloodshed of campus staff, at minimum. Allow me to explain.
So, we finish up our meal and decide to exit the cafeteria, despite people telling us the school bureaucrats were standing at the doors, trying to discourage people from leaving the building. James Cleaveland, Conan, and I all left anyway. One lady got in front of me and pleaded with me to stay in the building. I told her no thanks, that I was fine, and walked out the door. As I was walking across campus, every single glass door to the campus buildings were being “guarded” by campus staff.
Put another way, a madman with a gun could easily slaughter multiple campus staff, who of course are completely unarmed and essentially standing in the open. It’s all security theater. Any determined killer would have no shortage of helpless targets on a college campus. The dining commons itself holds hundreds of students, who would be fish in a barrel if the would-be shooter merely stood outside the East side of the building, which is all-windows.
Given that murder wasn’t the suspect’s intentions (he is accused of firing a gun in the air, not directly at anyone), no one on campus was in danger – this time. Therefore, the cops get to look like heroes for tromping around campus with their weaponry, acting like they’re the thin blue line protecting the defenseless (because of the state’s rules) college students. Had this guy wanted to hurt college students, he’d have come on campus and done that right away, before police were called, and no one would have been able to stop him, unless of course they too were carrying illegally on campus.
Today’s overreaction from Keene police was similar to 2012 when a man left a “domestic incident” with a gun and Keene police along with staties locked down Keene High School and an elementary school, brought in a helicopter, bunches of cops, and conducted a manhunt for a man who wasn’t even accused of firing the gun. The man in that case had merely left a domestic dispute and walked into the woods with a gun – not a crime. That situation resolved, laughably, when the hunted man turned himself in! He managed to walk across the entire city and was not apprehended by any of the cops who were crawling around looking for him. It’d be hilarious except for the whole police state part.