I think in the last 48 hours I have come around on the issue of campus carry.  It might in fact be a bad idea.

On principle, I believe that every law abiding citizen in entitled to the right to defend themselves.  It is a natural right, a primordial right.  The gazelle has horns to defend itself from the lion, the porcupine has quills to defend itself from the coyote, I have a gun to defend myself from who or what wants to do me harm.

In practicality, college students in the last couple of days have proven to me that they shouldn’t have so much as crayons and safety scissors.  Owning and carrying a gun is a big responsibility.  These kids have demonstrated a level of emotional and intellectual vacuousness that is causing time and space to warp around them.

Students at Yale, the No. 3 college in the country, are protesting and pitching a hissy fit because the wife of a dean of one of the colleges at Yale had the audacity to suggest in an email that maybe the school shouldn’t be policing what students wear for Halloween and that students had the right to express themselves.  This is how one student described the response to an email defending the right to freedom of expression:

“I have had to watch my friends defend their right to this institution. This email and the subsequent reaction to it have interrupted their lives. I have friends who are not going to class, who are not doing their homework, who are losing sleep, who are skipping meals, and who are having breakdowns.”

Let that sink in… students, at the No. 3 college in America… kids who are supposed to grow up to be Congressmen, Senators, and captains of industry are losing sleep and having breakdown because of an email that said “Is there no room anymore for a child or young person to be a little bit obnoxious… a little bit inappropriate or provocative or, yes, offensive?”   If this is the standard for behavior at the No. 3 college in America (I’m gonna keep driving that point home), what should my expectations be for the kids that come in below that.

The answer is … worse.  So there are were three – at least two of which were unconfirmed – reports of racist activity on the campus of the Univerity of Missouri.  The student body had been protesting for days and forced the resignation of the college president.  From this there have been rumors spreading of every bit of hostile activity on campus, the Klan showing up, etc.  None of which have been proven true.

One professor decided not to cancel class and continue with a scheduled exam.  He emailed his students with the message: “If you give into bullies, they win. The only way bullies are defeated is by standing up to them.”  He is right of course.  For the transgression of believing that his students were made of sterner stuff, he was savaged online and resigned while his character was impugned by the media.

Emboldened by the kerfuffle at Mizzou, students at Ithaca College are protesting for the resignation of their president for… reasons that I can hardly understand since it didn’t seem like anything actually happened there.  And the students of the University of Michigan are protesting in solidarity with the students from Mizzou and are causing havoc just because they can.

Speaking of solidarity for a moment, why does it not surprise me that the same people protesting for safe spaces on college campuses are also in solidarity with the Palestinians and anti-Israel anti-Semites (note the “Boycott Israel” bag)?

Here’s the thing.  I live in Alabama.  In 1963, black students faced attack dogs, fire hoses, and police with night sticks for the right to go to class.  They went face to face with ACTUAL Klansmen, screaming n****r in their faces, for the right to go into a lecture hall, listen to a professor, and take a test.  Today, the hoax of an unconfirmed rumor about the KKK on campus makes these students demand a professor be fired for not canceling class.  This is so far past irony it is headlong into insanity.

These kids broke me.  I want to trust them as adults.  They are old enough to drive, old enough to vote, old enough to go to war.  But after all this, I can’t trust them with anything more intellectually challenging than a sticker book.

(I’d of normally said coloring book, but I’m afraid it would be a micro-aggression against the color blind and people who can’t color inside the lines and they will go on Twitter and threaten to burn down my house.)

And speaking of sterner stuff, civil rights, bravery, and gun rights.  Here is a picture of Charleston Heston, the former president of the NRA, of “from my cold dead hands” fame, marching on Washington D.C. for Civil Rights in 1963. Fo those who love to call the NRA racist, there is our former president putting his career and personal safety on the line to take a stand for civil rights.