Beware the deadly assault holster

Here’s the background – Students for Concealed Carry, which is a nationwide group that is attempted to have the laws changed so college students that posses concealed carry permits can carry on their university grounds. Next week, they’re planning a week long “Empty Holster” protest, where their membership is going to wear empty holsters to all their school functions. Sounds like a decent enough idea, it’s subtle, and it doesn’t really scare whitey.

Unless you’re at the University of Florida, where the administration sent out the following email:

TO: Deans

FROM: Dr. Patricia Telles-Irvin, Vice President for Student Affairs

RE: Protest Event Next Week

A national group known as Students for Concealed Carry On Campus, which
advocates allowing students and others to bring concealed weapons to
campus, plans an Empty Holster Protest all next week. Students who
participate in the event are being urged to wear an empty holster to
class in order to protest state laws and university policies that
prohibit firearms on campus.

Neither state law nor campus policies prohibit carrying an empty
holster, so anyone who participates in this event is within his or her
rights. However, if any faculty member or student feels genuinely
threatened
(emphasis mine), they should feel free to call the University
Police Department. If you would, please pass this along to your
department chairs and faculty.

Genuinely threatened by what, Ms. Telles-Irvin? An empty holster? So…if someone sees an empty holster and feels scared because there could have been a firearm in that holster, they should call the university police because…the student with holster isn’t breaking any laws?

This is just about the greatest display of hoplophobia that I have ever seen – now you’re acting in fear of an object that carries a gun. This whole email is disconcerting on several levels. For example, I could assume that there are people who would feel threatened by the mere presence of a holster; a sad and disappointing statement. However, if I take the opposite tact and assume that no one would be threatened by an empty holster, than the Vice-Presidente’s email is implying that the Students for Concealed Carry are going to go around bullying people – an implication which I find foolish. It betrays a lack of knowledge of the types of people that get concealed carry licenses in this country, and is an insult to the student body at UF as well.

I support the Students for Concealed Carry – college students with carry permits are all old enough to join the military and be issued automatic weapons. I see no reason why they shouldn’t be trusted to carry their concealed firearms.

Uncle agrees that being threatened by an empty holster is damned silly, as does Sebastian, Bitter, and pretty much anyone else with a brain.

14 Comments

  1. No official confirmation, but word on the street has it that any student reported as having frightened another student or faculty member will be assigned special counseling. Been following this for a time now and cannot pin down precisely what the faculty response will be when hordes of screaming kids go running for cover when the holsters arrive on campus.

  2. god, I can just hear the hysterics now: “But…there could have been a gun there!”

    You know, I was hit by a car once. I lived (obviously) but I had some significant injuries. And yet, I don’t find myself fearing for my safety every time I cross the street, even though perhaps I should.

  3. I think this email is a way to bully the Students for Concealed Carry. It basically encourages anyone who doesn’t like the holsters to complain, thus giving the college a reason to crack down on these activists.

    This seems to be a tactic in some colleges to crack down on non-endorsed speech. This can really apply to any issue. (Doesn’t always work, of course. Even a college has limits to what they can consider threatening.)

    The S4CC should really wear ten holsters each in order to ensure they get attention. And they have to wear t-shirts with their website address.

  4. Need to pay attention ot AZ. This is just a veiled threat against the participants while informing the faculty and other students how to punish the participants with campus police activity designed to thwart free expression not in agreement with the “elite” administration and faculty.

    There will be bullying, harrassment, detention and possibly worse carried out in the guise of addressing complaints about “fears” received by the campus cops. Do not be surprised if we see some repeat of the Troy Scheffler debacle.

    This isn’t about fear, its about threat, and the administration is the one doing it. Look beyond the camouflage.

  5. I don’t want to steal their thunder. If I’m invited to participate I will. With a hip, thigh, and shoulder holster.

  6. fits: consider yourself officially invited. I’m trying to round up as many people as possible on my campus to participate, and the hardest part is figuring out how to find the gunnies. The more people who hear about the protest and decide to participate, the better, even if they haven’t been directly contacted by anyone.

  7. I certainly hope that those holster carrying students who are reported, and who have the campus police come for them, take names.

    It would be interesting to see just who the whusses are on campus. I’m thinking they should post all the reporting individuals (that is those who call the cops because they are afraid of an empty holster) on every bulletin board on campus–maybe even on a huge banner hanging from the dorms.

  8. As much as I’d like that from a vengeance standpoint, it’s too much like stooping to our opponent’s level. One of the reasons that the pro-gun side has been so successful lately is because we’ve not dropped to the level of name calling and emotional hysterics that the other side has.

  9. I’m not sure that listing the names of people so silly as to be “frightened”(they must claim so,even if they don’t mean it to cause any problems) of an empty holster is stooping to their level.

    A complaint like that is and ought to be public record. I see nothing wrong with letting everyone know whose credibility is suspect. Sort of like putting out an alert about phone scams, etc. Hell, it almost sounds like civic duty, now that I think about it.

    One doesn’t have to say anything about their characters or anything else, just point them out in relation to what they have already said.

    I don’t call police to say things I would be ashamed to have repeated. I bet you don’t,either. So if somebody repeats it, how are they stooping if we had already placed our words in the public domain?

    This isn’t a battle I would invest a lot of energy in, but I really don’t see your point. Though, I agree with you that we should never stoop to hysterics, lies, empty emotionalism, etc. I just don’t see how this particular idea meets any criterion of the foregoing. Explain, if you would. As I said I am not married to the idea, my mind could be changed if reason dictates.

  10. on every bulletin board on campus–maybe even on a huge banner hanging from the dorms.

    That’s specifically what I was talking about, it reminds me of the tar and feathering campaigns that the VPC is so fond of.

  11. Hey, I just got the email apologizing for radical Islam and came across this site in search of that woman’s email(Telles-Irvin or whatever). What a PC whore. Why can’t these people grasp the radical concepts of the very simply worded first and second amendments.

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