AG's Response to my last post

Apparently Alberto Gonzalez responded to my last post by saying that the presence of guns by law abiding citizens on college campuses will not make people safer.

Excuse me for saying so Mr. Attorney General, but that is easy for you to say working in a building secured by armed federal agents. The building you work in is crawling with people with guns. You undoubtedly have your own security detail (Secret Service, or FBI it really doesn't matter). You don't have to live with the cognitive dissonance set up between my employer saying I'm safe because there are no guns on campus and the certainty of the reality that I am not safe for precisely the same reasons.

I, on the other hand, because I am a law abiding citizen have only the heavy objects within my reach to use as potential weapons. My cubicle walls likely don't have the density to stop a handgun round and while my chair could inflict a lot of pain if someone with a gun gets that close to me, game over and I lose.

The Attorney General of a Republican administration should know better. A single armed student in the first classroom could have ended this thing with only two or three dead instead of ten times that number. That is a fact. This isn't about an overblown sense of machismo or some kind of hero fantasies. This is about soft targets advertising themselves and our society's unwillingness to stand up to those that would do us harm. This is about blurring the line between people in our society being subjects or citizens.

Make no mistake about it, if you deny me the means to defend myself in any setting, YOU take on the full responsibility (and liability) of guaranteeing my safety at all times until I'm able to have the means of defending myself. This goes for my employer, owners of sports venues, and the people in charge of any business or public place that expressly forbids the carrying of weapons. You are betting my life that someone won't sneak in with a weapon and start terrorizing unarmed civilians. You have the responsibility. While I won't excuse people like Cho for their actions, I will put some of the blame on our hopolophobic society.

I will hold you accountable for that responsibility.