Some colleges bar free speech when its about guns
The First Amendment guarantees Americans the right to free speech. The Second Amendment guarantees the right to possess firearms. Now the first two clauses in the Bill of Rights have come together in an ongoing debate over the right of qualified college students and faculty to advocate that they be allowed to carry guns on campus, said a Fox News report.
That on-going debate has hit a wall of resistance from school officials in some places, bringing into focus the dual issues of gun rights and free speech.
Many gun-rights advocates are arguing that college campuses, which are supposed to be open to diversity of thought, provocative dialogue, politics and protest, are hardly bastions of free speech when it comes to discussing firearms.
“The fact is, the topic is so explosive,” said Robert Shibley, spokesman for the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), which tracks discriminatory practices against students involved in conservative issues on campus. They’ve been dealing with “more and more” complaints about efforts to “squelch gun speech,” he said.
The latest flareup involves Christine Brashier, who says officials at the Community College of Allegheny County (CCAC) violated her First Amendment right to free speech when they stopped her from posting and distributing fliers advocating for concealed carry on campus, and for a new chapter of Students for Concealed Carry on Campus (SCCC) at the college. The group has about a dozen chapters on other Pennsylvania campuses, Shibley said.
Kentucky pastor invites people to carry guns
Reportedly spurred in part by recent church shootings, a church in Kentucky actually encouraged congregants to bring their guns to services on June 27.
The New Bethel Church in Valley Station opened its doors to armed parishioners, perhaps in no small part because church pastor Ken Pagano is a concealed carry instructor and former active duty Marine. According to WAVE news, Pagano called the June 27 exercise an “Open Carry celebration.”
There was one catch. Guns had to be unloaded and in a secure holster.
The move was not without its critics, including the Rev. James Tennyson at the Justice Resource Center. He told a reporter that “We are going back to the wild, wild west.” He was bothered that anyone would bring guns into a church.
Pagano fired right back: “This will be the safest place in town that day.”
Korea vet wounds robbery suspect in Galveston, TX
Don’t tangle with 77-year-old Robert Hays of Texas City, TX, and expect to best the Korean War veteran.
According to The Galveston County Daily News, Hays was at the Players Paradise on June 1 when two would-be robbers burst in and started robbing the patrons. About a dozen people were in the game room at the time, about 12:44 a.m.
The newspaper said one of the men threw Hays to the floor and began going through his wallet. Apparently in his effort to dig out Hays’ money, the thug overlooked the older man’s carry permit.
Hays pulled his concealed .38-caliber handgun and shot the robber, who fell down and then fled, but not before losing one of his shoes and leaving his own gun.
A short time later, a man identified as Tyreese Ross, 34, also of Texas City, showed up at a local hospital with a gunshot wound to his shoulder. He was arrested on a contempt of court charge for nonpayment of child support. The newspaper said he had pleaded guilty in 1995 to aggravated robbery in Galveston, but had not been charged with the game room robbery.
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