Say Anything Blog

Fargo Forum columnist Jane Ahlin (last seen perpetuating blatant falsehoods about Sarah Palin without any concern for facts or reality) suggests that a bill which would allow concealed carry on campus (among other places) isn’t necessary because there is no need to defend yourself on campus.

Someone might want to run that by NDSU President Joe Chapman who is currently being escorted by an armed body guard paid for at the taxpayer’s expense.  He may disagree.  Not to mention the victims of the various campus shootings and attacks which seem to happen on an all-too-regular basis.

But the very pertinent cause of self defense aside, I wonder why Ahlin feels there needs to be a pressing reason to go armed on campus and at other public gatherings?  Why does exercising the right to keep and bear arms need a justification?

You would expect someone with Ahlin’s background in education to have a better grasp of constitutional law.  Keeping and bearing arms is not in the same category as, say, driving a car.  It is not a privilege to be granted or taken away by the state.  It is a right, put in the bill of rights by our founders, that is no less important than free speech or free assembly or the free practice of religion.

If a liberal like Ahlin were to pen a screed demanding justification for free speech on campus he/she would be rightly mocked and derided for being an anti-freedom authoritarian.  But far too often gun rights are not treated like rights.

But gun rights are rights.  If liberals like Ahlin don’t like it there is a process available to them for amending the constitution.  But until they are successful in that endeavor, owning and carrying a firearm is no less a right than free speech.