Mission statement:

Armed and Safe is a gun rights advocacy blog, with the mission of debunking the "logic" of the enemies of the Constitutionally guaranteed, fundamental human right of the individual to keep and bear arms.

I can be reached at 45superman@gmail.com.You can follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/45superman.

Tuesday, May 27, 2008

Tarrant County College vs. the First Amendment (and the Second)

Days of Our Trailers wrote last week about Tarrant County College's suppression of an "Empty Holster Protest" planned by Students for Concealed Carry on Campus (SCCC).

In a dramatic blow to freedom of expression, Tarrant County College (TCC) has prohibited its students from wearing empty gun holsters to protest policies that forbid students with concealed carry licenses from carrying concealed handguns on campus.
I've said it before: why should we be surprised that any entity willing to trample the Second Amendment would feel little obligation to respect the First? It gets better.
A TCC administrator told interested students that they could not wear the holsters and could only conduct a protest in the school's tiny and restrictive free speech zone.
W-w-wait a second here; "free speech zone"? Wasn't it kind of an important point with the Founding Fathers that the entire nation be a "free speech zone" (not to mention "citizen militia zone")?

Even if one were to accept the evil of restricting Constitutionally guaranteed rights to designated "zones," TCC's definition of what constitutes "free speech" is a bit difficult to fathom (from an email "granting permission" for the protest):
This is to notify you that your request to stage an "Empty Holster Protest" on the South Campus is granted. Your protest will be limited to the Free Speech Zone designated on the South Campus, and you and other protestors may not wear empty gun holsters on campus, including the Free Speech Zone during the protest, or at any other time. [emphasis from original document]
So even in the "free speech zone," students are not to speak in ways that offend the administration.

All hail Big Brother.

Anyone care to drop the folks at TCC a line?
Ernest L. Thomas, South Campus President, Tarrant County College: 817-515-4501; el.thomas@tccd.edu
Juan Garcia, Vice President for Student Development, Tarrant County College: 817-515-4504; juan.garcia@tccd.edu

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

The proper course of action is to wear the holsters anyway, outside of the free speech zone.

En mass.

me said...

How about setting up a "cone of silence" in the free speech zone?

I think the proper response...well, I won't say THAT...but an acceptable response would be to slap your cellphone in the holster, then when they give you shit you go double ape-shit on them in the media for trashing two rights instead of one.

The media might not give a shit about the 2nd, but they'll glom onto the 1st.

Kurt '45superman' Hofmann said...

Now that you mention it, HH, a holster with a cellphone in it wouldn't be an empty holster, would it? He he.