CCRKBA BLASTS REMARK FROM BRADY SPOKESMAN ABOUT DROPPING OUT OF SCHOOL

BELLEVUE, WA – The Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms is taking issue with a crass remark by Peter Hamm, spokesman for the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, in which Hamm contended in a Fox News report that self-defense advocates have no business on college campuses.

Hamm’s remark, reported by Fox News on Wednesday, was, “You don’t like the fact that you can’t have a gun on your college campus? Drop out of school.”

CCRKBA Executive Director Mark A. Taff, himself a part-time college student, fired back, “For a fairly bright, though philosophically misguided guy, Peter said a remarkably stupid thing and he ought to apologize to every college student who believes that their right of self-defense should not be nullified simply by stepping onto a college campus.”

Taff said the Virginia Tech outrage might never have happened if that university had not adopted a campus gun ban, and actively lobbied against a proposed statute that would have allowed legally-licensed students and instructors to be armed. A shooting at Virginia’s Appalachian Law School a few years ago ended when the gunman was confronted by two armed students. A high school shooter in Pearl, Mississippi was taken down at gunpoint by a school administrator who ran to his private vehicle, retrieved a pistol and confronted the gunman.

“To suggest that anyone who disagrees with his personal view about firearms and personal protection ought to voluntarily sacrifice their higher education makes Hamm seem like an elitist snob,” Taff observed. “That’s an insult to thousands of students, like myself, who are this week participating in the ‘Empty Holster Protest’ on college campuses across the country. Certainly Peter doesn’t actually want students to be murdered, assaulted, robbed or raped, does he? We’d like to believe he is a better man than that.

“The real issue here isn’t what Hamm thinks, but the fact that under today’s laws and campus regulations, college and university students, teachers and staff are essentially living in victim disarmament zones,” Taff said. “These are essentially risk-free environments for thugs and lunatics, and that’s outrageous. Instead of encouraging personal safety advocates to quit school, we ought to be encouraging them to stay and change these environments.”