Last year, a brace of Gonzaga University students defended themselves against an intruder with a firearm. They did so from inside University-owned off-campus housing. Where weapons are strictly verboten. To eliminate any confusion amongst residents looking to exercise their natural, civil and Constitutionally protected right to keep and bear arms on University property in the future, Gonzaga has installed blue signs identifying off-campus properties as . . .

. . . gun-free zones. The new blue signs don’t convey the “rob this house without fear of retaliation” message overtly, but they might as well.

Strangely, or not, University officials see the “no guns” clarification as an excellent way to increase student safety. Check out this killer quote from Gonzaga University Vice President of Student Development Judi Biggs Garbuio:

From the administration perspective, better communication is always a good thing.

“I think also with the continuation of the gun violence in schools, I think more students are appreciating the fact that there are no guns on campus,” Garbuio said. “They feel a sense of security and safety knowing that we banned them.”

Once again, I’d like to point out there’s a big difference from feeling safe and secure and being safe and secure. I know which one is more important, but I don’t live in an ivory tower, or a property owned by an ivory tower’s denizens. Unfortunately, tens of thousands of our children do.

RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR

68 COMMENTS

  1. Once again educators showing how stupid they really are.
    As to the students the same Id tell anybody……………….MOVE!!!!!!

      • Take them down, take them to a range, fill them full of bullet holes, and then put them back up. That should send the right message to all concerned.

  2. So they have a House Named after a Lion King Song? Hakuna Matata… I think that just goes to show how much they treat students like children and not like the Adults they are claiming the students are.

  3. Has the world gone mad? It seems virtually everyone is trying to banish firearms. It is safer with no guns? However these two were able to stop an intruder by showing theirs. Is it me or does this seem not only illogical but ridiculous to anyone else?

  4. Can you guys tell me of a single school shooting on a campus where guns weren’t banned?
    Do these idiots seriously think the signs will increase their sense of security?

    • Increase security? Of course not.

      Sense/feelings of security? Works for those with impaired logic function, I guess.

      • A fool is still a fool even if they possess a degree, but the degree lets the fool become an administrator or politician. liberal logic truly is a disease that needs a cure sooner then later. It is quite repulsive that the liberal administrator’s ignorant and misguided personal feelings resulted in the use of authority to take away the student’s option of armed defense and post rob me signs on their residences. Two students successfully defended themselves from being victims and the school punishes them kinda makes you proud to be an American doesn’t it. . Many colleges are going the other way and respecting state carry laws and not establishing their own little liberal utopian propaganda indoctrination camps.

  5. Seems like one lawsuit from grieving parents of a student killed because the bad guy did not obey the GUN FREE ZONE sign would change things. Much like a stoplight isn’t installed until an intersection has multiple deaths.

  6. Wait so let me get this straight… students used firearms to protect themselves in off campus university housing. and the response of the university is to say.

    “We know those people trying to break into your house are bad people with bad intentions, but we would prefer that you die next time, mmmkay.
    Regards,
    Mgmt”

    • Correct. The University would rather have them die than use a firearm to defend themselves. That is a superior outcome in their minds.

      • Yes, this is another version of the university educated “feminist” victims who feel its morally and ethically superior for a woman to be raped and strangled with her own nylons, than for her to use lethal force to stop that threat.

    • The only such college I have ever heard of is Hillsdale College. http://www.hillsdale.edu/home

      Note that they have a great free monthly newletter you should get – “Imprimis”

      Also free online courses on the Constitution (not the libtard rewritten version).

    • They’re also putting up “No Sex” signs in the dorms. I’m so glad they didn’t have them in my day.

      Remember the old sock-on-the-doorknob signal? It meant your roommate was having a better time in the dorm room than you did.

  11. “Our goal is better communication with the students…”

    Perhaps they meant better target advertising to draw in criminals.

  12. In other news, the Catholic university is trying to cut down on the use of condoms by putting up “Pregnancy and STD Free Zone” signs on university property.

    “They feel a sense of security and safety knowing that we banned them.”

  13. Well the university owns the properties, so unfortunately you have to deal with the university’s BS rules.

    Or you can leave 🙂

    • So really why do you feel that way? What other constitutional rights can be taken? Can they have a monthly lottery and the loser gets a new life as a sex slave?
      You don’t lose your constitutional rights because you are standing in the wrong place.

      • Private property rights. If I don’t want you in my house because you are carrying a gun, I can tell you to leave and the law is behind me. If I don’t want you in my house because you are verbally advocating for Obamacare or illegal-alien amnesty, I can likewise tell you to leave. Gonzaga U is private, they have the same rights over their property. The BOR protects you against the state (or at least it is supposed to), not against private individuals

        • The Heller decision means nothing then?

          Heller specifically mentions the 2A right in your residence…

        • Heller, I expect, didn’t go into the nuances of landlord-tenant law vis-à-vis the perogatives of the property owner. There’s nothing in Heller that tells me I have to let you come onto my property, or stay on my property after you’ve entered it, just because you are toting a firearm. And, again, the Second limits the State, not individuals acting within their individual perogatives.

    • When Gonzaga rejects all federal funding, as some principled, independent colleges have done, then maybe I’ll care about their private property rights and freedom to discriminate.

      Until then, as long as they’re operating on my dime (pried from my wallet under threat of force by state agents with guns, by the way), I’ll speak out about their anti-freedom agenda.

        • oops-edit time ran out. I just wanted to add, I’m not saying anyone can’t speak out against Gonzaga’s stupid policy. I’m just saying you won’t get very far trying in court to enforce the Second against a private property owner exercising control over his own property.

      • There are only 2 colleges in the US that do not accept any form of federal aid or funds: Hillsdale College and Grove City College. This rejection of funds includes individual federal student loans, as determined by ruling in Grove City College v. Bell. While politically conservative, both schools still forbid student weapons on campus property.

  15. Oh finally some Common Sense™ in our colleges. I hope next they ban going to class with the flu, rape, and being a jerk in general. Progress! Ok.. that’s enough kidding around. The quote from that Judi is telling of what students are up against. I’ve seen it. Imperious womyn obsessed with imposing their rules and twisted morality on everyone. A bunch of Nurse Racheds, if you will, run the show at a lot of these places.

    • “I hope next they ban going to class with the flu, rape, and being a jerk in general. “

      UNC-Chapel Hill is one example of a school that has been using “Rape Free Zones,” complete with signs AND t-shirts, for well over a decade.

      https://www.google.com/search?q=unc%2C+rape+free+zone&gws_rd=ssl

      Yes, it’s as stupid as it sounds. Walked by one “Rape Free Zone” rally in the early 90’s and all it was was a bunch of girls (well, about 5) standing around chanting “Rape Free Zone.”

      I might add that this came during the height of numerous serious assaults by a serial rapist. And yes, those assaults continued to occur. Guess the rapist did not buy a t-shirt?

      They try every year or two with this stuff, and it is completely, totally, unequivocally pointless.

  16. When I was there in the 90s, there was a dirty little secret about how much the administration hid criminal activity (sexual assaults, burglaries) so it wouldn’t get out to the local media and tarnish the school’s reputation. The college is just up the street from the local mission and attracts some interesting characters from time to time. My apartment complex a block away from the school was burglarized, fortunately no one was hurt. It guess it feels nice to live in La-La Land (until cold, hard reality comes crashing down on the unsuspecting).

    • “When I was there in the 90s, there was a dirty little secret about how much the administration hid criminal activity (sexual assaults, burglaries) so it wouldn’t get out to the local media and tarnish the school’s reputation.”

      No kidding.

      I once investigated a freaking bomb explosion (a small one) on a college campus, and the official word was “nothing to see here, no word to the press.”

      Didn’t want to get the parents upset and pull their ‘kids’ out …

  17. Enterprising students should publish the addresses and salaries of the highly paid Gonzaga administration and say rob these places instead. We’re college students, we have no money, go to blank place, he/she makes six figures. It’d be classic and likely get the students expelled, but there’d be a social justice redistribution of wealth element to it.

  18. Whew, thank goodness Gonzaga has finally taken steps to protect their students by putting up signs. The voters did their part by passing I-594 and now this. Talk about cutting edge. Remember kids, be sure to vote democrat in 2016.

  19. I live in a college town. College students who live off campus are often targeted by criminals for break-ins because they are likely to have stuff of value that is easy to sell, they are easy targets who leave for holidays/weekends regularly, and are generally much more lax with respect to security than the average non-college student. Those “gun free zones” are pretty much a “rob this house for easy money” billboard.

  21. Didja ever ask yourself what would have happened if over-educated sixties hippies and disappointed communists, seventies burnouts and eighties left-behinds with no skills to support themselves became college teachers and administrators? No? Well, maybe you don’t have to ask.

  22. Maybe Judi meant that the students who planned to break into another student’s apartment felt more secure knowing guns were banned?

  23. What a shallow thinker! You’re got to be kidding! How is this individual a vice president of the school?!?! On another note, Texas better pass CHL campus carry this year! I’m tired of toting my blackpowder piece!

  24. These are adults and these buildings are their legal residence, I can’t imagine after the last few SCOTUS decisions on 2A rights that this will fly, legally speaking, regardless of who owns the building.

    • Agreed. Additionally, as far as I know, a contract can’t simply remove your rights. Even if you sign it giving up those rights. That’s not how it works.

      • That’s the way I understand it, too. Although, I don’t think our government recognizes the Bill of Rights as unalienable rights.

  25. “Our #1 goal at Gonzaga University is … the safety of our students.”

    Really lady? I would’ve guessed your #1 goal should be to provide a good education. Perhaps prospective students should look elsewhere if that’s your #1 goal? You sound kind of like a prison warden. But it’s good that you’re so focused on campus safety. I mean, what with those idiotic signs, “an additional security guard” and “keycard access to certain buildings” who wouldn’t feel safe? Oh that’s right, the off-campus students. For all Garbuio’s talk she sure seems interested in making students in off-campus housing unsafe.

    “They [the students] feel a sense of security and safety knowing that we banned them.”

    Really, they do? How did you find that out? Did you ask all of them or do you just “know” it to be true? Personally, if I was a student there and saw fellow students fending off a burglar with a gun and then the university flipped out and tried to punish them, I’d feel pretty unsafe from both the nightcrawlers and the university administration. Also, weren’t guns already banned? It doesn’t look like that stopped the students in this case from storing them in their residence, not to mention the perpetrators of those school shootings she mentioned.

    I think perhaps this women needs to avail herself of the educational services of her employer, such as they are.

  26. Maybe they could put up “burglary zone, rape zone, assault zone” signs. So the students wouldn’t go to those areas 🙂

  27. “They feel a sense of security and safety knowing that we banned them.” This is sort of he mantra of all gun control groups for the sheeple

  29. So predictable almost humorous. Leads to the question, will all the homes purchased with the federally backed loans be considered federal property and subject to those laws?

  30. I would argue that the University doesn’t have a legal leg to stand on. You can’t sign away your rights under a contract, and as the landlord, the laws limit what a landlord can and cannot do.

    I think the students should get a lawyer and wack the school over the head.

  31. Oh, the university just put up signs. The criminals will, of course, obey the signs.
    So the students and the robbers have been told, in the most harshest terms, guns will not be tolerated.
    Now everyone is sleeping contently in their beds tonight.
    Everyone is happy and secure in university land.
    That’s nice.

    Gee, I wonder what are the published crime stats for this university.

  32. It’s private property, so I guess it’s their decision. Although I wonder what the laws are on landlords controlling tenants engaging in lawful activity in their residences (in this case student housing).

    I do, however, take isse with the comment offered by Gonzaga University Vice President of Student Development Judi Biggs Garbuio, who boldly asserts that people who don’t obey the law and commit felonies will be dissuaded by a sign saying Gonzaga University says no.

    It reveals either Ms. Biggs Garbuio’s unfathomable lack of intelligence or her completely false belief that it’s the lawfully owned guns that will somehow exert mind control over their otherwise peaceful students.

  33. those in authority that make these decisions ..HAVE to be held responsible financially and criminally when any student is attacked, injuried or killed…It IS their fault if students are put in danger with THEIR mandates….imho

  34. Perhaps the signs are mounted on steel posts that slip easily out of a socket, then at least a threatened student could use the sign to bludgeon an attacker, thus proving that the signs actually do make the area safer!

  35. Personally, I think if fire codes require buildings to have fire extinguishers and first aid kits, I think there ought to be penalties for gun free zones without affective armed security. Just like if a fires kill someone because the owner of a building failed to meet basic fire code, the owner may face jail time, I think an owner of a property should face charges if he does not adequately protect occupants or allow the occupants the means to protect themselves.

  36. I’m thinking about moving into grad student housing in the fall from where I live now, since it will be more convenient and it will be covered by my grants…I’m not sure of there is a ban on firearms in those apartments, but I’ll be damned if I let that stop me from keeping at least a few funs hidden for defense should the need arise.

    • Good for you Anonymoose.

      Most (if not all) Universities have absolutely no concern for your well being. Their only two concerns are raking in as much cash as possible and bringing communism to our nation. Any apparent concern for your well-being is nothing more than theater to prevent students from going to an alternate institution that appears to be safer.

      If they have absolutely no regard for your rights, you have no reason to have any regard for their rights. (A university who tells you cannot be armed violates your life, liberty, and property rights.)

  37. One of Gonzaga’s off-campus apartment complexes is called Dussault Suites. Between this event and this policy, I think I can guess how they’ll start referring to it around campus.

  38. Gonzaga is a Catholic school Just wait until they put up signs banning rape, underage drinking, profanity, tight jeans, and rock music… IT’LL BE 100% SAFE!

    (/sarcasm)

    Sadly, since Gonzaga is located in the city of Spokane, I think every student there ought to be given a gun + self-defense training along with their tuition rather than this utterly useless sign.

  40. “Once again, I’d like to point out there’s a big difference from feeling safe and secure and being safe and secure.”

    This is something which no one in America knows. Please say it again. I’m positive no one herd you.

  41. The University is assuming responsibility for the safety of the residents. Sue them when they fail to provide security.

Comments are closed.