American universities are hotbeds of anti-gun animus. No uniform? No gun on campus! Because criminals, crazies and terrorists obey gun laws. Or all gun owners are potential criminals, crazies or terrorists. Or something. This “logic” leads anti-gun rights campus dwellers straight into the realm of paranoia.

Idaho University at Pocatello revealed its paranoia last Monday when a student reported seeing a man carrying what she thought was a gun case. I repeat: she did not see a gun. She thought she saw a gun case. From kpvi.com:

Pocatello Police and Idaho State University’s Public Safety police were all hands on deck, after reports of a man carrying a gun case on campus.

It all happened around 2:00 p.m. Staff and students were quickly alerted through text messages that police were on campus.

Text alerts were sent to Idaho State University students warning them of an unidentified man carrying a gun case on the north side of Frazier Hall. About six police cars were on campus.

Pocatello police assisted campus public safety. Some officers could be seen carrying funs after going through each building and sweeping the campus.

There were no shots. There was no brandishing of a firearm. There was no gun. There was no gun case.  It turned out that it was a pool cue case that was innocently carried on campus. From kpvi.com:

ISU’s public safety officers and Pocatello Police were all on scene screening every building. More than 24 hours later police say the situation was unfounded.

Kyle Mauck posted a picture on Facebook saying at the time the report came in, he was walking on campus near Frazier Hall with his pool cues bag, and may have been mistaken as someone with a gun case.

PPD tells KPVI Mauck went to police saying he might be the person they were looking for.

Police continued their investigation this morning. They showed the witness a picture of Mauck with the pool cues bag. The witness says, that’s the person they saw with the case.

Think of all the ways a person who wanted to conceal a gun could do so, especially on a northern campus in winter.

Any pistol, including the largest, could be concealed under a parka or most practical winter coats. Most shotguns and rifles including most semi-automatics, can be easily broken down to fit inside a gym bag. Most would not need to be broken down to fit inside a duffel bag.

I will let the reader dwell on the possibilities of card board boxes, cases for art supplies, the famous brass instruments and other containers.

It’s utterly insane to react this way upon seeing a container. In a sane society, we would not act that way for the sighting of a rifle, shotgun, or pistol carried in a non-threatening manner. In New York City, in the 1950’s, people routinely rode the subway with rifles and shotguns without any panic.

This is the result of brainwashing. We’re raising a number of hoplophobes. But they are very selective hoblophobes. If the gunman is wearing a uniform, they are immediately perceived as non-threatening. Perhaps the most “successful” mass shooter of all time put on a uniform to kill 77 people in 2011 in Norway.

We need more than just concealed carry on campus. This incident shows that we need open carry on campus. A dose of reality is required to undo this psychological conditioning.

©2017 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice and link are included. Gun Watch

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88 COMMENTS

  1. Yeesh, all the cases one sees on a campus for music, (non-gun) sporting goods, art, scientific equipment.

    I hope whoever placed the call never finds out that every AR15 is basically a take-down rifle; their peace of mind would be ruined forever.

    • New “Safety Law” for California, New York, Conn. etal.
      “All firearms shall be permanently attached to a 10 foot long 2×4 to avoid concealment”.
      We will all be safe and no longer paranoids.

      • Yep. Or they should require the takedown pins to extend out past the lower and be drilled to take padlocks. The owner then being required to leave the keys to the padlocks at home when outside with the gun.

        Field servicing options for the gun would be limited and those that remain possibly more hazardous. But, yanno, this way we’re sure the rifle always has the shape people associate with a rifle, thus giving regular, decent people who are not gun nuts a chance to know when someone nearby is armed.

      • Why not just require all firearms to be permanently attached to track vehicles with no less than 5mm of effective armor. That would make them much easier to spot.

        • When you buffoons are done patting yourself on the back, you might want to consider the role of public safety for a moment. A university I know of got a report of a possible sniper. It seemed far fetched so the police responded but no alerts were made or any evacuations. Big mistake. Even though no threat was found but the anger over no alerts caused a major restructuring of the whole threat process and heads did roll.

          So give the snowflake gong a rest and go get yourself a real job where responsiblity has consequences.

        • I think you need to see the Doktor and have your eyes checked… They are making fun or the absolute idiocy of people throwing fits over pool queue cases and pop tarts and said nothing of the surprisingly responsible actions of the campus police.

  2. We should all start carrying gun-like red herrings just to drive the rate of false alarms through the roof.

    • I like the potential of this idea! A cheap cloth actual rifle case, camo of course, containing…what? I figure even a pool cue might be a bad idea – a cop with no sense of humor might call a cue a weapon (it is one, of course). Hey, how about a pool noodle?

    • I really like this idea. Make sure that you put something totally innocuous in the case. A thin clear plastic tube with some jelly beans would be fantastic.

      Pro-tip:
      Whatever you put in the case, make sure that it is transparent and cannot possibly qualify as a “weapon” or fake bomb. Don’t give police or a prosecutor any wiggle room here. They could claim that any container which isn’t transparent was a fake pipe bomb. And they could claim that any rigid item of any strength — even a piece of PVC pipe — was a bludgeon or a stabbing instrument.

    • In places with heavy carry laws I always thought “blue gun carry” should be a form of protest.

    • Oh, c’mon. If you can’t melt a snowflake ortwo once in a while, then what’s the point?

      • Ah, but if enough people transport firearms in guitar cases, liberals will have meltdowns every time they see a guitar case.

      • I have a dremel case I found at goodwill for a buck. I am going to use a dremel to cut the guts out and put foam into it to become a pistol case. It would work perfectly for a full size handgun.

    • A banjo case will fit anything up to a 28″barrel rem 870, and if anyone asks you get the hipster respect of playing banjo.

  4. And this is why there are no so called “common sense” gun laws. Because when it comes to guns most non-gun owners and liberal politicians have so little knowledge of firearms that that have no common sense.

  5. At the airport on the way to hunting trip some years ago a young lady saw our 10 single and double rifle cases then asked if we were musicians. I replied “heavy metal” she said “cool” and left

    I figured my 30-06 and friends 375 were fairly heavy.

    Most people have no idea what they are looking at.

  6. I wouldnt want to be a UPS driver on that campus.
    This is a case of hysteria being carried way to far.
    But the Libitards at our schools of upper learning deserve to be so scared of a box.
    Let al;one their own shadows.
    That they shut it down.
    So far I havent heard anyone mention. “It was for the children”

  7. I am pro gun and a strong supporter of the 2nd Amendment but we need to understand that there are also many people in this country who did not grow up with guns and who have never even seen a gun in their lives and guns scare them. I admit that I was not raised with guns and it took me years to get to the point I was comfortable with a ccw. Just trying to be sympathetic to the other side of the story. Guns are very scary for tens of millions of people in this country. I think it’s important we don’t forget that and try to educate and not just force guns down people’s throat. All that is going to do is increase fear and resistance.

    • Homosexuality, gay marriage and now gender fluidity is pretty new an frightening to many people but that has all been rammed down our collective throats as they told us what bigots we are.
      Now those bigots can suck it up and accept our civil rights in return. Im tired of backing down and downplaying my armed lifestyle as if I’ve done something to be ashamed of. Screw them.
      Let the snowflakes melt.

    • “Guns are very scary for tens of millions of people in this country. I think it’s important we don’t forget that and try to educate and not just force guns down people’s throat.”

      You can only educate those who are willing to learn new things and think for themselves. Most of the latest batches of college indoctrinated progtards are nowhere near being salvageable, and real-life is going to have a beotchslapping field day with them (i.e. You can’t fix stupid).

    • Yes, but no…… and here is why:

      but we need to understand that there are also many people in this country who did not grow up with homosexuals and who have never even seen a homosexual in their lives and homosexuals scare them.

      Or this one:

      but we need to understand that there are also many people in this country who did not grow up with biracial people and who have never even seen a biracial person in their lives and biracial people scare them.

      I appreciate that they may not have grown up around something and that thing might be scary but them being afraid is their problem and not mine. I am not trying to scare them, I did not get up this morning and wonder what I could do today to upset some snowflake somewhere, I got up and went about my day doing adult things that are legal to do by adults in the places I am doing them. If they can’t handle that then the issue is with them, not with me.

    • Your Neanderthal replies only make things worse for responsible gun owners and supporters of the 2nd Amendment. Unfortunately many of you are too ignorant to realize it.

      • I am a responsible gun owner and supporter of the natural, civil, and constitutionally protected right to be armed. I may be ignorant, in fact I’m well aware that I am, but I am not so ignorant to see that attitudes such as yours will never make things better than they are now.

      • Seriously? Time to buck-up sissypants. I could care less about anyone’s “feelings”. The big boy/girl world has no place for your hysterical rant. My daughter’s would tell you to grow a set and probably kick you in the teeth if you called them a Neanderthal or bigot. My son would do the same and probably hit you again if you started crying.
        This PC crap started when I was in high school in the mid 70’s. I didn’t buy it then and certainly don’t buy it now. Sadly many in my generation seems to have raised a bunch of sissyboy and whiney girls. The world’s a tough place and will chew these kids up and spit them out.

        • Actually, the scary thing about my generation is that they will recognize that the world wants to chew them up and spit them out. And instead of sucking it up, they’re gonna call for government intervention. Those worthless, pathetic losers love nothing more than getting an outside authority (usually college admins) for enforce their bubble. Now, many of them are so disillusioned with politics that they thankfully refuse to vote, but how many are going to graduate college and want the state to force others to respect their widdle feewings? Not all of them. Maybe not even most of them, but certainly enough to make a difference. God I fvcking hate my generation…..

        • Bob, you’re just a shining example of why no progress will be made and why gun rights are constantly being attacked. You are part of the problem, not the solution. You are why so many people call us “gun nuts”.

        • “…Bob, you’re just a shining example of why no progress will be made and why gun rights are constantly being attacked. ”

          Actually you have that the wrong way ’round…. Your attempts at appeasing those who refuse to be appeased is the attack on our rights. You are trying to negotiate with an enemy that wants nothing short of the complete destruction of your way of life. And then you try and blame us for screwing up your negotiations of your total surrender.

          No. We ‘gun nuts’ are not why our rights are under constant attack. Our rights are under constant attack because people like you are so willing to give power and authority to those who would attack us.

      • “Lighten up Francis”

        Nobody’s hurting anyone. It’s the same as “seeing gay people kiss won’t make you gay.”

    • You mean like the article here some time ago where a professor at a college, while cowering under her desk, called campus security because seh saw armed men on the quad? When she was informed tha this was the campus ROTC unit drilling, and that the rifles were not real, she stated that she intended to call the police vevery time she saw them.

      • Yes Mark, exactly like that ! There is ignorance on both sides. Until that is dealt with in a reasonable and mature way there will never be any progress. People will just be considered either a “gun nut” or a “snowflake”. This mentality accomplishes NOTHING.

    • The irrational fear of guns is not instinctive, nor is it the inevitable result of not being familiar with guns.

      That irrational fear must be taught.

      • It’s not irrational Curtis. It’s totally rational. Probably TOO rational. And absolutely is taught. Have you seen a movie lately ? Watched tv ? Played a video game ? People see death by guns constantly, both good and bad guys. So when they see anybody with a gun the first reaction is “guns kill and I don’t want to die “. I’m sure you’re a good guy, but a total stranger doesn’t know that, they just see a guy with a gun. They have no idea what your intentions are.

        • An irrational reaction does not become rational simply because you’ve been brainwashed by our leftist culture. It is based on emotions and not on reason, and is therefore definitionally irrational.

    • That was really rotten of you. Now I have an image of the Hysterical Mother deep-throating a 7 1/2″ Single Action Army stuck in my head.

    • Thank you! The OP was incredibly condescending, and all the comments have been a disgusting circle jerk. Given the extremely heated political climate, the media’s constant fervor around gun violence, and the actual campus shootings that have occurred in recent years, why do we feel it necessary to ridicule a college student (someone who is for all intents and purposes still a child) for being concerned when she saw someone carrying a case that could very easily have contained a rifle? Were her concerns really that far outside the realm of possibility? What if it had been a gun? What if the shooter had climbed a clock tower and killed 20 people? What if she had the chance to alert authorities but hadn’t said anything?

      And for those of you chuckling about what the “snowflakes” would think if they knew how easy it was to take down and conceal an AR-15 – what the hell is wrong with you? Way to add fuel to the gun grabber’s fire. You’re helping prove their talking points for re-instating the AWB. Dumb kids don’t even know how easy it is to hide a rifle in something that doesn’t look like it might hold a rifle… FFS!

      • Life is full of endless possibilities. Our youth is being socially engineered to be irrationally scared of certain possibilities while being socially engineered to ignore many other possibilities. Your line of thinking leads to the acceptance of total police state, where any possibility the state deems unfavorable can be subjectively eliminated.

    • I don’t know what’s better, the fact that they don’t apparently catch an obvious mistake in an article or the fact that they think it’s notable that police officers were carrying guns when responding to a ‘man with a gun (case)’ call.

  10. I’m going to guess the words “an abundance of caution” were mentioned at some point. Remember back when we used to call it “pants-shitting cowardice?”

  11. I’ve had anti gun family going off on facebook over gun cases that are converted guitar cases with hippie Bern out stickers all over the thing. They should know, this is one of the reasons why cases that don’t look like gun cases exist.

    • “We must ban ____ and their evil ____. You know, for the snowflakes.”

      /sarcasm

      FIFY

  13. In the mid ’90s I lived in Norwalk California, in a huge complex. There were probably 40,000 people living there. It was a very diverse place with people from all over world living there. I was a definite minority there, being white. The apartment below me was rented by a band from Jamaica trying to make it in LA. One day as I was leaving my apartment and walking down the stairs with my rifle case, I ran into my neighbors who were walking up with instrument cases. One of them asked me if I was a musician. I replied that I was, and when asked what I played, I replied, ” I play percussion.” Loved that.

  14. There was a guy in the Burlington (MA) mall a couple of years ago, whose umbrella triggered (ha, ha) a lock down. He was back at work and when he saw the hubbub on TV _and_ realized that the “man with a gun” was him, he called the po-po and it got straightened out.

    They’re idiots “thinking”* that a spree killer is going to advertise his plan by carrying his rifle in such an obvious way.

    * The Left keeps using that word. I don not think it means what they think it means.

  15. We got trouble
    Right here in Pocatello City.
    Trouble with a capital “T”
    And that rhymes with “P” and that stands for pool!

    • I’m not sure what you mean. If you mean taco pool party though I’m all in, just lemme know where and when. I’ll bring the guac.

  16. Wow I figured this would have been Boise. I’m disappointed in Pocatello… That has been a less libtard region of Idaho.

  17. Rebuttal:

    People in college towns call the police at the drop of a hat. At least in the place I lived, which I’m going to assume is very similar to the atmosphere in Idaho since I was in Utah at the time (and maybe headed back).

    I mean literally at the drop of a hat though. we were on the top of our dorm building playing a game similar to dodgeball with balled up clothes with our RA and a bundle of clothes accidentally went over the edge. Cops showed up real quick. This was the first in a long line of ridiculous things I saw. I guess cops on campus are bored like ALL THE TIME.

    The cops get called for literally anything getting tossed around that is not a ball or frisbee. And I’d bet even those are not always safe. Water guns? Forbidden. Snowball fights? In Utah? Yeah super forbidden. Foam rocket launchers? FORBIDDEN.

    Seriously.

    So this is unsurprising and not really anti-gun animus in my mind. Just more of the same itchy speed dial.

    • I’m increasingly in favor of eliminating colleges wholesale. They’re now teaching regressive knowledge – ie – students are more capable when they enter college than when they leave.

      It would be better “for the children” that they not have their mental development retarded like that.

      • I agree 100% I’m 26 and I feel way dumber now than after I graduated high school and went to college. It’s just 4 years to Fuck off and avoid real life. I think 2 years mandatory national guard would really help people lock their sit down pre college

        • Been there. Done that. It was called the GI Bill following the Second World War. College administrators expected it to be a catastrophe because these students had been away from school for several years fighting the Axis. Whatever they had forgotten was more than offset by the maturity they had gained from a few more years of living and from their wartime experiences. They proved to be the most successful group of students ever enrolled.

      • Couldn’t agree more. I dropped out of college after one year and it was the best decision I ever made. Now, at 21, I’m happily working in construction

        • Wait…
          You’re in construction? You build things? Like, outside? With your hands, out in the sun and get all sweaty and filthy like a… (glances around) an IMMIGRANT?
          The typical office-dwelling city liberal now feels only pity and maybe just a little contempt for you.
          … I think I like you!

  18. I believe these holophobes are going to create a terrible scenario for themselves. Where by calling the police every time something looks frightening. The police are going to become less responsive. The old cry wolf scenaro

  19. Idaho? I live in NYC and even here no one would give two shits if you carried any sort of oblong case. I figured Idaho, even campuses, to be more gun friendly.

  20. Reminds me of an elderly gentleman from Michigan who was a WWII vet I met on fishing trip to the Texas coast. He and his wife were in the adjacent RV spot and he was my new friend for most of the day and said they would be camping at the location for another week. At dusk he saw me retrieving my tennis racquet bag from the truck and inquired about my racquet selection. When I unzipped the bag and revealed the AR pistol inside, the snow bird was visibly shaken and wanted to know if it was legal for me to have the weapon in a campground, I assured him it was as I zipped the bag up and put in my trailer. He and I were supposed to fish together the following day but that never happened because the yankee couple loaded up and left in the middle of the night. If I’d known the mere sight of an AR pistol would scare him away I would have never unzipped the bag.

    • A WW2 vet is someone who served in a branch of the armed forces during that war. It doesn’t mean he engaged in combat. There are people in the army who haven’t touched a rifle since boot camp and can’t be trusted to unload one correctly. Air force and navy get even less small arms training. The Marine Corps is the only service where you can be sure they know which end the bullet comes out of.

      • I took the old man at his word when he told me he’d seen combat in the Army after D-Day in Europe. I also afforded him the courtesy of not reacting to a couple of things he said that made it quite obvious he was a blue dog Roosevelt Democrat, even still, had I known the old codger had an irrational fear of Texans with guns, the AR would have remained concealed just like the Glock 33 he never saw.

    • I work in Michigan with a progressive democrat pro-union elderly war vet (not WWII) who repeatedly has to remind me that he’s not anti-gun and hunts deer sometimes. Sort of an ‘I’m anti gun, so I have to keep telling everybody I’m not anti-gun so you think my views aren’t unreasonable’ sort of guy.

      He freaked out when I had a case of 9mm (about the size of a single box of Kleenex) shipped to the office last year. About the third time he asked me if I was planning to shoot up the office, I was trying to force myself not to tell my boss that if I heard one more word of that shit I was going home and maybe not coming back. The word Fudd doesn’t begin to cover it. He’s what passes for a Sportsman among the progressive union types around here. I wish he was a rarity.

  21. Take up fly fishing. A 9 ft 3 pc flyrod is 3 pieces 3ft long, the rod tube is about 40 inches long. They make carriers to hold more than one rod, with a shoulder strap.

  22. Need I add: This is why we can’t organize our laws and society around making you feel safe.

  25. I heard this on the local news and my first reaction was WTF?

    When I attended ISU in the ’70s, it was not uncommon to see someone carrying a gun case on campus, especially during hunting season. When gun shows were mostly a chance for collectors to showoff their collections the ISU Student Union Building hosted a really cool gun show with lots of unique and interesting weapons.

    Hell, we even had a small bore range on campus.

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