“I honestly don’t think the average citizen is psychologically prepared to use deadly force,” Chris Hoover, director of University Police and Safety at Emporia State University, tell hutchnews.com. “They go through their 8 hours of training (required for a conceal-and-carry license) and think they’re ready to handle the situation. But the reality is, most trained police officers aren’t even prepared to handle that sort of situation and they go through far more extensive training.” Mr. Hoover is bitching because Kansas passed legislation “allowing” guns on campus by 2017 – and he doesn’t like it. Not one bit . . .
“I’ve been with students since 1981 and I know the sort of stress they’re under and the pressures that are put on them,” Hoover said. “When you add guns to that, nothing good is going to come of it.”
Hoover said that students often make rash decisions and when those decisions involve guns it is likely to turn deadly.
“When you have a gun strapped to your hip, it’s easier for someone who’s in a heated discussion to pull it out in anger and make a bad decision,” Hoover said. “Honestly, this thought really scares me.”
To date, there has never been a shooting reported on a college campus in Kansas, however, proponents of the legislation often cite school shootings like the one at Virginia Tech in 2007 to justify the bill. Supporters say that if a law-abiding, gun-carrying citizen had been present, lives could have been saved. Hoover, however, sees it differently . . .
One of Hoover’s main concerns is that the Good Samaritan will be the one perceived as a threat when the officers arrive on scene.
“When we get to a scene we have very limited information about what is going on,” Hoover said. “All we know is that the person with the gun is the bad guy, that’s the first person we go to.”
Hoover’s biggest fear is that the average Joe who was able to stop the shooter, will then be in danger of being harmed by one of the responding officers who believes he or she is the original shooter.
I’m confused. A supposedly untrained civilian shoots a spree killer, one of Hoover’s trained cops comes in and take out the hero, and that means untrained civilians shouldn’t carry a firearm? First, when has this ever happened? Second, oh well. I mean, the good guy took out a spree killer for goodness’ sake.
It sounds to me like Hoover doesn’t trust his gun carriers. And if that’s his biggest worry why not offer pistol-packing college “kids” (you must be 21-years-old to legally carry a concealed weapon in Kansas) a meet-and-greet with his officers to get to know each other and learn how not to get shot by responding officers?
Nope. That would be an acknowledgement that college security and legal gun owners are on the same level, playing for the same team. Elitists like Hoover can’t get their heads ’round that concept. So they have to be dragged, kicking and screaming, into doing the right thing. Shame, but there it is.
Wow NOBODY should carry. That just leaves criminals. What a doofus.
Not a doofus. He has a serious conflict of interest, if the campus allows concealed carry, his department is superfluous. He is trying to protect his job, who cares about the truth, logic, common sense or anything else.
That’s the first thing that comes to mind. He’s after job security.
My counter arguments:
These are adults making decisions for themselves that will impact the rest of their lives. If they can’t do that on a daily basis they shouldn’t be away from mommy and daddy.
People have survival instincts. When faced with a madman out to kill you it doesn’t take much to figure out what to do. Police often hesitate or second guess because they don’t want to deal with paperwork or get canned for doing something wrong. His “police don’t know what to do either!” argument doesn’t really work for him in this case either. He’s arguing normal people can’t survive because even police can’t in every case, but those same inept police should be relied upon. Incredible.
The “random violence” argument is weak and debunked when it comes to concealed carrier permit holders. Those that go through the process are far less likely to succumb to the already rare “random rage”. Repeat offenders are far more likely to have random rage and concealed carry permit holders have the means to combat that random rage and associated illegal activity.
A good guy would shoot the bad guy then put down his/her gun and comply with police completely. That is no different than any other DGU. We know the police only show up (or if they are there already they usually wait for backup) after a shooting has concluded in the vast majority of cases. The only confusion they have to deal with relates to their paperwork. Even if they were to shoot the good guy, he would have saved multiple lives in the process and then only the PD would look bad, oh wait, that’s the entire concern here.
Nothing to see here folks, just another PD trying to protect the public from their officers’ stupidity while keeping their own jobs.
Who is he to speak on our behalf anyway? He’s entitled to his opinion and that’s about it.
Campus carry : it’s the last bastion of gun rights enemies nationwide. Even when Shall Issue comes to DC, college campuses will remain disarmed territory.
Why? The average voter thinks of on campus CCW and pictures Jim Belushi packing an Uzi at the frat house. The facts are , most of the idiots on campus are too young to qualify for a CCW anyways, no matter where they are.
But facts sadly lose the field to emotion very often-and the image of a drunken frat boy with a pistol is just too pants soiling for this generation.
What are the Greek letters corresponding to U, Z and I? Perhaps someone needs to start a friendlier frat!
Upsilon, nothing, and Iota.
Zeta! I don’t care if its real, just make it up!
I can’t say I have ever been in a heated discussion and suddenly felt the need to clear leather and blaze away. Even when talking to my former mother-in-law, and that’s saying something.
Me neither. I got rear-ended at a stop light by some doofus a couple weeks ago and amazingly didn’t even think to pull my gun. I guess I must not be the kind of firearm owner he expects…
And anyone involved with law enforcement who blatantly states that such murderous feelings were normal while carrying a firearm, should be removed from duty instantly as a threat to the community BY HIS OWN ADMISSION.
Since the chief says his officers aren’t ready to handle situations either, why bother having them at all? At least the “unready” civilian carriers have the advantage of being on the scene when the bad guys are there too–not afterwards when the damage is already done.
His officers never went to college and thus, could not qualify to be police officers with a real municipal police department. So says his own Corporal. So they get to play cops and robbers on a backwater college campus with all of the other police academy rejects. Really, by their own admission, their typical day involves letting in students who’ve locked themselves out of their cars, and evicting possums who chase the school’s custodians at night. Seriously? This is the crack team of LEOs ready to stare down an active shooter? Give me a break!
Hell, the school can only afford one patrol car on duty per shift. Big whoop. They only just recently, after a 10 year hiatus due to staffing shirtages, began deploying the occasional officer on a bike. Not every day, mind you, just on special occasions. Really, one could seriously strain one’s extraocular muscles from eyerolling while reading this guy’s hubris-laden wailing.
I always love the “heated discussions will lead to a shooting” argument. And to that I ask, how often has ANY heated discussion on campus ended with violence (whether fistfighting or stabbing or shooting or whatever)? And how would adding a gun make that more likely? Of course, the antis are immune to logic and reason.
Not sure, but in all of 2012, there was only one violent crime reported on Emporia State’s campus, an incident of aggravated assault. In fact, in the five years 2008 through 2012, the college has seen annual reported violent crime incidents range from zero in a year, all the way up to a stratospheric, mass anarchy crime wave volume of two in a year (once). Not a single homicide among them. Source is FBI’s annual “Crime in the United States” report, table 9, reported offenses, by college/university.
So, clearly he’s full of b.s. and unaware that the rest of us are not popeyed vestals easily and simultaneously impressed and intimidated by his blowhard pronouncements. Still, it does make me wonder, though, where this campus copper gets his swagger to lecture us piously on responding to bad guys with guns when, um, he doesn’t appear ever to have done it. “Super Troopers” DVD?
Might just be parroting what the admin tells him to say, and adding a bit of his own embellishment. Wouldn’t surprise me much.
Oh crap! What is that thing?!?
That’s a hornet, as I remember. About 30 years ago I managed the college bookstore at Emporia State.
Excuse me, Mr. Hoover?
If this article is any indication, then my latest BM had more common sense on this topic than you do.
I dare say I speak for other college students who wish to carry when I say **** you for insulting me.
Look at this baby.
oh cr@p man I need some brain bleach after that comment, all I see in my minds eye is a talking turd floating in the bowl saying my sh!t don’t stink, what are you looking at!
1. I hate it when dumb people try to make broad pronouncements about average citizens and try to tell me what I am capable of, to “protect me from myself” “for my own good.” It’s like the Govt telling me I must contribute to social security because I am too dumb to save for my own retirement.
2. When has a heated discussion turned into a shootout among CCW holders?
3. When has a cop ever not been able to differentiate a CCW from a criminal post-shooting? All hypotheticals that haven’t happened.
Hoover sucks.
I c wut u did thar….
It strikes me as odd that people against civilian carry act like it’s something new. People have been carrying firearm on their persons for two centuries in this country, either openly or concealed, and have used them to defend live and property. This isn’t something new like gay marriage or civil rights. It’s not something people are fighting to obtain, they are fighting to KEEP IT. People act or say some things that imply that it has never been done before in this country. Are they ignorant or trying to brainwash people?
Both, and they think the people they are talking to are ignorant too.
“…they think the people they are talking to are ignorant too.”
Unfortunately, they are often correct.
Folks tend to forget that UT has allowed guns to be carried into/on all education facilities since 94, the response is always the same…..sky is falling, the latest example would be GA.
SSDD. Same shit, different dick.
We hear the same stupid, debunked arguments again and again and again. Broken freaking record. Get’s kind of boring after awhile.
He should be worried how his officers will react. We all know how the police are held to a much lower standard than the rest of us.
“I honestly don’t think the average citizen is psychologically prepared to use deadly force,” Chris Hoover, director of University Police and Safety at Emporia State University
I am so glad that Mr. or Ms. Hoover knows better than we do. What would our world be like if we did not have self-appointed elite people like Mr. or Ms. Hoover to save us from ourselves?
As usual, the Progressive has no actual argument. All they have is an ad-hominem attack that paints us as either crazy, stupid, or corrupt. In this case I guess Hoover is saying that we re stupid. Do us all a favor and crawl back under your rock Hoover.
Assuming that he is saying his campus rent-a-cops ARE prepared to use deadly force, do we think that is a good thing?
Oh pooh pooh get over it.
Anyone who’s lost count of the number of “I hope those NRA women get raped and see how little good their gun does them.” type of posts from liberty-phobes, knows that progressives are just projecting. They wish they could gun down everyone who disagrees with them, so they can’t fathom that gun owners would feel differently.
Every time someone like Hoover spouts off, I wish
anyone, especially a vet or retired LEO going back
to school would stand up and loudly say “Hey guys,
I have more training and experience then any of
your stooges.”
Better yet, the NRA become a bit more proactive
and do an end-around guys like Hoover. At any
campus that is resistant (if not openly hostile) to
CCW, organize quarterly or biannual training
that exceeds local standards.
no one taught our ancestors how to ‘prepare’ to smash someone’s skull with a club, perf their liver with a stone tipped arrow or slit their throat with a jagged rock, it just happened. Instinct. If you’re too busy trying to survive and eat and have no time for navel gazing, you don’t think too much about the nasty things you did to survive.
Well, if a good guy takes out a spree killer or some such, he probably has a good 20 minutes before the local police show up. If he takes out a home invader, he has 10 minutes before a 60 man tactical swat team shows up in MRAPs and Blackhawks.
Either way, plenty of time to holster/drop the weapon and assume the proper position for a good samaritan… pecker in the dirt, legs spread, hands behind the head.
The Liberal/progressive belief that law abiding citizens will turn into a homicidal maniac with a gun in hand is pervasive. It is an item of faith, and as an item of faith, it is accepted such that fact nor logic will change such a “given truth, a law of the universe”.
I know this from personal experience as I had grown up in a bastion of the Liberal/progressive; The Bay Area and Santa Cruz, CA. It was not even questioned, just accepted, If I carried a gun, two things would happen.
1. Become a homicidal maniac shooting people for cutting me off in traffic.
2. Because I’m being “paranoid and fearful” by carrying a gun to protect myself from a human predator, I would “draw” to me a predator, “like attracts like” after all’ and I would end up shooting someone because of carrying a gun.
I didn’t even realize I held this as a belief until I was attacked by a mugger. After winning, barely; I was confronted with the proof that not carrying a weapon, not even a knife, I could still be targeted by a predator.
It was shattering!
When I thought about carrying a gun, all the programming came to the forefront. It was bizarre; I had grown up shooting rifles, shot guns, even pistols; but carrying a pistol had never really crossed my mind, until after the attempted mugging. And all the delusions and the lies I had been taught to believe bubbled up like poisonous gas out of the ooze of a swamp.
So after a lot of soul searching, I started carrying a pistol, a .357 Ruger revolver. The first year I was looking very carefully if either of these “truths” came to pass. Of course, they didn’t. But the brain washing is incredibly strong. When the culture around you accepts these ideas as a given truth, it is very difficult to overcome such programming.
In my case, it took almost getting killed. Now, I look back at the me before the attack and now, 15 years later, and the old me is like from an alternate universe, or another life read about in some dusty book.
I will say, that the me that I have grown to become; would be looked at with horror and disbelief by the me before the attack. There would have been no argument, no fact, no other persons experience to change my mind. The old me would look at the current me with my facts, logic, experience and history and the thought that go through his mind is, “This is a mad man!”
This is why I say there is no compromise, no accommodation, no mutual respect possible with most liberal/progressives, for most liberal/progressives. would see such as making a deal with the devil himself. For them, it would as if they were becoming madness, chaos and death.
So in the end, there is only defeating a liberal/progressive; because they will never allow us to live among them as free and responsible adults; but only if we are as powerless, helpless and dependent as they are.
Thanks for sharing.
All these idiots make it sound like allowing CCW on college campuses will mean that a bunch of drunk frat boys will be running around terrorizing the campus, their fellow students, and of course their blue-blooded faculty, when in fact most of the ones qualified to carry will be returning vets or people who’ve had to defer college and actually work for a living before attending. I’ve been in plenty of “heated” discussions in college and law school and later in courtrooms, but in all that time I’ve never offered or been offered acts of violence. IF any of this crap were true, then there would be a long history of fistfights and knife fights on campuses, a history that, other than an occasional drunken brawl, is amazingly absent. Opinions must be based on facts; if not they are no more than farts.
Odd he thinks nobody is psychologically prepared to use deadly force but yet students are under so much stress that they ate ready to use deadly force at the slightest provocation.
???
And that these mentally unprepared students are the ones who were, only few years earlier, actively recruited to join the armed forces. Whatever. And so what if I am mentally unprepared –does that mean I will not use deadly force in an appropriate situation ? No, I don’t think so.
I think the funniest thing about all of this is that most people currently think that frat houses DON’T have guns in them. My sister goes to ASU and has told me that pretty much every frat house (off campus btw) has guns in them.
HEAR THAT! ITS ALREADY HAPPENING! YOU CAN STOP FREAKING OUT NOW!
If the average citizen is not psychologically prepared to use deadly force and most trained police officers are also not prepared to use deadly force, doesn’t that mean citizens and trained police officers are about equally prepared to use deadly force?
And that the only really operating operators in the entire operation would be the criminals/spree shooters, who, I guess, are required to acquire 2000 hours of training before committing their first murder.
So in one sentence he says people aren’t willing to kill to protect themselves….. but in the next paragraph he says a gun on the hip makes it more likely that a bad decision will be made… aka someone willing to kill over a simple argument.
I know right? Ol’ Darwin must be turning in his grave right now.
Much as I hate giving props to the cops, I think I’d take out the spree shooter and take my chances with the cops.
Things will be long over before campus security shows up…..whether I shoot the bad guy or not. The idea that they can show up in time to even have an affect on the outcome is simply preposterous.
Sorry Mr.Hoover,not everybody wants to be a unarmed victim. Did it ever occur to you Mr.Hoover that the ones who carry on campus are going to be law abiding citizens protecting themselves not criminals who use violence to settle their matters.
It must be contagious. Boise State university’s top cop said something just as bright as Hoover. In am interview said that people who carry concealled aren’t smart enough to go to the bathroom without dropping their gun. Therefore they shouldn’t carry. Must be LEO cream that rises to the top of university safety.
It’s part of the mandatory training for command grade police officers. here in California we hear it from all of the urban top cops–fantasy after fantasy, all just repeated without attribution or footnote to a study (that does not exist). More guns=more crime. people with guns will be a danger to themselves and to the community. People can’t be trusted is the theme. I guess that’s why the police are there to “protect and serve.” Ah yes, monopolies on power, how classic.
I’m a lot more psychologically prepared to defend my life with deadly force than I am to die.
Precisely.
You students shouldn t want a gun for selt defense just get raped and be happy about it til we the campus police get there andsweep it under the rug in order to save the university’s reputation.
Our man Hoover here sure is a piece of work. Instead of worring about the alleged mental stability deficiencies of others, perhaps he should worry a little more about his own. Here are some of his remarks last year to the campus paper on the topic of concealed carry:
“There’s absolutely no way that I will have a badge or target on my body – because that’s what that badge is, it’s a target for a violent criminal – and not be allowed to carry an armed weapon.” So either he believes only cops are serious targets of violent criminals, or else he adheres to the “rules for thee, but not for me” school of disarmament thought. Nice.
Hoover said most people don’t even want to think about shooting another person because it “gives them the willies.” “Guess what? It gives cops the willies, too,” Hoover said. “We just have to accept it as part of the job.” Well. Why can’t lawfully armed citizens get the willies, exercise their right to self defense, then just accept that as part of life? No answer from Officer Arrogant.
Well, no verbal answer. Maybe he’s a man of action, or inaction? He says he’s qualified to teach concealed carry classes under Kansas’ law, but chooses not to do so. Why not? “I don’t want to be responsible for someone who took my class out there doing something stupid,” Hoover said.
So pretty much EVERYONE, according o him, not just the college age kids whose rights he would infringe were he in charge, but everyone out there is stupid, mentally unstable, and lacks impulse control to murderous effect. Nice. Real nice. Someone with his host of issues probably shouldn’t carry a firearm, let alone decide who else may.
What the HELL is that sculpture? A giant bee?
Facepalm. Just one pairing of conjecture and contradiction after another.
Its just a guess, but I would imagine Mr. Hoover’s opinion is at odds with 95% of the state here in KS.
Who gave him the microphone?
Universities across this country infantilize adults by shielding from the real world and tending to their every need, all the while whining about the terrible “pressure” they face. As if you could not skate through Emporia State University half-stoned with your eyes closed.
I think the Chief is right that a lot of his twenty-one-year-old “children” are incapable of making the adult decisions. Well, he has three years to change that.
One could argue that even if the responding cops take out the armed citizen who downed the shooter the outcome of an active shooter situation was still better (fewer casualties). The possibility of a mistaken shooting says nothing about the RKBA or about the utility of armed citizens.
In that vein though, the concept of being shot by responding officers, or being shot attempting to assist an officer, I’ve been going on ride alongs, have joined a police fraternal club and have actively been trying to meet every cop in my county.
It started with a question to an officer; If I see you in a bad situation and want to help, how do I signal that I’m on your side and not coming to the aid of the suspect you’re dealing with?
His answer was that while help in some circumstances could be greatly appreciated, there was simply no way to know who was who in such a situation.
I’ve since taken that officer shooting with me and had dinner with his family. He’ll always know that I’m coming to help him if he sees me approaching a scene he’s on.
Can I take every cop in the county shooting and have dinner with them all? We’ll there are only about 120 sworn officers in the whole county, counting city, village and sheriff but leaving out state police. So it might take a while but eventually I plan to have every one of them recognize me as a ‘good guy’. It helps when one of ‘their own’ introduces you as being on the side of good and right.
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