Classical Values :: "why would anyone feel the need to hide the fact that they own one"?

May 10, 2007

"why would anyone feel the need to hide the fact that they own one"?

Well, that was Andrew Sullivan's question about guns, and I tried to come up with a few theoretical answers yesterday while trying to be funny.

What happened to a 31 year old Minnesota college student, while not funny, has provided an answer from the real-life world (as opposed to the often theoretically argumentative life of the blogosphere).

Unfortunately, I'm deadly serious. Via Glenn Reynolds, I saw a reminder that the freedom we enjoy in blogging is often in short supply in the "real world." For criticizing affirmative action, and for "talking about concealed carry" a Hamline University student has been suspended, and he will only be allowed back if he submits to -- get this -- psychological evaluation and treatment:

On April 23, Scheffler received a letter informing him he'd been placed on interim suspension. To be considered for readmittance, he'd have to pay for a psychological evaluation and undergo any treatment deemed necessary, then meet with the dean of students, who would ultimately decide whether Scheffler was fit to return to the university.

The consequences were severe. Scheffler wasn't allowed to participate in a final group project in his course on Human Resources Management, which will have a big impact on his final grade. Even if he's reinstated, the suspension will go on his permanent record, which could hurt the aspiring law student.

"'Oh, he's the crazy guy that they called the cops on.' How am I supposed to explain that to the Bar Association?" Scheffler asks.

He has also suffered embarrassment. Scheffler obeyed the campus ban and didn't go to class, but his classmate, Kenny Bucholz, told him a police officer was stationed outside the classroom. "He had a gun and everything," Bucholz says. Dean Julian Schuster appeared at the beginning of class to explain the presence of the cop, citing discipline problems with a student. Although Schuster never mentioned Scheffler by name, it didn't take a scholar to see whose desk was empty.

Scheffler has tried to get answers from the university, to no avail. On April 25, he called President Hanson's office to request a meeting, but when he told the secretary his name, she claimed the computer system had crashed and she couldn't access the president's schedule. She promised to call Scheffler back, but more than a week later, he's still waiting.

I guess I should be glad I'm not a student anywhere, or else they'd say I'm mentally ill and kick me out. (Well, I've had commenters question my mental health, but they can't do anything to me.)

Frankly, the tactics they're attempting to use against Mr. Scheffler remind me of Soviet-style "treatment" of political dissidents. The difference is that the government isn't doing it, and I suppose there's no right to attend college.

Unbelievable. (This is starting to sound eerily like Harvard's anti-homosexual witch hunts back in the 1920s.)

The most ominous aspect of this is that the same people who would declare Scheffler mentally ill would love to turn right around and use the same argument to deprive him of his Second Amendment rights. This is related to a concern I expressed in the immediate aftermath of the Virginia Tech shooting:

I think if standards are toughened as a result of this, it will be more along the lines of making it impossible for anyone who has ever sought treatment for mental illness to ever buy a gun. Couple that with the notion that nearly all of us are all mentally ill (whether from depression, neurosis, OCD, ADHD, "codependency" etc.) and I don't think it's much of a stretch to see a movement to use mental illness as grounds for disarming a lot of people who, while they might arguably need treatment for one thing or another would never shoot anyone.

But this latest idea by college administrators is a wonderfully neat trick.

"Talking about concealed carry" supplies grounds for mental health treatment. And then mental health treatment supplies grounds for losing the right to concealed carry.

Sheesh.

It is any wonder that gun owners don't want to be identified?

At the risk of making this more painfully obvious than I should have to, gun owners are fearful of being identified precisely because in the real world, they are increasingly face persecution like that meted out to Mr. Scheffler. Or they might face stigmatization, which leads quite predictably to life in the closet:

So anathema are guns among my friends that when one learned I was doing this piece, he opened his wallet, silently pulled out an NRA membership card, then (after I recovered from the sight) asked me not to spread it around lest his son be kicked out of nursery school.

It should surprise no one that stigmatization and persecution force people into closets.

What's surprising is that anyone would anyone be surprised.

posted by Eric on 05.10.07 at 02:56 PM

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Comments

After reading the news article linked to in the post, my own read is that the administration was playing CYA after Virginia Tech, not discriminating against Mr. Sheffler for his conservative opinions. I would not have gone as far as they did, but I think that their actions fall within the range of prudent behavior. Remember, they don't really know this guy from Adam; he's one of 4,000 students. He sends a rather cantankerous letter to the president and he seems to have a proclivity for guns. Any campus president who did NOT react in some fashion would be fairly accused of dereliction of duty. This president chose to take instant action to isolate the unknown threat; I would have ordered the Dean of Students to take rapid action but would not have suspended the student.

The requirement of a psychological test seems fair enough to me; recall that the country was reverberating with stories about the failure to follow up on psychiatric information on the shooter in Virginia. Get the facts, interview the subject, and then make a determination. That in itself is just fine. The suspension until the requirements had been met was a bit heavy-handed, but had the President given the student a week, would that mean only that the student would go on a rampage in six days? Would you be willing to take that chance?

Froblyx · May 10, 2007 04:54 PM

No, it's completely unreasonable. This sort of panicked reaction is how people lose all their rights bit by bit. That university needs to be sued within an inch of its endowment, pour encourager les autres.

Aaron · May 10, 2007 05:14 PM

Froblyx, how did I know you would defend the University? You're getting predictable already.

So help me out. Where is the "unknown threat" in his letter? Is it an offense to write an email that someone may deem "cantankerous"? That's quite a standard.

tim maguire · May 10, 2007 05:58 PM

"So help me out. Where is the "unknown threat" in his letter? Is it an offense to write an email that someone may deem "cantankerous"? That's quite a standard."

The fact that there is no standard is the source of the University's strong reaction. If there were a standard in place, the administration could simply have applied the standard and acted accordingly. The absence of a standard puts the monkey on the administration's back: if this guy does turn out to be a nut case and does go on a rampage, your career is over because you failed to respond to an "obvious" threat. In cases like this, bureaucrats always behave in the most CYA manner possible. What we're looking at here is not some grand anti-gun conspiracy but rather bureaucrats behaving like bureaucrats.

Froblyx · May 10, 2007 06:09 PM

He already had a concealed weapon permit, IIRC. Regardless of leftard hyperbole, they don't just feature those as prizes in Cracker Jacks boxes.

And there is a standard vis-a-vis firearms: view the firearm owner as a criminal. That seems well established, to my unbiased view.

skh.pcola · May 10, 2007 08:04 PM

this is typical of the Left Thought Police.

Because the guy committed a thought crime, thinking thoughts that were politically incorrect: opposing Affirmative Action, supporting the second amendment, he must be insane.

Just like the Left's model, the Soviet Gulag imprisoned in insane asylums Democracy Dissidents, and Jews.

The school should be sued to within an inch of it's endowment. Perhaps settling for $100 million or so.

Jim Rockford · May 11, 2007 02:06 AM

"Because the guy committed a thought crime, thinking thoughts that were politically incorrect: opposing Affirmative Action, supporting the second amendment, he must be insane."

I don't read it that way. The letter alarmed the president because it made references to guns and expressed ill will towards a minority group. Sure, there was nothing in the letter that proved the writer to be insane. But knowing nothing more about the writer than the letter, which would be more prudent: to ignore it, or to investigate the writer?

Froblyx · May 11, 2007 10:10 AM

"The requirement of a psychological test seems fair enough to me; recall that the country was reverberating with stories about the failure to follow up on psychiatric information on the shooter in Virginia. Get the facts, interview the subject, and then make a determination."
I believe that an interview process before allowing an individual to by a gun is a good idea. However it is important to acknowledge the fact that many mentally ill people act normal unless they were triggered by something and thus they would still pass the interview and get the gun.
"But knowing nothing more about the writer than the letter, which would be more prudent: to ignore it, or to investigate the writer?"
I say investigate but immediate suspension seems to go against the idea of innocent until proven guilty - What is the right balance between rights and safety??

AChiu _2* · May 13, 2007 01:13 AM