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FRP ALERT: Campus Carry Showdown, 2-7-08 at 10:00am in Olympia!
In case you haven't seen the GOAL Alert below already, pass it on to every list or website you know of that college students read. Campus Protection has been introduced in the Senate, to counter the campus gun ban bill, and it's officially on! The hearing for both bills will be in the J.A. Cherberg Building, Senate Hearing Room 3, at 10:00am.
Now is not the time for students to be intimidated away by threats of "repercussions". Intimidation is how bullies operate, so don't let it work. The people in authority at colleges are only concerned about their monopoly on power, and will resort to anything to stop campus protection from happening. They will let Rebecca Griego and Virginia Tech happen a hundred times over to stop you from exercising authority and power to protect your lives, because when that happens, it means the job got done without them, and their power over you is diminished. They don't care about your safety, so you have no reason to care what they think. Administrator types will be the primary opposition we'll be facing in the room. There's also a possibility of a police chief or two showing up to voice their "concerns" about non-uniformed students possessing guns during a violent episode. It's the same thing with them, they also consider the exercise of force to be their sole domain, and are only concerned about being the only ones who are armed when they show up.
The thing about bullies is that they are all paper tigers when you make it clear that not only will their intimidation tactics not be tolerated, they will be used to bite them with, and publicly expose the bullies for what they are.
The Higher Education Committee has given us what we've wanted, an all or nothing showdown between the two sides. It's an opportunity we will likely not see again. If gas is a problem, borrow money. I'll drive some people there myself from the Seattle area, and I'll donate some money to carpools if you get in touch. If you have stage fright, get over it, because this will be decided by the number of people present who are willing to stand up, speak and be counted. (Written testimony is an acceptable alternative though.) The committee would not have arranged for this showdown unless they were willing to actually pass Campus Protection out of committee, if they are sufficiently impressed, so it's a certainty that one of these two bills WILL be passed out of committee.
As you all know, this is about far more than just a gun issue, it's about people's lives. The lives of your fellow students, your teachers and staff, and you. If we miss this opportunity, and lives on campus are lost again in this state, we will have to live with the fact that we failed them ourselves. So let's pull the stops out and win this one.
These are the emails for the Senate Higher Education Committee. Whether you can make it to the hearing or not, contact them right away to urge support for HB 6860, and thank them for this generous opportunity.
"Senate Higher Education":shin.paull@leg.wa.gov,
kilmer.derek@leg.wa.gov,
delvin.jerome@leg.wa.gov,
berkey.jean@leg.wa.gov,
schoesler.mark@leg.wa.gov,
sheldon.timothy@leg.wa.gov;
The sponsors of HB 6860 are Pam Roach (prime sponsor), Val Stevens, and Jerome Delvin. Also write to them and thank them profusely for tackling this issue for us.
roach.pam@leg.wa.gov
stevens.val@leg.wa.gov
delvin.jerome@leg.wa.gov
Also, a website devoted to Washington State campus carry related legislation is under construction by a campus leader for Students for Concealed Carry on Campus. The site will be at:
http://www.campuscarrylegislation.com/ . It should be up in a day or two, so check back, developments and alerts will be posted there, and there will probably be an alert list to sign up for as well.
Sincerely,
Kevin Schmadeka
Freedom Restoration Project of Washington
frp-wa@mindspring.com
360 757-7122