{"id":78579,"date":"2017-08-31T13:56:41","date_gmt":"2017-08-31T17:56:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.gunsamerica.com\/blog\/?p=78579"},"modified":"2017-08-31T13:56:41","modified_gmt":"2023-08-21T06:06:35","slug":"kansas-professor-sports-bullet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gunsamerica.com\/digest\/kansas-professor-sports-bullet\/","title":{"rendered":"Kansas Professor Sports Bulletproof Vest to Protest Campus Carry"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Kansas<\/a>

Filmmaker and Prof. Kevin Willmott is wearing a bulletproof vest to protest campus carry at Kansas University. (Photo: Savanna Smith\/KANSAN<\/em>)<\/p><\/div>\n

Filmmaker\u00a0Kevin Willmott is taking a stand against campus carry. \u00a0Willmott, who also teaches media and film at the University of Kansas, showed up to class last week wearing a bulletproof vest. \u00a0His point, he doesn’t feel safe in the classroom anymore.<\/p>\n

\u201cTry to forget that I\u2019m wearing a vest, and I\u2019ll try to forget that you could be packing a .44 magnum,\u201d Willmott told UDK.com<\/a>, the student paper of KU.<\/p>\n

Willmott likened the new law that allows law-abiding citizens to carry on campus grounds provided they’re over the age of 21 to a “nice\/nasty” form of segregation from the ’50s where instead of erecting big signs enforcing the separation of whites and blacks businesses would put up small notices to conceal<\/em> the policy from plain sight.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe disturbing part of the policy for me is that it is concealed,\u201d Professor Willmott explained. \u201cIt\u2019s kind of a don\u2019t ask, don\u2019t tell kind of a policy, and so, you\u2019re just kind of expected to forget that they\u2019re probably there. And in that sense, you\u2019re kind of living in a lie.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd that\u2019s what this policy is all about,\u201d Willmott continued. \u201cThey don\u2019t want it to be visible, because if it was visible, if everybody was walking around with a bulletproof vest on, people would say, \u2018Oh my God, is this a warzone? What\u2019s going on here?\u2019 And yes, it is a warzone. No one\u2019s started shooting yet. Yet. But we don\u2019t know how many people have guns.\u201d<\/p>\n

Willmott went on to argue that guns on campus chill the free exchange of ideas in the classroom, that everyone — students, teachers, administrators — is scared and that the mental health of college students is already fragile and having guns around will have tragic results.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou know, I\u2019m a filmmaker, and it\u2019s like you\u2019re living in a satire,\u201d Willmott said. \u201cYou\u2019re living in this kind of crazy satire where you\u2019re teaching and people can have guns. I mean it\u2019s crazy, it\u2019s crazy. I don\u2019t know how else to say it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Willmott says he plans to wear the vest for at least a year.<\/p>\n

SEE ALSO:\u00a0Kansas Professor Pens Resignation Letter Over Campus Carry Law<\/a><\/h2>\n

Fears over campus carry are overblown. \u00a0The notion that students and teachers and administrators are living in a warzone with blood in the streets is complete and utter nonsense.<\/p>\n

In an article published on The Hill <\/a>back in May, researcher and economist\u00a0John Lott Jr. flat-out debunked the notion that campus carry poses a threat to student safety.<\/p>\n

“Twelve states mandate the right to permitted concealed carry on public college campuses and an additional 22 states leave it up to the university,” wrote Lott. \u00a0“Not once has a permit holder in any of these states committed a crime on one of these campuses with a gun.”<\/p>\n

Lott also made a good point regarding Kansas’ Constitutional carry standard which doesn’t require one to obtain a permit to carry concealed.<\/p>\n

“It is a wonder how these professors ever go off campus. After all, there are over 1.15 million concealed handgun permit holders in Texas. Kansans don’t even need a permit to carry. Professors can’t go to restaurants, movie theaters, or grocery stores without being around legally carried concealed handguns,” he noted.<\/p>\n

Lott’s right. \u00a0If KU is a warzone, well then so is the entire state of Kansas. \u00a0If he is going to be intellectually consistent, Willmott should wear that vest everywhere he goes, not just to class.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cTry to forget that I\u2019m wearing a vest, and I\u2019ll try to forget that you could be packing a .44 magnum,\u201d Professor Willmott said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":34,"featured_media":78580,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_specdata_upc":"","_specdata_placement":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7,25,216],"tags":[132,318,607,122],"featured":[],"hunt365":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-78579","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-gunsamerica-authors","8":"category-current-events","9":"category-s-h-blannelberry","10":"tag-buzz","11":"tag-campus-carry","12":"tag-news","13":"tag-r2kba"},"featured_image_src":"https:\/\/gunsamerica.com\/digest\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/59a059716a78a.image_-150x100.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gunsamerica.com\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78579","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gunsamerica.com\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gunsamerica.com\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gunsamerica.com\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/34"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gunsamerica.com\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78579"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gunsamerica.com\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78579\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":183039,"href":"https:\/\/gunsamerica.com\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78579\/revisions\/183039"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gunsamerica.com\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/78580"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gunsamerica.com\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78579"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gunsamerica.com\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78579"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gunsamerica.com\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78579"},{"taxonomy":"featured","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gunsamerica.com\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/featured?post=78579"},{"taxonomy":"hunt365","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gunsamerica.com\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hunt365?post=78579"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}