No Free Speech Rights for Those Wanting to End Gun Free Zones?

This is bizarre, but it is hardly surprising.

WASHINGTON — The First Amendment guarantees Americans the right to free speech. The Second Amendment guarantees the right to possess firearms. Now the first two clauses in the Bill of Rights have come together in an ongoing debate over the right of college students to advocate that they be allowed to carry guns on campus.

The bloody massacres at Virginia Tech and Columbine High School, as well as smaller campus shootings across the country in the last decade, have fomented a lively debate over whether citizens should be allowed to carry concealed weapons to defend themselves on campus.

But that debate has hit a wall of resistance from school officials in some places, bringing into focus the dual issues of gun rights and free speech.

Many gun-rights advocates are arguing that college campuses, which are supposed to be open to diversity of thought, provocative dialogue, politics and protest, are hardly bastions of free speech when it comes to discussing firearms.

"The fact is, the topic is so explosive," said Robert Shibley, spokesman for the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), which tracks discriminatory practices against students involved in conservative issues on campus. They've been dealing with "more and more" complaints about efforts to "squelch gun speech," he said.

The latest flareup involves Christine Brashier, who says officials at the Community College of Allegheny County (CCAC) violated her First Amendment right to free speech when they stopped her from posting and distributing fliers advocating for concealed carry on campus, and for a new chapter of Students for Concealed Carry on Campus (SCCC) at the college. The group has about a dozen chapters on other Pennsylvania campuses, Shibley said.

"I genuinely wanted to start discussion on the topic," Brasier told FOXNews.com this week. " I am not such an avid gun owner as much of the news has made me out to be — I simply believe in liberty and that college is the place for a debate about important issues such as this one." . . . . .

Read the rest.

Thanks to Anthony Troglio for the link.