Second Amendment Remedies?

The charges eventually brought against the students that took over Willard Straight Hall at Cornell University, in April of 1969, did not include any related to the fact that the militants brought a number of guns onto campus. Simply brandishing the rifles was perfectly legal under New York State Law, and they did not use the weapons to occupy the building. The rifles did not appear until after Willard Straight Hall was emptied of students, parents, and faculty. After a tense week of negotiations, the incident was peacefully resolved. Apart from some minor injuries sustained in a fracas between black students and members of a white fraternity, there were no casualties.

What a different outcome from what occurred the following year during disruptions on two other college campuses. On May the 4th of 1970, four students were killed and nine others wounded when National Guardsmen opened fire on the campus of Kent State University in Ohio. The shootings climaxed several days of anti-war protests on the campus sparked by the announcement of the invasion of Cambodia by US soldiers. Ten days later, protests by a large group of Black students on the campus of Jackson State University in Mississippi were met by a barrage of shotgun fire from some 40 state highway patrolmen, who later said they had come under sniper fire. A subsequent investigation turned up no evidence of any snipers. The gunfire killed two students and injured twelve others.

In neither of the 1970 incidents was any evidence produced demonstrating that any firearms, other then those in the hands of military and law enforcement members, were present. That some protesters used rocks and bottles as projectiles is not disputed. The question then becomes why was lethal force used at Kent State and Jackson State, but not at Cornell? At first glance, one would conclude that the difference was that the students at Cornell had armed themselves with guns, while the students at the other two schools had not. The lesson then becomes that the authorities blink in the face of well-armed protesters.

That simply doesn't hold up very well under scrutiny though. The Black Panthers armed themselves quite well, but ended up being decimated by law enforcement. And the fact that some rioters had guns didn't prevent dozens of them from getting shot down during the riots that wracked America's cities during that era. Perhaps what it comes down to is that the people in charge at Cornell exercised much better judgment then the authorities did in the two other examples. The administration at place at Cornell at that time has been flogged ever since for what has been termed a "craven surrender" to the demands of extremists. Would it have been better to call in the Cavalry? In all probability, the incident at Cornell would have become something far uglier then either Kent State or Jackson State. The example of Attica comes to mind. As Winston Churchill once said "It is always better to jaw-jaw then war-war" And he was certainly someone in a position to know...