Tom DeLay Has the Solution to Gun Violence: More Guns!

Asked by Charlie Rose his thoughts on the tragedy at Virginia Tech, book-touring Tom DeLay offered a jaw-dropping solution to avoiding future campus carnage (one I've heard echoed by other pistol-packing conservatives): allow students to bring concealed weapons to class with them. "We need to remove the ban of guns on the Virginia Tech campus," said DeLay, "and allow people to defend themselves." Yep, the answer to gun violence is... more guns!

For DeLay and his fellow gun lovers, the Second Amendment guarantees not only a well-regulated militia, but a well-armed student body. It brings a whole new dimension to school supplies. Ruler? Check. Protractor? Check? Glock 9 with ankle holster? Check. Target practice will be a freshman prerequisite. It's Mutually Assured Destruction Goes to College. Animal House meets Death Wish. Shootout at the O.K. Dorm.

Do we really want our institutions of higher learning to become ivy-covered versions of the Wild West? Haven't DeLay and company ever watched Deadwood?

Here is the full bizarro-world exchange between Rose and DeLay:

Rose (holding up a newspaper photo of Cho Seung-Hui): The picture on the other side is the gunman at Virginia Tech. This is an old debate, and we don't have time to talk about it, but does it make you rethink guns? What he did was all legal. He went in and got a handgun, bought a handgun, was checked, had no criminal record. Went back a month later, got another gun. Do we need to do something about this?

DeLay: Yeah. We need to remove the ban of guns on the Virginia Tech campus, and allow people to defend themselves, and allow people to get concealed carry licenses. Maybe if there was one person in there that had a concealed carry license, was carrying a gun, he wouldn't have killed as many people.

Rose: So if there was a student in the classroom or a professor in the classroom that had a gun, they could have defended those students?

DeLay: That's right.

Rose: Do you think that's the answer?

DeLay: That is the answer.

Rose: More guns?

DeLay: It's been proven over and over again.

Rose: More guns in the hands of students in this case, or in the professors' is the answer to--

DeLay: It has been proven as such. The criminal doesn't know that you have a gun.