Some of you might recall that my bachelor's degree is from Liberty University. Back in the day (I was in the class of '85), I used to make fun of the fact that campus security carried guns. I wondered where the danger was.

Anyway, apparently one of those security guards used their gun yesterday:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/19......220.html

Perhaps it's not particularly newsworthy, but it's a bit upsetting, nonetheless.

Well I don't know if it's good or bad news without knowing the why of it. What fails to happen can matter as much as what happens.

Well, I'd like to know a lot more, but so far haven't really found any more information. I need the powers of Balducci.

The only thing I know so far is that the young man apparently attacked the security officer with a hammer. Seems like a legitimate reason to pull a gun to me.

Also he was in the girl only dorms, so I am thinking, he may have been a sex case.

Maybe. The reports I have read so far say that he approached the officer in the dorm to claim his car had been stolen. So he enters the lobby, talks to the guard, and attacks him with a hammer. Had he succeeded in subduing or killing the officer, what would he have done next?

It's a frightening story.

My very first semester, I had a roommate who was a gun fanatic. He would sit around the room polishing a beautiful Smith & Wesson and talking about the guns he had at home. But having a gun in a dorm room was, of course, against the rules. Anyway, the kid went on to quit his studies and join the campus security force. So I always thought that he was more interested in guns than books. I also thought that it meant that the main reason the security officers carried guns was because they wanted to carry themselves. (Full disclosure: back then I was also quite interested in guns, and used to buy magazines and dream about which ones I'd buy if I had the money.)

These days he might be allowed to polish that gun without breaking the rules:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/04......005.html

My guess is, the guy went into the girls dorms to commit a sex attack, the guard found him, asked what he was doing in there, the guy lied and said, my car has broken down, I am looking for help. The guard did not buy the story and so the guy tried to hit the guard with an hammer to get away and the guard shot him.