(GunNews) – The local mainstream media outlet, the News-Gazette published a huge front-page article about violence on campus last weekend (and then ran it online this Sunday), basically letting folks know that incidents like those we knew as Polar Bear Hunting attacks from 2010 are still going on and that students are pretty much on their own and at the mercy of violent thugs prowling campus.
The subhead read “Campustown is overall a safe place to be, but it’s still foolish to wander around alone at night, while intoxicated or otherwise distracted.”
We hate to break it to the politically correct News-Gazette, but if it’s not safe to be outside after dark alone, it’s not an “overall safe place”.
The “Polar Bear Hunting” attacks in 2010 occurred that fall and saw a dozen or more savage racial attacks committed at random by small groups of predominantly African-Americans youth against white males. The minority youth would then run away, laughing about pulling off the attack and the reaction of the victim. Local police were out in force for weeks trying to prevent further attacks and finally after a few arrests were made, publicity surrounding the attacks died down.
Until the recent headline pictured here.
Unfortunately for UI students, staff and visitors, one doesn’t have to be intoxicated and alone on campus to be the victim of serious violent attack, as happened to one visiting researcher from Australia found out last year. He was not only beaten, but kidnapped and taken to a farm field and robbed. He was lucky to escape with his life, but the attack left him “hospitalized for five days with bleeding on the brain, a broken nose, a cut to the head and scrapes and bruises.”
A great way to spend a weekend visiting your fellow researchers, right?
The most recent article quoted police urging students to “know their limits” and to not be wandering the streets intoxicated when they can’t recognize a threat or defend themselves. This story came out less than a week after University of Illinois students had returned to school. Welcome back! Now send us your hefty tuition checks, please.
First off, Illinois law pretty much limits the personal defense options for students and non-students on the U of I campus to next to nothing. Unlike 49 other states, Illinois has no right-to-carry provision and Illinois law in many ways further restricts the possession of non-firearm weapons in campus areas.
In stark contrast, students walking on campus at Indiana University, for instance, who are licensed to carry a personal defense handgun, can carry the means with which to defend themselves from violent attack, including sexual assault. Ditto for the University of Kentucky. Ditto for the University of Missouri. And Wisconsin. And Iowa.
At Illinois? Not so much.
The News-Gazette article discussed a student who wandered home from a party and received a parting gift from the thugs at the UI’s hometown of Champaign: A broken nose, broken facial bone and an eye swollen shut and red for almost a month.
It gets better. Those responsible were eventually brought to justice. Dias Carter, 24 and Magdiel Rosario, 19 each got a whole two years probation for the attack. Wow. Two years probation.
Dias Carter also a a prior conviction from a wilding attack in Scott Park in Champaign in September 2010.
Scott Park is, coincidentally right in the northwest part of campus.
In that 2010 case, he battered a man and was sentenced to… are you sitting down?
He was sentenced to probation in that attack and was still on probation in that case at the time of the June 2012 attack that left the latest victim nursing his broken bones and screwed up eye.
Dias Carter knows college kids are easy pickings. They can’t meaningfully fight back. And our charming justice system catches and releases him and people just like him with promises he’ll be a good boy.
In our NRA Personal Protection classes, we tell our students many of the same things the U of I police are recommending: Be aware of your surroundings, travel in groups where possible and being drunk or impaired in public is a magnet for trouble. We teach students to be aware of their surroundings and not to be a “sheeple” in condition white: unaware, distracted and/or oblivious to their surroundings (running at night with headphones on or about as bad, texting while walking with the headphones on). We also teach folks how to use their lawfully carried firearm to thwart a violent attack if circumstances call for it.
We don’t tell folks to carry a rat-tail comb or tongue depressor for self-defense as the Illinois State Police recommended up until recently. No, GSL Defense Training shows folks how to use the proper tool for the job. Oftentimes, the Dias Carters of the world have never had it explained to them that way and go on their merry way when confronted with a true equalizer and the willpower to follow-through on its use if required.
Ultimately in a civilized society you shouldn’t have to be prepared to use force to defend yourself, but savage attacks by folks like Dias Carter leave reasonable people to understand that the only thing violent thugs understand and respect is violence reciprocated.
The earlier Polar Bear Hunting cases were resolved after police made some arrests, but our local judiciary sentenced most of those caught to probation, just like Dias Carter received in his case.
At Guns Save Life, many of our members noted that Polar Bears can be very dangerous game.
The same holds as true to day as it did in a couple of years ago.
“Polar Bear hunting” was obviously black on white hate crimes. The cowards entrusted with prosecution of these attacks would not charge the participants as such. Can you imagine the outrage, both real and manufactured If these were white on black attacks?
IF nobody wants Justice, then Justice will never be served.
** Let the citizens and students enjoy their chains… who cares.
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