Pro-2A Student Shuts Down Anti-Gun Syllabus

Quick action by a vigilant pro-Second Amendment student at the University of Kansas has resulted in shutting down a professor’s anti-gun syllabus. After KU senior Victoria Snitsar shared a copy of the offending syllabus with university officials, the university forced the professor to remove language from his class syllabus that is not “in compliance with university guidelines and state law.”

In his syllabus history professor Eric Rath requested students “not bring firearms to class or anywhere I am present.” Referencing widely discredited and biased gun control claims, Rath’s syllabus warned students that carrying a firearm could increase a student’s likelihood of being killed in an active shooter situation. Rath’s syllabus attempted to suppress the exercise of a constitutionally guaranteed right.

A university spokesperson didn’t indicate if the professor of Japanese history would face any disciplinary action.

Kansas, along with 9 other states, allows law-abiding citizens to carry firearms on campus. Rath used taxpayer resources to produce a syllabus that quotes extensively from the partisan gun control advocacy group, the Giffords Law Center for the Prevention of Gun Violence. His syllabus omits the fact that in Kansas, as in every other state, campus carry laws make students, faculty, and staff safer. In the first year of the new law, campus crime dropped by 13 percent at Kansas University. Furthermore, campus police did not record a single weapons violation on campus for the entire year.

Kansas State Representative Blake Carpenter (R-81) says this kind of anti-gun bias has no place in our public universities and is pleased the university is taking action to correct the anti-gun syllabus. “It is unacceptable for professors to intimidate students like this and try to force their political views on them.” He encourages students to be vigilant to these types of attacks on our rights and bring them to light.

Snitsar, who alerted national media outlets to the syllabus, is pleased with the university’s response. She says no student should feel unwelcomed in a classroom. She says she has always been active in calling out anti-Second Amendment bias on campus and lives by the Ronald Reagan motto, ‘freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.’ “I just don’t want any other student to have to experience that kind of intimidation by a person in authority,” Snitsar said. “That is not right.”