At least a half-dozen universities across the country welcomed students to first-day-of-fall classes Monday with run-and-hide warnings about possible gunmen on campus. In almost all the cases, the reports were hoaxes or swatting calls. A few campuses said simply that no evidence of a gunman or violence was found. Students at the University of Arkansas, University of Colorado Boulder, Iowa State University, Kansas State University, the University of New Hampshire and Northern Arizona University, were terrorized by the false alarms. The University of South Carolina received two reports of an active shooter at Thomas Cooper Library in Columbia on Sunday night, the University of Tennessee-Chattanooga received a hoax active shooter call on August 21 and Villanova University near Philadelphia received two false active shooter reports during freshman orientation last week.

"How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world, that has such people in t!" This is America now thanks to the mass proliferation of firearms, a growing tradition of mass shootings, and lunatics creating havoc by "swatting." This year two serial "swatters" who delighted in terrorizing people and wasting taxpayer resources were sentenced to prison. Links: Swatting Maniac in California; Swatting Maniac in Romania.