In the wake of the Tucson shooting, Arizona's legislature is considering various bills addressing guns and violence. The legislation with the best chance of passage has nothing to do with strengthening the state's laws to prevent dangerous individuals from easily acquiring the firepower that enabled Jared Loughner to shoot 19 people in about 16 seconds, killing six of them. Incredibly, the bill with the most momentum would force Arizona colleges and universities to allow the concealed carry of guns on campus.
The Arizona bill is one of many similar bills being pushed in states across the nation, as the gun lobby seeks to overcome the collective judgment of college administrators, faculty and students that allowing guns on campus is a recipe for disaster. Up until now, sanity has prevailed, as such bills have failed 43 times in 23 states in recent years. But the forces of "gun everywhere" are back, and pitched battles are underway, not only in Arizona, but in Texas and elsewhere.
It all started with the Virginia Tech mass shooting of almost four years ago, which prompted "gun rights" proponents to argue that the shooting could have been stopped if one of the students in the targeted classrooms had been carrying a gun and could have returned fire. It is revealing that none of the students and teachers who actually were under fire that day have become proponents of concealed carry on campus. Indeed, Colin Goddard, who was shot four times in his French class, has become a crusader for stronger gun laws, as poignantly depicted in the documentary Living for 32, now being shown on college campuses coast-to-coast. (The movie was shown at the University of Arizona and Arizona State this week.)
The argument supporting guns on campus is based on a bizarre assessment of relative risks. Its proponents seek to create the remote possibility that a legal gun carrier will be in the right place at the right time when a killer attacks, and will act effectively to stop the attacker, when the attack itself, particularly a mass attack, is itself a remote possibility. In order to create the unlikely chance of this "good guy shoots attacker" scenario becoming reality, the proponents of campus concealed carry seek to ensure a proliferation of guns in classrooms, dorm rooms, dining halls, sports stadiums -- anywhere where a violent attack may occur.
This necessarily means introducing a broad new array of obvious risks into everyday life on college campuses. Those risks seem anything but remote: that an argument between a professor and a disgruntled student will erupt in gunfire; that an intoxicated student will accidentally discharge his gun while showing it off at a Friday afternoon keg party; that a student's momentary despair over a romantic break-up will turn lethal as he finds a gun and turns it on himself.
The pro-gun crowd assails "gun-free zones" that allegedly invite the violent to attack the unarmed, but the reality is that currently gun-free college campuses are far safer than the gun-saturated communities that surround them. Justice Department figures show that college students aged 18 to 24 experience violence at a 20% lower rate than non-students in the same age group. In addition, 93% of the violence against students occurs off campus.
Given that in most states gun owners must be 21 to carry concealed weapons, the "guns on campus" activists question why law-abiding adults licensed to carry in other locations should be barred from doing so on college campuses. Several obvious responses come to mind.
First, the experience of states in making it easier to carry concealed weapons hardly recommends extending concealed carry to college campuses. The evidence is mounting that very dangerous people are being given concealed carry licenses, that they are committing egregious violence with guns, and that liberalized concealed carry is associated with more violent crime, not less. Why should we subject our largely peaceful college campuses to a policy that has led to greater danger outside those campuses? After all, Jared Loughner was a legal concealed carrier under Arizona law until he shot 19 people.
Second, college campuses are particularly hazardous environments for widespread gun possession and carrying. They are populated largely by individuals aged 18 to 24, a highly volatile time of life and the age group with the highest incidence of such behaviors as binge drinking and drug use. Moreover, those young people live in dormitories, group houses and other high-density situations in which it is difficult to ensure that a gun always will be in the possession of the person licensed to carry it.
The pressures of college life itself add to the risk, particularly the risk of suicide. Chancellor Francisco Cigarroa of the University of Texas, in an eloquent letter to Governor Rick Perry opposing concealed carry on campus, cited the concerns of "campus health professionals, who know and deal with the reality of the emotional and psychological pressures of academic life, separation from family, relationships -- all pressures that contribute to the harsh reality that suicide is the second leading cause of death among college students."
Finally, don't believe for a minute that the "gun rights" crowd is content to limit campus concealed carry to 21-year-old seniors and grad students. At the same time the gun lobby is pressing the Texas legislature to force Texas universities to allow concealed carry, the NRA is pursuing a lawsuit to strike down, as a violation of the Second Amendment, the Texas law setting 21 as the minimum age to carry concealed. If the NRA gets its way, it will be freshmen and all other students who will be eligible to carry loaded guns on campus.
Students are standing with their professors and administrators in resisting laws forcing campuses to accept guns. The student government at the University of Texas has come out foursquare against such laws. Just this week, 57% of the Texas A&M student body voted against guns on campus. These are young people who have grown up around guns, yet understand they have no place on a college campus.
Ultimately, this is not just a campus safety issue. It also is an issue involving the core values served by institutions of higher education. It is difficult to imagine anything more destructive to an environment of academic freedom -- in which controversial issues can be passionately debated free of fear and intimidation -- than students or professors "strapped" as they participate in those debates.
Students, faculty and administrators get it. Do our lawmakers?
For more information, see Dennis Henigan's Lethal Logic: Exploding the Myths that Paralyze American Gun Policy (Potomac Books 2009)
John Woods: Guns on Campus: Ask the Virginia Tech Survivors, Not the Armchair Quarterbacks
The bill needs to pass so they are stored safely and securely as they are at Wal-Mart, Church, Grocery stores, Restaurants, at the Bank, and everywhere else that "people" go. It's just common sense.
You seem to trust security guards and law enforcement despite the evidence that CCW holders hold a better safety record and hit/miss ration... interesting.
Texas Penal Code 46.03 defines premises as a, "A building or Portion of Building." So licensees carrying guns in a city library is ok, but to enter the campus library you must store it in your car.
The same guns are on campus, just stored differently.
Ask yourself this:
I'd feel safer at a college that:
1) Forced "everyone" (or "people") to store guns in cars, allowing easier access to guns on campus for criminals committing vehicular burglaries.
2) Allowed licensed, responsible, adults who underwent training and background checks on Local, State, and National levels, to have their weapons safely secured and concealed while they are in buildings like they are everywhere else.
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Personally, I HAVE had my car broken into and the contents stolen.
I have NEVER had anyone reach into my pants in class or in the library to see what might be concealed in there.
Considering the increased risk of a gun ending up in a criminal's hands on campus with car storage as it is now, I'd vote for the second option. Why provide easier access to guns for criminals on campus? It makes no sense.
I have read all your comments today, and have a comment. You have repeatedly asked how many mass shootings have been stopped by a CHL. You have stated that only a few have been stopped and that is after the shooter has started his massacre. The question I have is how does a CHL know that a mass shooter is about to start a mass shooting, and since there is no way of knowing, if a CHL took preemptive action, wouldn't that land him in Mr. Sugarman's list you seem to be fond of? If mass shooters were not necessarily worried about CHL, why do they commonly choose "gun free zones" rather than at gun stores, ranges, or police stations? What few mass shootings that have been stopped by CHL, or other armed persons, has resulted in far fewer fatalities overall.
No one has said they will stop the mass murder from beginning. You have been creating a straw man with that argument. They can and have stopped mass shootings from being any worse.
We do know that there have been more at least 15 studies of defensive firearm uses done by universities, new media, the US Government, and even strong supporters of gun control, and they generally find between 1 and 2 million succesfull DFUs per anum.
"But we do know that colleges are not the general public. This is a very highly-stressed, difficult time in young people's lives, as evidenced by the fact that suicide is the second leading cause of death (the only statistic that means a thing)."
And again, since most students live OFF campus, most frats are OFF campus, and most parties occur OFF campus, and since state bans on concealed carry on campuses do not apply OFF campus, what has really changed of concealed carry is allowed ON campus?
"It is so counterintuitive that a trained monkey could see it's nuts."
Another poisoning the well argument.
"All of which proves that gun nuts are dumber than the average trained monkey. "
Ad hominem. Flagged.
http://wethearmed.com/index.php?topic=8500.0
Over 150 murdes, 9 of them against police officers, by media-reported CHL holders since May '07. And since police won't report all the stats, this website has to rely on media reports for its data, so the real numbers are clearly much, much higher.
The "study" goes back about 4 years. America averages about 16,000 total murders per year, meaning that time frame covers about 64,000 murders.
Yet of those 64,000 murders, only a few hundred are shown to be by CCW holders. Thus it is proven that CCW holders commit a microscopic fraction of the murder total and are not a significant threat as a whole. You have shown that CCW holders are far less likely to murder then the public at large, not more.
Concealed handgun permit holders have killed at least nine law enforcement officers in addition to 142 private citizens (including 15 shooters who killed themselves after an attack) since May 2007 according to the latest update of Concealed Carry Killers, a Violence Policy Center (VPC) on-line resource that tallies news reports of such killings.
The web site, located at http://www.vpc.org/ccwkillers.htm, is updated monthly to include new fatal shootings since May 2007 by concealed handgun permit holders and any changes in the legal status of permit holders facing criminal charges. (Any concealed handgun permit holders who are eventually acquitted of their alleged crimes are not included in the tallies maintained on the site although the facts surrounding the shooting are detailed.)
Not while exercising concealed carry in public. VPC's claims have been constanly proven to be misleading and often flat out false. They include people who never had a permit to carry concealed (because VPC got permit to purchase as required in that state confused with permit to carry), people whose permits had expired, shootings which did not take place with a concealed firearm, shootings which took place in areas where concealed carry permits are not needed, etc.
Take anything the VPC says with a large pinch of skepticism. They are notrious for being deliberatly misleading and even advocate doing so on their website.
First, it would not be thousands. It would likely not even be over 100.
Second, they can do so every bit as effectively as they can police the population right now.
"The inescapbable fact is, common sense by any reasonable "
You are engaging in a "poisoning the well" argument.
"These are not arguable points "
Yes, they are.
"I'd say CCW holders should be identified with an arm band or other insignia "
Which completely negates the advantages of concealed carry and would actually cause a lot of the problems you are using as reasons not to carry concealed.
http://tinyurl.com/q4y4en
(2) Like most rights, the Second Amendment right is not unlimited. It is not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose: For example, concealed weapons prohibitions have been upheld under the Amendment or state analogues. The Court’s opinion should not be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms. Miller’s holding that the sorts of weapons protected are those “in common use at the time” finds support in the historical tradition of prohibiting the carrying of dangerous and unusual weapons. Pp. 54–56.[43][44]
Colleges and universities:
http://www.championshooters.com/Collegiate.htm
http://www.rose-hulman.edu/Users/groups/RifleTeam/Public/HTML/OtherPages/links.html
http://studentactivities.tamu.edu/online/organization/OTU5MzYw/profile
"Tennessee is one of four states, along with Arizona, Georgia and Virginia, that recently enacted laws explicitly allowing loaded guns in bars. (Eighteen other states allow weapons in restaurants that serve alcohol.)."
JimInHouston 11 hours ago (11:15 PM)
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"What if the campus administration and students don't want to permit this?"
Tough."
At Virginia Tech, Cho had eleven minutes to walk room to room, firing over 170 rounds, shooting people as he saw fit to do. One person blocking a door was shot through the door and died. Students were going out windows. Everyone but Cho was unarmed, they were fish in a barrel. He may as well have been walking through a petting zoo. Police report hearing the final shot after they broke in, before going to the second floor. If not for his suicide Cho could have kept on killing until stopped.
"How the Virginia Tech shootings unfolded
Edited extracts from the Virginia Tech report, detailing the events leading up to and on the day of the April 16 massacre in which 33 people died."
"9.15-9.30am: Cho is seen outside and then inside Norris Hall, an engineering building. He chains the doors shut on the three main entrances from the inside. No one reports seeing him do this.
9.40-9.51am: Cho begins shooting in room 206 of Norris Hall, where a graduate engineering class is under way. This is where most of the killings take place.
9.51am: Cho shoots himself in the head just as police reach the second floor. Cho's shooting spree in Norris Hall lasted about 11 minutes. He fired 174 rounds and killed 30 people in Norris Hall plus himself. A further 17 people were wounded."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/aug/30/highereducation.usa
I thought it was interesting that Texas A&M polled their students and 57% didn't want guns on campus - and this is one of the most conservative military-based schools in the country. If you can't sell the A&M student population, you can't sell any of them.
Students don't want it, professors don't want it, campus police don't want it, the general public doesn't want it, and at the end fo the day, your rights don't supersede mine.
I agree that students have a right to be secure in their surroundings while attending classes, just as they have this same right anywhere else. If prohibiting the possession of a weapon without a corresponding process for enforcing this prohibition (TSA-style screening?) were synonymous with creating a zone of guaranteed safety, there would be no reason for debate.
The state in which I live (and attended college) does not restrict CCW permittees from carrying on campus, and there has never been a single case of even a threat to safety resulting from such carry. The assumption that college students are ill-equipped to safely possess weapons is simply not borne out of the facts. As most states require permittees to be 21 years of age, the association of "homesick, lovesick, depressed kid who's experimenting with drugs and flunking out and his world is crashing around him" just doesn't reflect the real world.
Happy now?
And yet Dennis can't point to any examples of this happening in colleges where CCW is already allowed. Something to consider.
It comes down to rights - Does a CHL holders' right to carry a gun (a right that is not universal already since there are millions of places you can't take a gun whether you have a permit or not) can supersede my right to send my son to a school where he doesn't have to worry about whether a despondent kid sitting next to him in class is carrying a gun. Is the CHL holders' right so obviously superior to mine that we'd actually change an existing policy to allow it? I doubt you could get 35% of all college students and their parents nationwide to accept such an outrageous assertion.
http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/14808321/detail.html
Really? I didn't know Dennis was a mind reader. I didn't know he called up all the dozens of people who were in Norris hall that day and found out their views on CCW.
Just because not everyone has decided to persue a lucrative career as a paid lobbyist for a special interest group like the Brady Bunch like Colin Goddard doesn't mean they don't have strong views on the subject, against CCW or in favor of it.
Example
Wayne Chiang
Ken Stanton
Both, along with MANY who lost friends at Virginia Tech, are members of VIRGINIA TECH STUDENTS FOR CONCEALED CARRY ON CAMPUS
Google them or find on Facebook.