From the piece by Joe Vossen:
It has been nearly a year since the tragic shootings on the campus of Virginia Tech, where 32 students were murdered by a lone gunman who also took his own life. The incident rocked the campus in Blacksburg, Va., and shocked a nation into action. On Jan. 5, President Bush signed into law the most sweeping federal gun control measure in more than a decade.
The Virginia Tech massacre also refocused public attention on a debate more than two and a quarter centuries old: The right of our country's people to bear arms. According to a Mar. 18 article in The New York Times, the U.S. Supreme Court recently addressed the issue for the first time since 1939, when it heard arguments on Mar. 18 in the case of District of Columbia v. Heller. Outside the nation's highest court, the issue is front and center on college campuses.
The group Students for Concealed Carry on Campus is a national organization that advocates gun possession on the nation's campuses. (Only one state, Utah, permits gun possession on the grounds of state universities.) Proponents of gun ownership on campus believe the risks and dangers of school shootings would be mitigated by allowing students to carry weapons and protect themselves and others.
Since the campus shootings at Northern Illinois University on Feb. 14, the group's membership has surged from 14,000 to 23,000, according to its Web site, www.concealedcampus.org. A K-State chapter of Students for Concealed Carry was recently established, and according to Kansas Federation of SCCC President Ryan Willcott, freshman in pre-professional business administration, its organization already has grown to 195 members.
According to the Kansas Attorney General's Web site, more than 11,000 Kansans have applied for a concealed carry permit since the Personal and Family Protection Act was signed in 2006. If the right to bear arms is extended to campuses, the potential hazards could outweigh any benefits.
The motives of gun owners who want the right to bring their firearms to campus are pure: They want a safer campus and a secure learning environment. They point out that strict gun control regulations on campuses do not deter violent gun crimes from occurring at colleges and universities.
But escalation is not the answer. Allowing firearms on our university campuses would give rise to more gun-related incidents than it would prevent. The college environment is known for drugs, drinking and the stresses of class and preparing for a future career. Can you imagine what might happen in a beer-induced brawl at a Saturday tailgate when guns were introduced to the mix?
In a CBS Evening News report on March 27, University of Georgia Police Chief Jimmy Williamson said that making weapons legal on campuses would make an officer's job more difficult in the event of a school shooting. Officers could find it harder to spot the real threat if a gunfight erupted between students and shooters.
"There's only going to be a split-second there, and I could see innocent people being shot by police," he said. "There is no way to estimate how many additional victims would be killed in crossfire between criminals, armed students and law enforcement officials."
Incidents like those in Virginia and Illinois certainly require us to examine our gun control policies. Though new gun control legislation - like that approved by President Bush in January - makes it harder for criminals to obtain firearms, there are still considerable gaps in our mental health-care system. As Virginia Tech showed us, it can be easier for a student suffering from mental-health disorders to purchase a weapon than a convicted criminal.
Putting guns in the hands of college students is a knee-jerk reaction to devastating tragedies but is not the long-term solution that will make us safer.
Joe Vossen is an eighth-year senior in puppet show production and Russian culinary arts. Please send comments to opinion@spub.ksu.edu.
A couple of comments from readers of the Collegian:
From critic:
Seriously, the level of your analysis is more guns = more violence? Throw in a quote from a random police officer, the notion that everyone on campus is drunk or high and the usual hyperbole about gunfights and you've got a Collegian OpEd, I guess. It's unfortunate that your argument is undercut by any serious statistical analysis.
From Bryan
I would encourage people who want to learn more about Students for concealed carry on campus or the debate centered around it to visit Concealedcampus.org.
From Mickey
would like to point out that for a combined total of 60 semesters all state universities in Utah and some Colorado universities have allowed licensed students to carry on campus. During those 60 semesters, there have been no firearm accidents, firearm thefts, or drunken brawls escalating into shootouts. Those who claim that colleges would erupt in gun violence if licensed individuals are allowed to carry on campus are no different from those who claimed the streets would run red with the blood of innocents, and that concealed handgun license-holders would be shooting people to death over parking space disputes in the early days of concealed handgun legislation.
Statistically speaking, people who are licensed by their respective states to carry defensive handguns are many, many times less likely to commit a crime than unlicensed individuals. Here in Texas, for example, a four-year study from 1996 to 2000 found that male CHL holders were 7.6 times less likely to commit a violent crime, and a staggering 18 times less likely to commit a non-violent crime
Simply put, Students for Concealed Carry on Campus is NOT advocating that all college students be armed. We are pushing for LICENSED individuals, who are required to be over 21 years old in most states, who have completed rigorous training and qualification requirements, who have been background checked, and who are already carrying their defensive weapons without incident as they go about their daily lives in shopping malls, theaters, churches, grocery stores, parks, etc. to be able to carry their defensive handguns onto campus.
As for the argument that police will be unable to tell the shooter from the armed students, I call baloney. Police officers are trained to expect both armed good guys and armed bad guys in such situations. Furthermore, incidents involving the defensive use of a handgun are usually measured in mere seconds. It is very unlikely that police would encounter an armed citizen actively engaging a threat. More likely would be a situation in which a threat is stopped and the licensed individual has holstered their weapon and is waiting with the other victims for the police to arrive. In that case, there would be plenty of witnesses to identify the good shooter.
I think that perhaps the only "knee jerk" reaction going on here is the author's knee jerk reaction to the thought of students being able to fight back, rather than being forced to cower under a desk and wait for a bullet because they lack an effective means of confronting a violent, armed attacker. Guns in the hands of good guys are NOT the problem.
From Metacritic
What kind of legitimate critic's modus operandi consists of finding coherent, logically valid columns and littering their comment pages with personal insults, hypocritical exaggerations and straw men? For what reason do you? For the purposes of trolling, I suspect; no reasonable person could possibly misapprehend our columnist's germane evocation of a "beer-induced brawl at a Saturday tailgate" for the absurd assertion that "everyone on campus is drunk or high," or that a major university's police director has the same testimonial value of a "random police officer." This is simply sophistry of the most disingenuous kind.
And on the issue of complexity, I must ask: what exactly are you looking for? Is there a more sophisticated method of expressing a direct empirical relationship, other than to demonstrate this relationship to be the case? College students can be breathtakingly capricious and irresponsible -- especially in the context of school itself -- and it is clearly a terrible idea to unnecessarily introduce weapons into the powder keg. This is a simple thesis, and was explicated rather simply by the author.
The Devil ought to find himself a new advocate.
In a CBS Evening News report on March 27, University of Georgia Police Chief Jimmy Williamson said that making weapons legal on campuses would make an officer's job more difficult in the event of a school shooting. Officers could find it harder to spot the real threat if a gunfight erupted between students and shooters.
"There's only going to be a split-second there, and I could see innocent people being shot by police," he said. "There is no way to estimate how many additional victims would be killed in crossfire between criminals, armed students and law enforcement officials."
Incidents like those in Virginia and Illinois certainly require us to examine our gun control policies. Though new gun control legislation - like that approved by President Bush in January - makes it harder for criminals to obtain firearms, there are still considerable gaps in our mental health-care system. As Virginia Tech showed us, it can be easier for a student suffering from mental-health disorders to purchase a weapon than a convicted criminal.
Putting guns in the hands of college students is a knee-jerk reaction to devastating tragedies but is not the long-term solution that will make us safer.
Joe Vossen is an eighth-year senior in puppet show production and Russian culinary arts. Please send comments to opinion@spub.ksu.edu.
A couple of comments from readers of the Collegian:
From critic:
Seriously, the level of your analysis is more guns = more violence? Throw in a quote from a random police officer, the notion that everyone on campus is drunk or high and the usual hyperbole about gunfights and you've got a Collegian OpEd, I guess. It's unfortunate that your argument is undercut by any serious statistical analysis.
From Bryan
I would encourage people who want to learn more about Students for concealed carry on campus or the debate centered around it to visit Concealedcampus.org.
From Mickey
would like to point out that for a combined total of 60 semesters all state universities in Utah and some Colorado universities have allowed licensed students to carry on campus. During those 60 semesters, there have been no firearm accidents, firearm thefts, or drunken brawls escalating into shootouts. Those who claim that colleges would erupt in gun violence if licensed individuals are allowed to carry on campus are no different from those who claimed the streets would run red with the blood of innocents, and that concealed handgun license-holders would be shooting people to death over parking space disputes in the early days of concealed handgun legislation.
Statistically speaking, people who are licensed by their respective states to carry defensive handguns are many, many times less likely to commit a crime than unlicensed individuals. Here in Texas, for example, a four-year study from 1996 to 2000 found that male CHL holders were 7.6 times less likely to commit a violent crime, and a staggering 18 times less likely to commit a non-violent crime
Simply put, Students for Concealed Carry on Campus is NOT advocating that all college students be armed. We are pushing for LICENSED individuals, who are required to be over 21 years old in most states, who have completed rigorous training and qualification requirements, who have been background checked, and who are already carrying their defensive weapons without incident as they go about their daily lives in shopping malls, theaters, churches, grocery stores, parks, etc. to be able to carry their defensive handguns onto campus.
As for the argument that police will be unable to tell the shooter from the armed students, I call baloney. Police officers are trained to expect both armed good guys and armed bad guys in such situations. Furthermore, incidents involving the defensive use of a handgun are usually measured in mere seconds. It is very unlikely that police would encounter an armed citizen actively engaging a threat. More likely would be a situation in which a threat is stopped and the licensed individual has holstered their weapon and is waiting with the other victims for the police to arrive. In that case, there would be plenty of witnesses to identify the good shooter.
I think that perhaps the only "knee jerk" reaction going on here is the author's knee jerk reaction to the thought of students being able to fight back, rather than being forced to cower under a desk and wait for a bullet because they lack an effective means of confronting a violent, armed attacker. Guns in the hands of good guys are NOT the problem.
From Metacritic
What kind of legitimate critic's modus operandi consists of finding coherent, logically valid columns and littering their comment pages with personal insults, hypocritical exaggerations and straw men? For what reason do you? For the purposes of trolling, I suspect; no reasonable person could possibly misapprehend our columnist's germane evocation of a "beer-induced brawl at a Saturday tailgate" for the absurd assertion that "everyone on campus is drunk or high," or that a major university's police director has the same testimonial value of a "random police officer." This is simply sophistry of the most disingenuous kind.
And on the issue of complexity, I must ask: what exactly are you looking for? Is there a more sophisticated method of expressing a direct empirical relationship, other than to demonstrate this relationship to be the case? College students can be breathtakingly capricious and irresponsible -- especially in the context of school itself -- and it is clearly a terrible idea to unnecessarily introduce weapons into the powder keg. This is a simple thesis, and was explicated rather simply by the author.
The Devil ought to find himself a new advocate.
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