According to Fox News, an amendment was recently passed by the Arizona Senate that allows students who hold a weapons permit to bring guns on university campuses.
The amendment allows guns in outdoor public areas, but not in classrooms or buildings.
Allowing guns on our university campuses is the surest way to kill the freedom to express opinions, and undermine the feeling of safety students out to feel on a campus.
It was “downsized” from its original form in a bill by Arizona Legislators, which proposed no location restrictions.
Florida attempted to pass a similar bill (SB 234), but it was, thankfully, completely thrown out by the Senate Comittee according to the Miami Herald.
Instead, an amendment has been passed to maintain the state law, which prohibits guns on all school campuses, including universities.
After reading several articles concerning the “guns on campus” debate, I found that both sides are equally fervent in their beliefs.
The Arizona law’s supporters argue that allowing students and faculty to arm themselves would deter or prevent incidences of campus shootings.
There is also some discussion of a violation of Second Amendment rights in not allowing students to bare arms.
Those who oppose the bill argue that allowing students to carry guns would instead lead to an increase of campus shootings and gun-related accidents.
What I’d like to know is, if one student shooting on a college campus is bad, what happens when you add, let’s say, another twenty students who are also carrying guns to the situation?
It seems to me that an increase of firearms in such a situation would result, at the very least, in more bullets fired.
Even with the understanding that television shows and movies aren’t what reality is actually like, have you ever seen a standoff scene?
As more guns emerge, the scene becomes more frantic and chaotic, with guns pointed in more than one direction. If campus security or police arrive at a scene to find ten students with guns drawn, how are they supposed to know who the dangerous shooter is?
Obviously, if five students were pointing their guns at one particular armed individual, the answer would be apparent.
But I have a sneaking suspicion that may not always be the case.
Eleven panicky and armed students all seem somewhat dangerous to me.
Of course, there are requirements needed to obtain a concealed weapons permit. One of which, in Florida, is the completion of at least one of several specified training courses. But do the courses adequately prepare an individual for a situation like a campus shooting?
One of the ways that “competence with a firearm” can be demonstrated in the state of Florida to obtain a concealed weapons permit is the “completion of any hunter education or hunter safety course approved by the Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission or a similar agency of another state,” according to the 2010 Florida Statutes as stated on the www.flsenate.gov.
I freely and openly admit that I have never taken such a course. Having said that, I can’t imagine that hunter education and training involves instruction on how to react when one of your peers is armed with the intention to kill, and is in the process of acting upon it.
Even if such education is provided, the pressure and anxiety which arises in such a situation cannot be duplicated in an instructional setting.
Virginia Tech is a few hours away from where I went to high school, and a number of people I know were attending the school at the time of the shooting in 2007.
While it appears that a number of the guns-on-campus-bills’ public proponents are from Virginia Tech, none of the students that I know who attended the school are in favor of them.
Instead, they believe that an increase in campus security was needed, not an increase of students with weapons.
School shootings are a relatively rare event, but when they do occur, they are deeply tragic.
The prevention of them is, of course, something that needs to be discussed, I just don’t believe that arming students and faculty is a viable solution.
In fact, I feel that it would make an already terrible situation more volatile.
Universities are traditionally places where knowledge and ideas are nurtured.
It is also a place where, ideally, debates are encouraged and differences of opinion can be expressed.
I’ve never had a fear of a school shooting while attending UT.
And I hope that I never do.
I don’t want to see discrete bulges and wonder what they are.
There is a rather trite saying that goes, “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people.”
I’d like to propose an amendment to the saying that changes it to
“People with guns kill people.”
Alysia Sawchyn can be reached at asawchyn@spartans.ut.edu.
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Edit: Between the parentheses, and the word with, there should have been written; that allow concealed campus carry,
There are already 71 campuses in three separate states(Utah, Colorado, W. Virginia) with a grand total of ZERO permit holders being involved in either a crime, or an accident. Utah has allowed concealed carry on campus for the last five years, so there is plenty of data to show what those of us with the ability to have an original thought knew long ago, law-abiding citizens with arms are not a threat to anyone except criminals.
What Alysia thinks and what she can prove are lght years apart.
Doctors are in fact 12,000 to 25,000 times more likely to kill you than a person licensed to carry concealed.
So the title in itself is as hypocritical as it gets, guns on campus hinders freedom of expression. So guess Alysia believes the shooters have a right to express themselves in a violent fashion.
Guess Alysia believs a woman raped and strangled with her own pahty hose is morally superior to a dead perp.
Speaking of dead perps, how then if such defensive incidents never occur in large public settings did these occur?
Shoneys Alliston AL 1991
Peaarl High School Mississippi 1997
Appalchian Law School 2002
New Life Church Colorado Springs 2007
College Station Georgia May 4th 2009
where the body count was 8 to 10 times lower than the following incidents…
Luby’s Cafeteria TX 1991
Columbine
N Illinois UNiv
Va Tech
Ft Hood.
Yeah funny how the majority of those shooters could have been stopped had a doctor or the government employee actually done their job prior to the incident. But hey facts like the government failing to enforce the background check more than 1% of the time doesn’t matter to you!
I think it was a big mistake to vote down allowing Florida concealed weapons permit holders to carry on campus in Florida. I am a former police officer and SWAT team leader who knows that something like the VT shootings could have been stopped by an armed student.
People must have forgotten about monsters like Ted Bundy and Danny Rolling who slaughtered college students in N Florida. Throwing out this bill is like putting up a “Serial Killers Welcome” sign up on college campuses across the state.
Most university police departments are small, under-trained, and understaffed. What officers they do have are usually officers trying to get hired at bigger (real) police departments, or they are staffed by officers who could not cut it on the street.
Wake up people – this is not 1950s Mayberry USA!
Ignorance is bliss, huh? You think people don’t already carry? How many campus shooters were permit holders? Why do you think shootings happen at schools? Actually think about it, maybe do some research. This just stops those that follow the law from being prepared to defend themselves. I feel uneasy every day I leave my apartment unarmed because WMU doesn’t allow possesion anywhere on the property. I have my empty holster everyday as a message if I become a victim due to my defense capability being taken from me.