Concealed Carry on Campus

What if a state legislature proposed a law to solve a problem that didn't exist, and students organized a protest for shock value?

This seems to be the case with concealed carry on United States' college campuses. Recently, Texas became the newest state to force college administrators to accept guns on campus when Governor Greg Abbot (who believed President Obama was planning to invade Texas), signed S.B. 11, also known as the campus carry law, on June 1st, 2015. The implementation began August 1st, 2016 as students returned to college. Specifically the law requires colleges in the state to allow students to carry a concealed handgun on campus, including in lecture halls and dorms. The law also allows colleges to fashion limited gun free zones, as long as those zones do not, “generally prohibit or have the effect of generally prohibiting license holders from carrying concealed handguns on the campus of the institution.” Also, gun owners are always allowed to leave their weapons a vehicle.

The United States needs more restrictions on the ability to purchase guns. It needs to restrict the types of weapons available for purchase and their modifications. And while allowing guns on campus is ill advised as it transforms an open area to one of possible danger, the counter protest of college students illegally carrying sex toys to campus seems juvenile.

The Texas legislature provided two reasons for pushing guns on campus. Number one (campus protection), the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun from committing mass murder is a good guy with a gun. And number one (personal protection) the only thing that stops a bad guy from murdering me is if I have a gun. Notice there's no distinct difference, this is a college campus! The implication is cops and other weapon wielding professionals might not respond swiftly enough neutralize an armed criminal. In the legislatures mind, civilians need to be “the first line of defense” against this omnipresent menace.

This is a myth, for two reasons.

First, in spite of the claim that mass murdering psychopaths rampage through gun free zones, it appears the assumption is incorrect. In 2015 there was only one mass shooting at a college: Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon, which left nine wounded and nine dead. Everytown for Gun Safety, a pro-gun control organization, reviewed FBI statistics and found only thirteen percent of mass shootings occur in gun free zones.

This concealed carry law in Texas is designed to allow weapon carrying civilians to prevent a shooter from taking advantage of unarmed college students hanging out on the quad or going to class. As all former college students realize, there is no need for guns to prevent everday crime. There isn't gun related crime on campuses. Yet, mass shootings (which again, rarely occur in gun free zones) only account for less than one percent of all firearm related homicides. Texas passed a law to allow guns on campus to prevent thirteen percent of one percent of all gun homicides in the United States. And there are financial costs to be discussed further down.

Gun violence is a serious problem in parts of the United States. Republicans refuse to acknowledge this fact, which is unforgivable because the most gun violence, per capita, occurs in states with Republican legislatures, Congressmen, and Governors. The difference between Massachusetts (3rd best per capita homicide by firearm at 3.2 per 100,000) compared to Louisiana (2nd worst at 19.0 per 100,000) is unbelievable. And yet, Democrats fail to confront the serious issue of gun violence when they become a hysterical mob after each mass shooting. Instead of focusing on mass shootings and what can be done to prevent them, they need to mobilize and craft actual gun control legislation, targeting everyday gun violence.

But aside from the fact that the law won't stop any gun homicides, because there really aren't any happening on campus, there's also the problem that civilians armed with weapons don't end up stopping mass shootings either. According to FBI statistics complied by the Huffington Post, only four percent of the one hundred and sixty mass shootings between 2000 and 2013 resulted in a civilian shooting the mass murder. Instead, thirteen percent of shooters were restrained by unarmed civilians.

Police officers train and risk their life. They still end up wounded or dead, and sometimes harm innocent people in chaotic situations. No one should believe untrained civilians will do better. They will do much worse. Armed civilians can also be targeted by police if they are mistaken for the active shooter.

So the reasons for allowing concealed carry on campus, including classes and dorms, is bunk. But the reasoning behind the sex toy protest seems infantile and fallacious.

The arguments have been many; the cost will be prohibitive, teachers will be unable to honestly debate with students out of a fear of violence, and there will be more gun violence on campus.

The reasoning of the phallus carrying protesters: if guns are allowed on campus, then sex toys should be as well. Currently the later is banned in Texas because of obscenity laws, and activists claim sex toys are less dangerous than guns, therefore they should be allowed. Their logic looks like this: Guns are weapons. Weapons are dangerous. College campuses need to be safe so students can learn. Therefore all dangerous objects not directly related to school should be prohibited. Sex toys are not dangerous. Therefore they should be allowed on college campuses.

But the last statement doesn't follow from the ones proceeding it. Colleges don't need to allow all 'safe' items just because they're safe.

It's a mocking, shocking, look at me protest that doesn't matter. And why? Because the effects of conceal carry aren't as obvious as the protesters claim.

To begin, the cost of all Texan public universities allowing concealed carry was estimated in 2015 to be forty million dollars over six years, but the current estimates for this year are about one million. Half of the cost was for signs, which won't need to be replaced each year. There are better uses in education for one million dollars, but considering Texas spends over twenty-two billion on its higher ed, a million isn't going to significantly impact the outcome.

Secondly, while professors may be initially wary of possible packing individuals, it is no different then the reaction the public has for a time after a mass shooting. For a time civilians are nervous, but soon other issues intervene and life goes on. As a former high school teacher, each school shooting across the country induced a sudden dose of fear. But a week later, all the classes, papers, and learning has left no room for worry. Especially when one realizes its an isolated event that is about as likely as winning the lottery.

And finally, mass shootings don't occur as a significant number, and they don't occur commonly in gun free zones. It just feels like they do. And allowing concealed carry on campus is not going to create an epidemic of students shooting their teachers. This law won't results in campus related homicides, because seven states already allow concealed carry on their college campuses: Colorado, Idaho, Kansas, Mississippi, Oregon, Utah and Wisconsin, but there isn't a constant flow of shooting sprees. If there was, it would be in the news.

College campuses are not the place for guns: they are not needed and provide no benefit. They may have some unknown and detrimental effect, but their prior institution in seven other states without obvious effect belies this claim. At the very least they may change the character of the educational setting. But at the same time, the hysteria surrounding their introduction is no more worthy of recognition.

In conclusion, the United States needs to deal with its real problem of gun violence for those who suffer as an every day part of life. Republicans need to admit it's happening, Democrats need to stop politicizing mass shootings which are unrelated, and both sides need to stop making gun control a purity test,destroying any chance of rational discourse.

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