Ready for guns on campus?
April 18, 2010 by Claire KnightPosted in: Campus Safety, In this week's e-newsletter, Latest News & Views
It’s hard enough to keep schools safe. And now students are one step closer to being allowed to carry concealed weapons on campus:
The Kansas House of Representatives recently passed House Bill 2685, which would allow anyone 21 or older to carry concealed weapons on the state’s higher education campuses.
The bill stipulates one exception: Weapons would not be allowed in buildings with adequate security measures, such as metal detectors, installed inside.
In spite of the stipulation, many school administrators aren’t happy. Here are responses to the bill:
- From the Kansas Board of Regents: “It is our firm belief that allowing weapons on campus would significantly increase the risk of violence and harm to students, faculty and others rather than making anyone safer.”
- From the University of Kansas: “The concealed carry bill as passed would undermine campus safety and security efforts now in place. In fact, the number of reported crimes on campus, overwhelmingly non-violent, is down 34% in the last decade … To keep weapons off campus, the university would have to install metal detectors at virtually every building entrance. Such security measures would be cost prohibitive and would not absolutely guarantee safety.”
The bill now moves forward to the Kansas Senate for a vote. We’ll keep you posted.
Good legislation or an accident waiting to happen? Chime in below.
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April 21st, 2010 at 2:11 pm
The backward state of Texas already passed such a bill that became effected last September. It is just a matter of time before a simple dispute escalates into extreme violence with ready access to handguns. As a faculty member of the University of Texas, I will now require all students to leave their backpacks outside of my office!
April 21st, 2010 at 2:57 pm
You’re absolutely right, Kenneth! To protect our students and ourselves, we need colleges to be gun-free zones just like Virginia Tech is! Oh, wait…
April 22nd, 2010 at 11:42 am
Sorry folks, laws will not stop all people from carrying weapons, on or off campus. At least people with a permit to carry are typically trained in safe gun practices, and their carrying agenda is self preservation or community protection. Do you know who among the criminals on shooting sprees had a concealed weapons permit? If you can name one, please cite how your information was confirmed.
April 22nd, 2010 at 3:39 pm
” It is just a matter of time before a simple dispute escalates into extreme violence with ready access to handguns.”
Please justify this prediction through a demonstration that similar occurrences of violent incidents have occurred in college campuses where students and faculty who are legally permitted to carry concealed deadly weapons are not prohibited from doing so when on campus.
April 22nd, 2010 at 5:08 pm
To reemphasize my point above, did Virginia Tech’s gun-free zone stop Seung-Hui Cho from his shooting spree? Did the University of Alabama-Huntsville’s gun-free zone stop Amy Bishop from killing 3 fellow faculty members and wounding 3 others with a gun carried into that zone?
If one person with a carry permit had been present and armed at either location when those tragic events took place, lives could have been saved. And yes, I mean a gun on their person, not in the car. Cho chained & locked the doors, and Bishop opened fire either during or after a meeting in a classroom building, so a gun in someone’s car probably would have done no good.
One UAH female student asked the administration to allow her to carry (she has a permit) after the VA Tech shooting and BEFORE the UAH one, and they said no (I’ve looked for the news clip of that story but can’t find it).
April 22nd, 2010 at 6:37 pm
The statistics clearly show that a gun in a home is most likely to lead to the shooting death of the member of the family or a friend. In contrast, the instances in which a gun in the home was actually a benefit in protection are relatively minor by comparison. The university campus is my home and I do not appreciate having individuals who THINK they are trained in the use of a firearm bringing one into my “home.” The data clearly show that simple disputes escalate into deadly violence when a gun is available.
There is a tremendous difference between knowing how to shoot a target and knowing when to shoot another human being during times of stress. Law enforcement officers are trained to think clearly during times of stress. The average gun owner with a few hours of training is a danger to everyone around them in times of stress.
Unfortunately the gun lobby places more emphasis on their theory of protection than on the large body of data.
April 23rd, 2010 at 12:43 am
Well, the Gun Free Zones (unarmed victim) option does not seem to be working too well. In the early 80s we could possess firearms on campus and no one was getting shot. We could even have them at high school in the late 70′s. No one got shot in high school either. The laws against carrying on campus only keep law abiding citizens from possessing firearms on campus and have no effect on people that want to do you harm.
April 23rd, 2010 at 9:49 am
Kenneth, the large body of data you refer in your first sentence DOES NOT EXIST. Your claim is a myth. If you disagree, then I would appreciate it if you would cite your source. Otherwise, please do not make unsubstantiated claims in order to infringe on my right to protect myself, my family and colleagues. I will agree that gun owners should get as much training as they can, but the 2nd amendment says what it means and means what it says, whether you like it or not.
BTW, ever heard of the Appalachian School of Law shooting in Virginia? Two students subdued the shooter because they ran to their cars and retrieved their handguns.
http://www.thepriceofliberty.org/04/01/13/lang.htm
(many other links can be found with Google)
Remember the shooting in Pearl High School, MS? A vice principal subdued the shooter because he ran off-campus to his car and retrieved his handgun.
http://www.davekopel.com/2a/othwr/principal&gun.htm
(many othe links can be found with Google)
Yes, these examples are anecdotal, but ask the families of the victims of Cho & Bishop if they wish someone had been armed on those tragic days.
April 23rd, 2010 at 9:53 am
“The statistics clearly show that a gun in a home is most likely to lead to the shooting death of the member of the family or a friend.”
This statement is meaningless without a defined frame of reference.
” In contrast, the instances in which a gun in the home was actually a benefit in protection are relatively minor by comparison.”
I am certain, then, that you can reference data supporting this claim. Please do so.
” The university campus is my home and I do not appreciate having individuals who THINK they are trained in the use of a firearm bringing one into my “home.”
Are you claiming to the property owner of an entire university campus?
” The data clearly show that simple disputes escalate into deadly violence when a gun is available.”
You should be able to demonstrate, then, that “simple disputes” more frequently “escalate into deadly violence” in locales where civilians are legally permitted to carry concealed deadly weapons. Please do so.
“Law enforcement officers are trained to think clearly during times of stress. The average gun owner with a few hours of training is a danger to everyone around them in times of stress.”
Why, then, do civilians who are legally licensed to carry concealed deadly weapons cause negligent or criminal injury through firearm misuse less frequently than do law enforcement officials?
” The average gun owner with a few hours of training is a danger to everyone around them in times of stress.”
Please substantiate this assertion.
“Unfortunately the gun lobby places more emphasis on their theory of protection than on the large body of data.”
Please substantiate this assertion.
April 23rd, 2010 at 11:29 am
Kenneth, when you walk across campus at the same time someone criminally carry’s a gun while in a rage or loss of sanity, who then points it in your face, just call 911. You can feel confident the police will arrive quickly to protect your rights in a gun free zone even if you are maimed or dead on the ground.
April 23rd, 2010 at 1:26 pm
The Texas bill referenced by Kenneth Johnson was actually killed by a Democratic filibuster of an unrelated bill, so it did not, as Mr. Johnson claims, take effect last September. You’d think a faculty member at the University of Texas would know this, especially since the debate over whether or not to legalize licensed concealed carry on campus has been prominently featured in four issues of the UT student newspaper, within the past week.
Bogus studies attempting to show that having a handgun in the home puts a family at greater risk have been thoroughly debunked. One of countless refutations can be found at this site: tinyurl dot c0m backslash kopel-rebuttal
Such studies rely heavily on suicides and include both incidents in homes where criminal activity was prevalent and shootings that were later ruled to be justifiable self-defense. Simply put, they do not accurately depict the threat to the average American of owning handgun. And the conclusion that a gun is more likely to kill a family member than an intruder is a red herring because the real issue is not the number of family members killed versus the number of intruders killed; the real issue is the number of family members killed versus the number of family members SAVED. Such studies don’t include incidents where a homeowner shot an intruder in the leg or scared off the intruder by brandishing a handgun, even though those are clearly incidents where the homeowner (and possibly his/her family) benefited from owning a handgun.
For those of you who haven’t been following the debate over House Bill 2685, the point of the bill is to make sure that public facilities (including state colleges) that choose to prohibit licensed concealed carry (of handguns) use metal detectors to insure that “gun free” policies and laws don’t–by relying on the honor system–inadvertently stack the odds in favor of dangerous criminals who have no regard for policies and laws.
This is about making sure that laws are based on fact and rooted in reality. Unless college officials choose to ensure that campus “gun free” zones are gun free in more than name only–by taking steps to disarm not only the law-abiding citizens who choose to follow the rules but also the dangerous criminals who choose to ignore the rules–there is no legitimate, fact-based reason for Kansas state law to dictate that a trained, licensed, carefully screened adult (age 21 or above) allowed to carry a concealed handgun in a movie theater on Saturday and in a church on Sunday isn’t allowed to carry a concealed handgun in a college classroom on Monday.
If a state-funded college is going to refuse to honor state-issued concealed handgun licenses, it only makes sense that the college be required to implement security measures designed to make sure that licensees are not placed at greater risk by being disarmed.
From a statistical standpoint, there is no reason to believe that any provision of this bill would make college campuses any less safe. Since the fall semester of 2006, state law has allowed licensed individuals to carry concealed handguns on the campuses of the nine degree-offering public colleges (20 campuses) and one public technical college (10 campuses) in Utah. Concealed carry has been allowed on the two campuses of Colorado State University (Fort Collins, CO, and Pueblo, CO) since 2003 and at Blue Ridge Community College (Weyers Cave, VA) since 1995. After allowing concealed carry on campus for a combined total of almost 124 semesters, none of these twelve schools has seen a single resulting incident of gun violence (including threats and suicides), a single gun accident, or a single gun theft.
Anyone who wants to see the rest of this editorial’s arguments rebutted, as well as anyone who simply wants to learn the facts and arguments in support of allowing licensed concealed carry on college campuses, should visit this website: CampusCarry dot c0m
April 23rd, 2010 at 1:29 pm
Here is just one study to show we are less safe with guns than without. There are many more like it. Important conclusions should not be reached based upon anecdotal evidence, but rather by careful statistical analysis!
http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/160/10/929
April 23rd, 2010 at 2:08 pm
” You’d think a faculty member at the University of Texas would know this, especially since the debate over whether or not to legalize licensed concealed carry on campus has been prominently featured in four issues of the UT student newspaper, within the past week.”
I believe that you have neglected to consider that civilian disarmament advocates are frequently dishonest, irrational and entirely uneducated regarding the very subject of their advocacy.
April 23rd, 2010 at 5:22 pm
You’d also think that an educated individual would realize the sheer absurdity of asking students to leave backpacks outside of classrooms. If a student were carrying a gun in a backpack, he or she would most likely switch to carrying the gun on his or her body, rather than risk leaving the gun vulnerable to theft. If a concealed handgun license holder were to leave his or her firearm in a bag outside a classroom, that would put everyone at greater risk by increasing the odds that the bag would be stolen, placing the gun in the hands of a criminal.
Both the National Academy of Sciences and the Harvard Injury Control Research Center have concluded that licensed concealed carry does not make the places where it’s allowed any less safe. And statistics from the college campuses where concealed carry is allowed supports these findings. If, rather than looking at dubious* studies of issues such as guns in the home, you want to see careful statistical analysis of THIS issue, I suggest you start here:
http://www.CampusCarry.com
The essay on page 29 cites the aforementioned NAS and HICRC studies.
*The study “Guns in the Home and Risk of a Violent Death in the Home: Findings from a National Study,” cited by Kenneth Johnson, includes this disclaimer, “The gun in the home may not have been the gun used in the death. This possibility seems less likely with suicide, but, with homicide, it is certainly plausible that someone brought a gun into the home. [...] It is possible that the association between a gun in the home and risk of a violent death may be related to other
factors that we were unable to control for in our analysis. For instance, with homicide, the association may be related to certain neighborhood characteristics or the decedent’s previous involvement in other violent or illegal behaviors. Persons living in high-crime neighborhoods or involved in illegal behaviors may acquire a gun for protection. The risk comes not necessarily from the presence of the gun in the house but from these types of environmental factors and exposures.”
April 24th, 2010 at 10:47 am
“Here is just one study to show we are less safe with guns than without. ” Well you are much more likely to die in a car wreck if you ride in a car than if you walk and people still ride in cars. Can you say hoplophobe?
April 24th, 2010 at 2:37 pm
Kenneth, to repeat what Douva said, that study is bogus. It is not ethical to include homes full of gang-bangers and responsible gun owners, such as those with carry permits, in the same study.
Let me just add one note regarding the subject of suicide: I know an RN who has experience working in forensic psychology, and she told me that if someone wants to commit suicide, it doesn’t matter if there are guns in the house or not, that they will find a way.
BTW, so as to not be accused of producing only anecdotal arguments, John Lott has done statistical analysis regarding gun ownership in his books “More Guns, Less Crime” and “The Bias Against Guns: Why Almost Everything You’ve Heard About Gun Control Is Wrong “. The former has a 3rd edition coming out in May.
April 24th, 2010 at 2:40 pm
Oh, and why is an agency with a name like Centers for Disease Control and Prevention studying guns anyway? What does this have to do with their name/mission?
April 26th, 2010 at 11:05 am
Here is another study that some of you might find interesting:
http://works.bepress.com/david_kopel/10/