NEWS: Students With Concealed Weapons: Worst Idea Ever

CULTURE: Students With Concealed Weapons: Worst Idea Ever

There is the possibility of a frightening new trend on the horizon for college campuses around the country. I'm not talking about a new hazing ritual, worsening cafeteria conditions, or making students scrub the toilets in their dorms. This is much, much worse.



Ever since the terrible shootings just over a year ago at Virginia Tech, some students and parents have been calling on schools to allow students to carry concealed weapons on campuses.



Fox News . . . (not that I recommend watching Fox News)





This has to be one of the worst ideas in history, for a number of reasons:



1. To get a concealed carry permit in any state, the person has to be 21. Which, coincidentally, is the same as the legal drinking age. It has been my experience as a student, an instructor, and as someone who lives within three blocks of every college bar in town, that most students have a tendency to hit the sauce a bit hard when they first become legal. This is not the ideal conditions for allowing someone access to firearms.



2. College students often show dramatic lapses in judgment. Not all students, obviously, but enough that even one student who decides to do something stupid could have deadly results



3. The purpose of the movement is to provide some form of defense against a hypothetical attacker. I'm sorry, but I simply cannot see students being able to react in a manner that is safe to the innocents in a situation and providing actual deterrent to an attacker. If they didn't manage to shoot themselves in the foot, they would very likely panic and fire blindly in the general direction of an attacker, which could be very deadly to any bystanders who might be in the same general area.



The day after the Virginia Tech attack, I was listening to the local morning conservative talk radio idiots, and the sheer number of calls coming in from parents was frightening. There were several different versions, but they all said about the same thing, dramatically paraphrased here:



"My son (never daughter) woulda shot that sum-bitch dead, and I knows cuz I taught him to shoot tin cans."



To make matters worse, one of the people that sold the guns to the Virginia Tech shooter is trying to defend his actions in a visit to that campus. (Turns out this online gun seller also supplied some extras to the nut who shot people in Northern Illinois University)



There are plenty of sane things students, faculty, and campuses can do to protect students. They could replace the windows in classroom doors with "bulletproof" glass; they can practice drills like they do with fires and tornadoes; they can set up a campus-wide alert system; they can even set up a lock system so that, if someone pushes a panic button or types in a code, all doors would lock until the all-clear had been given. Yes, they are expensive measures, but they could easily be paid for by the tuitions of the students who weren't shot.



If a gun kept at home is more likely to end up hurting a family member than an intruder, how much more likely is a gun on a college campus going to be used incorrectly than to stop an attacker in an emergency.



Campuses do not need armed wannabe cowboys with delusions of heroism and grandeur. They need trained security, workable safety plans, working communications, and good screenings of potential students instead of the business-like "we'll take anyone with money" attitude that so many schools have.



Coyotemike is a part-time college professor, and will resign the day his campus allows students to carry concealed weapons.

I totally agree, coyotemike,

Same here. We've touched on this subject before, but the current call for allowing this means we aren't done with it.

The last thing you want in a situation like that is crossfire. That's especially so when the crossfire would be between untrained, immature civilians and a maniac. Trained police officers have a hard enough time avoiding bystander casualties.

And when the police do arrive, how are they supposed to know which shooters are 'good guys,' and which are 'bad guys'? This is far more likely to make a bad situation worse than to improve it.

Part of what inspired this article was the gun show I went to last weekend. Every idiot there wanted to buy either a high-capacity handgun, an assault rifle, or a combat style shotgun. The quasi-military weapons outnumbered the hunting weapons easily. I do NOT want those weapons in anyone's hands, let alone the hands of an inexperianced, untrained, immature (stealing lines from bald_eagle) 18-24 year old. Frankly I don't like to be around anyone handling guns unless I've trained them or I know the person who did. But that's just me.

EDIT:
Sadly, some of the schools that are trying to set up emergency systems aren't quite getting it right. I couldn't find the link, but my local NPR station did a story about a school here in Nebraska that tried to test their system, and about half of more of the people didn't get the messages on their phones to give them the message. So there are still many bugs to be worked out.

Combat-style shotgun? Oh, crap!

I'm pretty sure the answer to the problem is NOT more guns.

"No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it."
-- Albert Einstein

You mean you don't need a semi-auto shotgun with a pistol grip, folding stock, and extended magazine?

Possibly, but that would be a very difficult change to enact. But there should be must stricter regulations. The Virginia Tech gunman bought one of his pistols over the internet. That sould be very illegal.

Mike, I think you just hit on the problem with gun control in this country. Before relocating to Long Beach and True Love, I lived in the city of Philadelphia. I probably don't need to tell anyone who's reasonably informed how bad a city Philadelphia is when it comes to gun violence. Just over 400 homicides last year made that argument already(interesting and random statistic, something like 50% of all homicide victims in Philadelphia in 2007 were black men under the age of twenty-five, I am not therefore never felt threatened while living there).

I don't think the answer is try and get rid of guns in our culture, or take them away from people. Watching the Democratic Primary and the talk of gun control I reflected on the fact that nearly everyone I know in Philadelphia has two experiences, one they've nearly all had a gun pulled on them at one point or another. Second, nearly every single one of them either owns a gun and has a carry permit or has expressed the desire for same.

People, I think, feel safer with a gun in their hands then they do if they didn't and were just blindly trusting law enforcement and the government to protect them from gun violence. I know that while I don't carry or own a gun, I wouldn't feel safe out on the streets without carrying my blade which I practice with constantly so that I know how to back someone down and in a worse case scenario I can cut someone without killing them(never carry a weapon that you aren't prepared to use, children). So I think the answer is in making tougher requirements for owning or carrying a weapon and harsher penalties for those that don't secure their weapons or allow those unqualified(and too young) to handle them access to them. Ideally, I think, anyone carrying a pistol of any kind should be trained to roughly the level that local law enforcement is trained to. I know a lot of people would be uncomfortable with that, but as you pointed out Mike, you yourself are not comfortable around gun wielding people who have not been trained to the degree you have. If all gun owners were required by law to be trained in the storage, handling and firing of their weapon to the level that we expect of law enforcement(not SWAT, mind, and not military) I would feel much safer around people with carry permits, and despite your points about college age adults, I would have a much smaller issue with this sort of suggestion than I currently do.

Except that this is about being allowed to have a concealed weapon in the school campus not in the bars. This would mean the chances of a student being intoxicated from alcohol while a school shooting is going on is slim to none since I bet you haven't seen more than a handful at best of students drunk while attending class.

True this is often the case while they are out with friends and don't think any thing is serious or important. However, this is why they are first screened to be able to buy a gun then have to try to get a concealed handgun permit. I am not sure about the rules and standards but I would imagine that it includes knowing gun safety and learning how to fire. Also this debate is not about if college students should be able to have a concealed hand gun or not but rather if they have the right to have it on college campuses.

I don't think having the students sit in their seats while a person shooting at them while they wait for campus security too show up is a better solution. As the person said in the video you provided, people that have licensed guns are more likely to not commit a crime then the general population. Nor has any one with a concealed pistol has been convicted of murder and its not like the states that allow concealed weapons have turned into the wild west with shoot outs and trying to be vigilantes.

Granted this might not be the best solution but some thing needs to be done. It might be a better idea if the teachers took weapon training courses and where able to carry a weapon in their brief case instead of students. However, not doing any thing and keeping it like it is now isn't the right answer either.

2. College students often show dramatic lapses in judgment. Not all students, obviously, but enough that even one student who decides to do something stupid could have deadly results

I also agree with this point. Since the brain is still developing until you're 25 years old.

In classes, probably not. In the dorms is another thing. And what about the nights when they come home from the bar and have their gun in their room, just waiting for something bad to happen. Having guns of any kind in that situation is just a bad idea.

The current screening processes for first purchasing a handgun, then getting a concealed carry permit are pathetic. They basically consist of being a citizen or legal resident and not having any felonies on your record. The training course consists mostly of some basic targeting and safety rules that should be common sense. There is very little by way of training in the psychological aspects of knowing when to shoot, when not to shoot, and determining a viable target.

I did provide several alternatives to having students sit in their seats.

The only major problem that I can see on the side who wants to carry weapons is the second amendment (by the opposing side's logic). Now, I do not like weapons, guns or anything like that and I know I would not feel safer around them, based on some of the arguments that you have provided. And I'm not 100% sure, but don't schools retain the right to not have weapons based on some sort of property law/private institution act? I was always under the assumption at my college(s) that the school can deny the rights to have guns on campus simply due to the fact that they are an educational institution that owns the grounds and therefore you give up your rights by agreeing to attend that university. I'm sure this is not the same for all colleges, but I just remember that there's a reason why private property in dorms and classrooms can be searched and seized under university jurisdiction.... Anyone know?

Yes because bars are never located near or, occasionally, on the campus. Every student would go home, disarm, safely lock his gun away in his safe or with a trigger lock and then go out drinking with the boys. I've been to college, and I never would have gotten through my first two semesters without going to class drunk, it was a very poor community college in NJ.

Yes because state laws have never permitted dangerous people to buy handguns legally. Oh wait,
the guy that kicked this whole debate off passed the required handgun background check.

You're either being intentionally thick or just evading the issue. He isn't talking about creating a lock system that turns classrooms into shooting galleries, he's talking about creating safety features that protect students from a man wandering the hall ways with a semi-automatic rifle, like bulletproof glass and locked doors with keycode locks controlled remotely from a safe and secure location.

In classes, probably not. In the dorms is another thing. And what about the nights when they come home from the bar and have their gun in their room, just waiting for something bad to happen. Having guns of any kind in that situation is just a bad idea.

But they would already have the hand gun in the dorm (although I believe being 21 in a dorm is getting a bit old on average). This isn't a debate about the legal age to own a gun or to have a concealed weapon. This only has to do with if people that already own a gun and have the concealed weapon permit can have that gun in a class room where they won't be intoxicated and hopefully should have a focus head any ways and hopefully never have to use it. Also I would think it would be a safe bet that it's only a handful of students that would want to own and carry a pistol.

I still think it would be a better idea if it was the teachers that took the training courses and had the concealed weapons on the campuses over the students. Or that if the students carried a pistol they would have to first register with the administration and campus police office and only carry "non-lethal" rounds for their pistols.

This scares the shit out of me just about any time i hear it. People present examples like hunting and skeet shooting and compare it to tactical shooting and they just aren't the same.

The skeet, tin cans and deer aren't carrying semi-automatic weapons and are not trying to kill you. When doing those things, you have time to prepare your stance, aim, exhale and fire.

When your tactically shooting, you rarely ever are presented with the opportunity to do anything but maybe get one shot "relatively close" to your intended target while you're taking fire. There is no stance, you're panting like a female dog in heat, you're palms are sweating and your brain is running just short of Mach 9.

Before i actually trained, i was naive enough to believe that my hobbyist shooting was enough experience to carry me through a live fire event. It's not, and it never will be. Live fire and situations of that sort change everything about being able to shoot successfully.

While i like this idea over the idea of permitting college students to carry guns. I'd still like to see the problem fixed at it's source, rather than create more expenses to band-aid a problem.

Society continuously looks past people that are crying out for help. I'd like to see people get they help they need prior to toting a gun to a crowded area and opening fire. But that seems to be a naive and rather Utopian dream.

Being that i am back in college, at 33. It's kind of a 50/50 shot in the dark whether a college kid carrying a gun is a good idea. I am in a class that ranges from former military to people that have been seriously beaten with the stupid stick. I know when i was at that age, gun safety wasn't the first thing on my mind.

They would need to dramatically fix the permit to conceal process and overhaul it prior to ever even giving thought to letting this happen. I know too many people that have the permits that in my mind, clearly shouldn't.

wow this got long, good story, well written, you're getting good at this. I should start writing articles again.

Guns on campus? Unnecessary. The gun-boner crowd is right about one thing; people with carry permits are usually pretty well trained proficient and are not likely to be criminals. But can somebody explain why we need a arms race on campus?

*Edited for clarification.

Except that nearly all campuses do not allow any sort of firearm on the grounds. And 21 isn't so old for the dorms, particularly if someone is in the Greek system or is from out of state.

I live in the middle of a state with one of the highest gun ownership percentages in the country. There are three departments in my building. I am one of two faculty members between the English, Philosophy, and Modern Languages Depts who owns any sort of firearms, and the other is retireing this year to go back to being a pastor. College professors are not generally the type who would want to have anything to do with guns on any level.

For a Nebraska concealed carry permit, a person needs to take a short class (something like 6 weeks of one-night-per-week/one-hour-per-class) on gun safety and target shooting. This is not enough training for combat/reaction shooting.

I've been shooting since I was about 4 years old, was trained by my father who was a gun/hunting safety instructor, and I wouldn't feel comfortable carrying a weapon to combat a possible attacker. I'd more than likely freeze up, miss and hit a bystander, or my hands would be shaking so much I would drop the damn gun.

And hopefully people that carry concealed weapons would never have to use them. The schools do have a right to not allow weapons on campuses since it is private property but the students do have a right to be angry and try to take action when they think it would help their safety. I am sure a compromise will eventually happen of either having workers in class rooms carry a weapon or doing their own screening to allow maybe ex-military, and level headed students that are responsible enough also be allowed instead of just any one.

Lemme see if I can understand guntard math. Guns + more guns = less gun violence.

I feel safer already!

Good point. It wasn't my intention to say that permitted owners are well trained to take down crazed gun-men (In fact, I highly disagree with that idea). I was just agreeing with the gun-nut viewpoint that permitted carriers aren't usually criminals, since that seems to be some sort of contention from the pro-gun side.

Do you mean the maintainance staff? No, thank you. Most of the ones I've met are very nice people, but they aren't up to combat. I wouldn't mind having the campus police being armed, but only if they are an actual police force with full training, and not rent-a-cops who are mostly concerned with parking tickets.

I'll conceed that. At least the background checks that exist are able to weed out people with felony convictions.