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.