And neither extreme will work.

My school has one and while the technical portions of it work, they've not shown the best judgment in using it.

Maybe a month ago, a man on the residential side of town killed his family and all the students got a message saying there was an active shooter on campus. There are several reasons this was a bad decision:
1) He was nowhere near campus.
2) They gave no instructions, didn't say whether classes were canceled, etc.
3) There was no gun involved in the incident at all.
4) He was dead by the time they sent out the message.

All that message did was confuse and scare people.

students probably shouldn't be allowed to carry concealed firearms around campus. They certainly shouldn't be encouraged to do so.

college students are statistically prone to binge drinking, peer pressure, irresponsibility, and other factors that do not make them good candidates for concealed carry. I'd rather see a greater number of profecient police officers on campuses than a bunch of barely post adolescent hormone machines with a penchant for beer bongs packing heat.

Damn, how'd I miss this one? No, it was one of those kits that really is legal because it doesn't do anything to the actual mechanism, but instead does something (not sure what) to the trigger, causing it to fire as fast as possible.

I'm just going to comment on the original post and not the rest of the comments going on here:
1. First and foremost, if you have a concealed weapons permit, not matter in any state, you can not be anywhere near a place that serves liquor. You cannot attend any large gatherings with your gun, like a sports game or movies either. Also the actual punishment for violating these things are EXTREMELY hard, and well they should be.

2. You know what, your right, some College student have their head up their ass, I was one of them, but who are you, and me, or us to start telling people that THEY DON'T HAVE THE JUDGMENT TO DO SOMETHING. If we start not trusting each other with our decision making we become fascist assholes pretty quick. You need to educate and make a culture that is educated enough to know better.

3. Again this is judgment call, but as you saw from Columbine (which really had more wounded and killed form the actual police officers and if big fat cover up to other issues) or Virginia Tech (which is a fault in the system of checking Mental health backgrounds for guns, but unfortunately legislature is stuck on that) or Dekalb NIU there really is no real way to defend against an armed attacker other than to attack back. People don't talk about the Virginian Law School who were able to hold off an attacker after they went back to their cars and took their pistols and held the man off.

Maybe instead of asking for bans on guns and blaming guns, why don't you ask WHY this happened. Maybe this points to a more sinister problem, like the fact that Mental Health in this country is at an all time horror of a condition, or that Insurance don't support the real treatment for mental health and only give a band aid of drugs and pills to people when they need real help and interaction.
Where were the parents of the Columbine kids? How can a parent NOT know they were building PIPE BOMBS in their own rooms?
Virginia tech had a man totally cut off form his fellow students a person more a alone who had to create a fantasy for himself, and no one reach out to him nobody helped him or asked "How you doing?"
The shooting at NIU is stilll in the air about the whole situation but the it's another Mental health situation there too, and again probably linked neglect, ignorance and human indifference.
The guns didn't do shit, didn't do anything, blame people and blame ourselves.. Drunk drivers kill more a year, do we take away cars and alcohol? Pools kills more children in their home than guns do, do we ban pools? No those are fucked up because of us, not them, not you, us, as people, FUCKING UP.
Next time try to talk to you fellow human and say whats up, at least high, like Vonnegut said in Player Piano " * In order to get what we've got, Anita, we have, in effect, traded these people out of what was the most important thing on earth to them _ the feeling of being needed and useful, the foundation of self-respect."
Instead of chickening out and walking away from you duties as professor, maybe you should stick around and talk to student about your point of view. It's very easy to walk away form a place that maybe different than you but maybe if you stick around to talk and exchange you can make a difference in it?

Source please?

Source? How about a translation?

Has babelfish got a gun-nut option yet?

I don't know what kind of fucked up school you went to, but most classes aren't held in bars. Well, except for bartending classes. And while you're right that they cannot carry in bars, the gun would just be waiting for them when they got home. And there is nothing magical about the gun that would immediatly sober someone up just because they walk into their dormroom/bedroom/apt/etc.

I'm only expressing my opinion, based on a dozen years of observations.

Do you have any source for any of this babble?

I agree, there is more to the issue than just guns.

Have you ever heard of "standing up for one's convictions?" You seem to be under some sort of misinformation about the role and duties of college professors. We are there to give information and teach methodology. The rest is up to the students.

College is an acid-test. To that point in student lives, it is MEANT to be the most difficult, the most stressful, the hardest part of their lives. Often it isn't but part of college is to push students, and get them to push themselves, to their limits. They are stressed. They are haggard. They are still growing into adults (the human brain doesn't stop growing and maturing until around age 25). They are still in the last stages of their adolecence. They are, for most, on their own for the first time. The idea of adding guns to one of the most stressful parts of their lives (classes and campus life) is idiotic.

Wow, so I defend the right to bear arms a bit and I'm a gun nut, wow....CLAP....CLAP....CLAP.....nice going there. I guess I can call you a Liberal so-and-so and we can just start the dance of idiocy everyone wants us to do, or actually we COULD talk about the issues.

My typing skills do need work so I apologize for that.

As for Sources: http://scribblguy.50megs.com/columbine.htm is the best bet to me, since it has most or all the links on Columbine cover up. Various reports have said that autopsy's show that many of the student were injured or killed by actual SWAT team gunfire and that the father of one of the two shooters was actually an FBI agent.

The rest, about secret studies and experiments and all that you can take as a grain of salt.

Wow, the Columbine conspiracy theorists make the other internet conspiracy theorists seem like geniuses. Awesome reading there.

EDIT- ooo, they tie it in to the Denver Airport conspiracy. I love the internet so so much sometimes.

Uhm yeah thats what I said, you're a teacher, maybe you know, TEACH? Maybe you got your tweed jacket a bit too snug on the leather elbow patches thier chief, but thats what I'm saying, instead of scurrying away, give you opinion and give the students the other side.

Yehs College is meant to be difficult, but not DANGEROUS OR LIFE THREATENING. Look at this: here
and here where did you see a sign telling people not to carry guns stop anybody? Because you know once a criminal or an insane person reads a sign they'll just stop, right?
Now am I'm going to mention the NRA, and before you jump down my throat with your responses just hear me out:

An article from the NRA's magazine, America's 1st Freedom containes the comment, "Armed Guards protect our money; politicans enjoy security details. But when it comes to our most important asset - our schoolchildren - anti-gun politicans and media refuse to consider the important role firearms have and should play in protecting schools. A new dialogue is needed."

The article goes on to list Pearl Mississippi, and the Appalachin Law School in Grundy, Va. Both had shootings stopped abruptly by others with their own firearms.

It goes on to mention Edinboro, Pa. in 1998 when a 14 year-old shot and killed a teacher and wounded three others at a school dance who was stopped and held until the police arrived, 11 minute later, by a restaurant owner who grabbed his shotgun.


Now I don't have to cite it but you'll find them probably with a quick google search but this is where I'm bending towards. I'm not saying "ARM THEM KIDS!" or anything but some sort of armed response is necessary.

(BTW, not a fan of the NRA, they don't do enough to educate, just fight with people, hence why we have all these discussions)

Yes the internet is just a gaggle of insanity at times, but there are bits of truth there with Columbine ties and all that, it's when they get into Project MDKFFMDM or whatever the hell it's called, that they lose me.

Teach what exactly? I teach writing and american literature. I try to teach students how to express their opinions, how to form opinions . . . But I don't see how resigning in protest of a policy I disagree with would be considered "scurrying."

And adding more guns in the hands of untrained civilians who are under the largest amount of stress in their life is the answer?

Your first link is to a list of high school events, not one of which was stopped by students or teachers carrying guns. Your second link is again about high-school incidents (or younger) or the kind of college shootings that would not have been stopped by armed students (particularly the bell-tower sniper in texas and the Kent state shootings by National Guard troops).

And now you're just missing the point of my article. I'm talking about college students carrying legal weapons on campus. I am all for having an armed, real police force on college campuses (provided they pass the same training and background checks used for police). Many campuses already have that.

I think it's worth mentioning that the laws on carrying a concealed weapon vary state-by-state. In Indiana, a concealed-carry permit can be issued at age 18. Indiana Code 35-47-2-3

And while you can't carry on school property, there is no prohibition on carrying a concealed weapon (with a permit) in a bar.

It just seemed as though some of the folks here were generalizing from their own states' regulations and assuming them to be uniform. They're not.