Sorry, but that’s just the way it goes when a hot-button topic is popular with the nonsense crowd.
Yeah, I’m generally pro-gun, but this is one place I strongly diverge from the rest of the pro-gun crowd.
I was a RA for 3.5 years at one of the largest state universities in the country (Texas A&M) in the early-mid 1990s. While my residents were pretty much non-violent and law-abiding, they were also pretty much 18-22 year old dipshits with a proclivity for getting drunk and doing dumb and possibly injurious things. I even fell into that category, and I was one of the guys nominally in charge! Combine this with the still not quite developed emotional state of most college students, and you have a bunch of frequently drunk dumb-asses who often get drunk and do stupid things out of their drunkenness and/or emotion.
Throwing guns into that mix is a bad idea. I could totally see my idiot residents getting liquored up and pulling out Billy’s shotgun and playing CD skeet-shooting out the windows. Or any number of other dangerous but not intentionally violent things. I could also see some of my more… dramatic residents shooting themselves after breaking up with girlfriends, had guns actually been present. Or shooting someone else in one of the myriad of love triangles, cheating incidents and misinterpreted FWB situations that I saw in that time as an RA.
As it was, it was just a lot of yelling, crying, and the occasional fist-fight, and the stupid stuff was confined to mostly non-violent things like firing model rockets down a hallway, trying to ride a mattress down the stairs, shooting hunting slingshots in the hallways, lighting anything and everything on fire, and dozens of other less than well thought out things that happened if not weekly, at least monthly.
Guns just add a deadly element to all that, and to what end? So that on that extremely low probability that someone actually might need a gun for self-defense, it’s present? It’s like giving someone preventative chemotherapy in case they might get cancer.
I think people carrying guns at the local Walmart or a park is also quite hazardous and prefer to shop at businesses that exercise their option ban firearms on their premises. Prior to this concealed carry legislation my campus was already awash with guns (It’s Texas), the only difference is that now instead of the campus police being able to immediately to stop a student, faculty or visitor with a firearm and remove the possibility of them harming others, campus police must now wait until the person has the firearm positioned in a threatening manner prepared to shot (you know, when it’s a lot harder to stop them).
Drunk Aggies with firearms (shudder), that is the stuff of campus nightmares
Discussions like this always derail onto the general topic of guns and gun control.
Ie. of course there people aren’t going to be carrying guns on college campuses in NJ because carrying of guns anywhere in NJ is de facto* banned. In AZ where you (people 21 and over) don’t even need a permit to carry a gun, it’s an actual question whether college campuses should be the exception. But most posts on threads supposedly about special gun restrictions in particular venues devolve to one group of posters just challenging the general premise of gun control in states like NJ, and another challenging the general premise of gun control in states like AZ.
Personally I live in NJ and find its gun restrictions overbearing but not a major issue in my life. Looser gun control laws in places like AZ or FL would be positive reasons to move there, for me, but pretty minor. Winter weather and lower taxes would be the main pluses; summer weather and being the new comer, no longer rooted, would be the big minuses.
Anyway relative to the general gun laws the OP’s appeal to ‘what possible!?!’ is the wrong way around. In states which allow pretty universal carry of guns, I don’t see why it makes sense to exclude any area unless it’s feasible, and you’re willing to pay, to have security checkpoints with metal detectors to enforce it. It makes no sense to say a whole campus including open areas is ‘no gun’ when there’s a basically universal right to carry two steps over outside the campus boundary and no enforcement at the boundary. OTOH in states where almost nobody can carry a gun anyway, the question of the particular status of campuses is moot.
*500 carry permits in a state of 9 million people.
Has any mass shooting, anywhere, ever been prevented by a civilian with a gun?
There were lots of open carry activists with guns at the protest in Dallas where the sniper attacked the police. None of them were able to stop him.
Also having more firearms around could lead to more accidental and negligent deaths, especially if people are drinking and showing off.
Really? Here is one articlewith 10 examples. There is, of course, a difference between “stopped” and “prevented”. “Stopped” can be proven and documented, “prevented” cannot be. There are undoubtedly cases where a potential shooter changed their mind (or at least their target) based on the likelihood that someone else would have a gun. That is prevention, but we can never know when/if it happened except by word of the potential shooter.
Probably the two safest numbers of actual guns on campus (or anywhere else) is “zero” and “one per person”. The problems always occur in the middle.
I find that hard to believe, if every single person had a gun the number of accidental shootings would likely be much higher than if, say, 20% of the population did (and not outweighed by a similar decrease in actual crimes).
Every time this debate comes up, people raise this concern. And I get it. I remember college. People were drunk or stupid (and often both). Fights broke out; things were destroyed; and the notion of people being armed in the middle of it seems worrisome.
But what’s the data on this? As far I can recall, Utah began to allow firearms on campus in the early 2000s. That’s ten years of crime statistics. There are a number of other states that have followed suit. What are the numbers? Has there been a stark increase in drunken fratboy shootings?
(I have a similar question more generally. When states talk about making it easier to carry firearms in public, people worry about gun battles over parking spots and the like. But, despite the concern, the laws seem to pass. Presumably someone has looked at the statistics: have there been an increase in parking lot shootings?).
You’re not foolish enough to believe that someone intent on no good is going to obey those signs, are you?
No, but I believe that having laws that allow police to arrest people for carrying guns where they are not allowed makes it much easier to stop someone intent on no good than having to wait for that person to present a more imminent treat. To me it’s the equivalency of an open can law (i.e., if you are driving with an open can of beer in your cup holder, I think the police should be able to arrest you for DWI without bothering to check your blood alcohol level, res ispa loquitur). Anti-carry laws are a great tool for law enforcement. Further more anyone carrying them gun somewhere that it is visible enough for them to get caught, well, they deserve the arrest for stupidity.
Look up the shooting in Oregon, at Umpqua Community College. A bunch of trained civilians with guns burst out of a classroom and took the shooter down.
Oh, wait, it did not happen like that at all. All the armed guys in the classroom hunkered down and waited for LE to arrive.
I’m an armed criminal and I feel the same way! What a coinky-dink. 
Why limit this to civilians? Do you think law enforcement personnel are magical? They’re people with guns, just like anyone else.
But yes, civilians have stopped mass shootings.
Not magical, but trained.
Well, if you are convicted felon the mere act of carrying that gun will land you back in jail. If you are an aspiring armed criminal, the mere act of carrying that gun in a no carry zone will be enough to have you arrested. I prefer that to a situation to one where I have to wait until you have cocked and aimed the weapon for the police to shoot you.
Are you saying that police should kill anyone who violates a “no guns allowed” sign?? :eek: See, I tend to think that police should refrain from shooting anyone who is not a threat to life or safety. Interesting that those who find hunks of metal too dangerous to be near have no problem with murderous cops roaming the streets.
I’m generally on the mildly pro-gun side of things.
My concern in general is not that I expect bad guys will obey gun control laws. Obviously they won’t. As you say.
My concern is that CC laws encourage lots more people to be carrying guns. So now I have to trust all of *those *people to exercise good judgment whenever I’m around them. In addition to the crooks I already had to be (a bit) concerned about.
I’ve seen people drive, buy groceries, drink, choose mates, fight, raise kids, and all the rest. By and large they do stupid shit fairly often. Your whole professional life has been spent dealing with the aftermath of people doing stupid shit usually for stupid reasons.
If you live in the crappy part of town you’ll have lots more crooks to contend with. If you live in a nice part of town essentially every gun you encounter is a “law abiding citizen” with a CC. Or somebody not intending harm, but still violating the firearms laws by not bothering with the CC license. I have a hard time seeing how all these folks are improving my life. Or really even their own.
Herd immunity I get. It’s a real effect on would-be criminals. I do benefit from that. But it’s unclear to me that the beneficial effect is larger than the risk I pick up from all the “good guys”.
If a gun was a magic crime repellent force field I’d carry one too. But they’re not, at least not for most people with typical degrees of training and motivation. And they have the side effect of bringing a gun to every single silly / stupid situation that armed person encounters every single day.
I do wonder how the number of carriers is trending over time. Perhaps so far the states with the most carriers per capita have pretty well used up the ranks of the stable folks who can be trusted to carry reliably. And as carry becomes more popular or more of the zeitgeist or whatever and carriers become not 5% of the populace but 25% of the populace we’ll necessarily get ever less suitable people doing it. For darn sure in some states CC “training” for the permit is a joke. Some states are pretty rigorous; others not so much.
No, I don’t believe the police should kill anyone who violates a “no guns allowed” sign on the basis of only having the gun. I think the police should arrest them. Now if the gun carrier violently tries to avoid arrest in such a manner that puts the police or anyone in the general area in danger, I have no problem with the police using whatever force is necessary including lethal force to stop them. What I don’t like is that because of campus carry laws, people can bring dangerous lethal objects into crowded public places without adequate safeguards. I don’t want handguns in the library for exact same reason I don’t want chemistry students bringing beakers filled with corrosive acid into the library.