Posted on 03/14/2011 12:39:00 PM PDT by marktwain
There is a new bill being proposed this legislative session that will lift a campus gun ban. It is the first of its kind in the state of Nevada and the thought of allowing people to carry their gun legally on college campuses has stirred up quite the controversy. This also isn't an issue just being discussed here; people from across the country have used social media to express their opinion.
"The thought of students on campuses with guns just doesn't sit well with me," said Mark Cooley, student at the University of Nevada, Reno.
He said he would feel uncomfortable if he knew his classmates carried a gun around with them while at school.
"There are other things you can defend yourself with like pepper stray. I think a gun is a little excessive for self defense on campus," said Cooley.
The issue of self defense is the reason behind this new bill. Senate Bill 231 will allow people with concealed weapon permits to carry their guns onto property within the Nevada System of Higher Education.
"Whether they are female or male late at night and may feel uncomfortable in scary situations and would like the ability to have their weapon to protect themselves," said Senator James Settelmeyer (R - Capital Senatorial Dist.) who co-signed the bill.
Currently, people with concealed weapon permits need a written permission from a college or university president in order to take their gun onto school property.
This topic about allowing concealed weapons on college campuses has been widely discussed. For example, the National Students for Concealed Carry on Campus has formed a group with more than 43,000 people who support legally carrying guns on campus. And on social media, a local chapter at UNR has been formed on Facebook.
Senator Settelmeyer said this bill is about the students' safety.
"What it really comes down to, when you're in a situation that is dangerous, seconds count and unfortunately at times it takes police minutes to get there," said Sen. Settelmeyer.
Similar bills like this are being discussed in several other states such as in Florida, Texas and Idaho. This bill in Nevada will get its first hearing this Friday, March 18 at 8a.m. It will be at the legislative building and is open to the public for comment.
Your decision against legal concealed carry memorializes the anniversary of the Virginia Tech shootings with practiced irrationality. You replicate the same comforting environment Seung-Hui Cho embraced, while asserting psychopaths must cower before a rule forbidding licensed students to carry pistols.
A rigorous, twenty-year study by John Lott and William Landes from University of Chicago Law School supports expanded concealed carry in public places. Passage of shall issue laws correlates with large decreases in multiple victim shootings, and reduced harm when shootings actually occur. Use of citizen deadly force makes startling interruptions causing assailants to abandon or improvise assaults. Police then respond to incidences in progress, instead of arriving for body counts and paperwork.
Also important were absences of shootings. Public place shootings provide perpetrators leading roles in malevolent fantasies. Previously imagined screams and explosions suddenly penetrate their beings, embellished by intimate, self-created visual stimuli of human terror, bloody mists, broken bodies, culminating in splendid, convulsive suicides at their chosen moment. The latent presence of armed citizens provides a deterrent disqualifying those places, and leading prospective murderers to abandon fantasies, or to seek a supportive “gun free” environment.
Rather than invite or allow licensed individuals, it seems more comforting for public officials and media to weave pleasing illusions around an occasional Columbine, Omaha mall or Virginia Tech, than recognize repeated cases of armed citizens thwarting violence. The Linfield campus shall become an official island of contentment for predators, during the ten-minute plus police response time.
No mention that students under 21 would not be eligible to carry, because they are ineligible for carry permits.
Would anybody feel differently if Cooley said, "The thought of students on campuses with free political speech just doesn't sit well with me."
Or, "The thought of students on campuses having freedom to assemble just doesn't sit well with me."
Or, "The thought of students on campuses worshipping any way they want just doesn't sit well with me."
The right to own and carry a gun or knife is just as important as any of the other enumerated rights, and maybe more important.
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