Posted on 04/26/2008 5:58:12 PM PDT by Paleo Conservative
The holsters at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi are empty this week, but the symbolic call to action has highlighted campus security again, just one week after Texas A&M University-Kingsville was placed on lockdown after an armed suspect was reported to be on campus.
Dozens of students from the A&M-Corpus Christi Chapter of Students for Concealed Carry on Campus have worn empty holsters this week as part of a national movement to allow the carrying of concealed handguns on college campuses.
The idea is that having a handgun readily available in college classrooms could avert outbreaks of deadly violence on campus, such as the Virginia Tech massacre, in which one student shot and killed 32 students before turning the gun on himself.
Empty holsters are to serve as a reminder to campus communities that because carrying a concealed weapon on college campuses is a felony offense, students, faculty and staff are left with no means of defense against would-be perpetrators of violence.
Forty-five states have colleges with local chapters of the organization. Texas is tied with Ohio for the most. A&M-Corpus Christi is the only university in South Texas to have a chapter.
Though A&M-Kingsville does not have a student chapter, some students believe having means of protection against possible assailants wouldn't be a bad idea.
Last week, A&M-Kingsville experienced a potentially dangerous situation that prompted university officials to lock down the campus for three hours because of reports of an armed suspect being chased by Border Patrol near campus.
The three-hour lockdown on the anniversary of the Virginia Tech tragedy was an all-too-real encounter with possible on-campus violence.
Authorities eventually located the suspect, who was found to be unarmed.
For some of the students attending the rural university, handguns and other firearms are a way of life -- one they say they should be allowed to bring to campus.
Agricultural science major John Michael Mauldin said students who are responsible gun owners who have undergone concealed weapons training should be allowed to protect themselves and others with a concealed handgun, if necessary.
"I was raised with guns. Both my parents have concealed weapons permits, and I'm going to get mine," Mauldin said. "I would feel safer if I could carry a gun here."
Criminology major Chris Alaniz supports gun rights but said students on campus shouldn't have to worry about being the first line of protection against violence.
"We are to learn, our focus should be learning not defending ourselves," Alaniz said. "That's what the University Police Department is for."
Sandra Jefferson, director of the University Police Department, said the university has not found a loaded firearm on campus in years. While she understands that students advocating for concealed weapons are just wanting to help, a handgun on campus -- even in the hands of those wanting to help -- still could end in tragedy.
"I just think it is risky business," Jefferson said.
It is a known fact that criminals know to avoid gas stations and stores where clerks keep a gun on them, the same would go for a place where dozens of people could be packing heat.
"We are to learn, our focus should be learning not defending ourselves," Alaniz said. "That's what the University Police Department is for."That's what police do? They defend us?
Hmmmm. I thought they showed up after the fact, supervised the carting away of dead bodies (if any) and began the long slow process of piecing together what happened.
No, if it's defense you want, you have to do it yourself.
When seconds count, the police are just minutes away!
As a graduate from Linfield college, I just sent this letter to the president and to the local paper.
Your decision against legal concealed carry following the anniversary of Virginia Tech shootings highlights different outcomes between a woman volunteer (not security guard) at New Life Church saving lives, and colleges forbidding licensed students to bring 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, and allowing police response to incidences in progress, instead of arrival 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, leading prospective murderers to abandon their fantasies, or to seek the supportive environment of a “gun free’ zone.
Rather than invite or not restrict licensed people, it seems more comforting for public officials and media to weave pleasing elusions around an occasional Columbine, Omaha mall or Virginia Tech, than recognize repeated cases of armed citizens thwarting public violence. The Linfield campus shall become an official island of contentment for predators, during the ten-minute plus police response time.
Link to Study: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=272929
“I just think it is risky business,” Jefferson said.
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