Tribal
Member
The following is an opinion piece I've written for my grad school's newspaper. I've redacted the names of the school and the town/city where it's located.
Thoughts?
I don’t like writing serious things. Having a sense of humor is a blessing, and I’ve made plenty of people here at [my grad school] suffer through mine, and they’ve graciously refrained from throwing heavy things at me for my more egregious puns. However, I couldn’t think of any ways of injecting humor into this column and so I’ll have to ask for the indulgence of those who don’t know me well and for those who do know me well to keep your sighs of relief to yourselves.
For a long time I thought that the world, or at least America, was a safe place. It’s not. There are cowards out there who will take advantage of the trust, goodness, or weakness of others to get what they want, and they’ll use whatever they can to gain an advantage over their victims. This can be dramatic, as with the shootings at Virginia Tech and Appalachian School of Law, or, like so many muggings, robberies, and rapes, never get any public attention.
What these situations have in common is that the victims weren’t as strong as the scumbag who preyed on them. Maybe the person was a 100-lb. woman assaulted by a 200-lb. man, a guy on a run to the ABC store to stock up for the night’s festivities mugged at knifepoint, or one of the grad students shot one by one as they sat trapped in their university classrooms in Blacksburg. I believe that in each of these cases, allowing the person to have a concealed handgun would have protected the victim and saved lives.
The Colt Single Action Army, which you’ve seen in every single Western movie ever made, is more famously known as the “Peacemaker.” It earned that name because it kept the peace when settlers moved out to the West: this gun was easy to use, inexpensive, and powerful and it meant that even a poor farmer could defend himself against someone much stronger than he was. This meant that, unless he wanted to risk getting himself shot, a would-be criminal had to act like a civilized person, or at least find a way that didn’t rely on his victim being weaker. Guns do the same thing today: they allow a person to effectively defend herself. What I’d like is for this right, guaranteed by the Second Amendment, to be recognized by [this grad school].
There are some important objections to this, though. Continuing the Wild West theme, wouldn’t letting students tote six-shooters turn every little dispute into a re-enactment of the O.K. Corral? Realistically, what are the chances of a gun ever being needed for self-defense here at [my grad school in this town/city]? Even more, isn’t this why we have the police?
I’m not advocating letting every student walk from class to class with a shotgun. What I’m proposing is that the College should simply harmonize the Code of Conduct with the existing law. If you possess a Virginia Concealed Handgun Permit, and if the police find walking around with a concealed weapon on campus then they wouldn’t have any legal authority to do anything about it. However, if discovered by the [grad school] administration then you could be subject to “academic discipline,” including expulsion. Cities have no right to pre-empt Virginia law on this; I don’t see why universities should, either.
Getting a CHP isn’t the easiest thing in the world. Along with the requirement of being over 21 years old, I had to complete safety training and a shooting accuracy test, followed by passing an extensive background check to ensure I didn’t have a criminal record or mental problems. I’m told that the test to obtain a CHP is actually tougher than the test to become a police officer. Restricting the right to carry concealed on campus to those over 21 who have an impeccable criminal and psychological history, demonstrated skill with a handgun, and safety training would be a responsible plan. This would be more than is required for allowing students to drive on campus, and cars are far more dangerous than guns.
Really, though, what are the odds of someone needing a gun at [a grad school] in Virginia? Within the past decade, we’ve seen the 2002 shootings at Appalachian School of Law and the 2007 shootings at Virginia Tech. One difference between the two was that a student at Appalachian was able to grab a gun from his truck and force the killer to stop, while you know what happened at Virginia Tech: the murderer committed suicide when the police showed signs of entering and being able to stop him. The result was similar at Columbine High School, at New Life Church in Colorado Springs, and at Northern Illinois University: once confronted by the police or a person with a defensive handgun, the shooters killed themselves.
Things don’t have to be as spectacular as rampage shootings, however. Sadly, rapes on and around college campuses occur every year. According to the National Crime Victim Survey, a woman who resists such an attack with a gun reduces the probability of the rape being completed from 31% to 0.1% and of being otherwise injured from 40% to 0.0%. This is simply astonishing, and the fact that women are drastically less likely to be successfully victimized by rape and other violent crimes is borne out by several other studies. Now, [my college town] is a nice place and we joke about how dull things can be, but bad things happen even here. I’m sure we have a fine police force, but they can’t be everywhere. When is the last time you saw a police officer at the [grad] school?
I don’t mean to imply that we live in a world where bad guys will need to be gunned down by Dirty Harry [grad students] on a daily basis. Hopefully, concealed handguns will never need to be used. The Commonwealth of Virginia recognizes that bad things do happen and that the right of citizens to protect themselves should not be pre-empted by well-meaning cities. Are [grad] students such children that we can’t be trusted with the same rights on campus as we enjoy as soon as we step off the college grounds?
Thoughts?
