Concealed Carry On Campus : Promoting The Safety Of Students Essay

While the debate and argument over the carry on campus law continues, more and more concerns are surfacing about the jeopardy it could put our nation in. Are students even mature enough for the handling of weapons? Students are not to be trusted with guns and college campus should stay a gun-free zone. Carrying a gun in general requires responsibility that people of a young age sometimes tend not to have. The handling a firearm and a lack of responsibility within a person can be a very dangerous situation. Judgement and maturity of such a young group are things to consider when thinking about the carry on campus law and a student’s capability to make smart choices when handling a weapon can’t be trusted.

The Second Amendment has given the right to individuals to keep and bear arms since December, 15th 1791. Even though this has been in the Constitution for 223 years, the issue of gun control and the right to concealed carry has been a growing issue in the United States. Whether citizens should be allowed to legally carry a gun has been a growing debate. In this paper, I will talk about the history of concealed carry, the different types of issuances among the states, and how to obtain your concealed carry license in Wisconsin along with providing concrete evidence with different statistics and stating the pros and cons of the issue.

Concealed carry and college campuses are two major topics currently in the media, yet these two topics are rarely used in unison, until now. The topic of whether or not concealed carry should be allowed on college campuses is a now mainstream debate with multiple views and numerous differentiating opinions. Many of the general public question if campus police is capable enough to protect a university’s enormous student body? Another commonly discussed issue is if concealed handguns actually do deter crime, and if they are capable of aiding in stopping a mass shooting spree? Or if guns on campus, carried by fellow classmates would make students as a whole feel more cautious or on the opposing hand make students feel more secure with guns carried on campus? If guns are allowed on campus, how will this affect a growing student’s ideology? These questions and many more are highly spoken of in our social media based generation, the answers to these questions help to improve our knowledge on this debate of concealed carry on college campuses, which will lead us to form our own individual opinions on this debate topic based on the facts and evidence presented.

Concealed carry has been in news for a while now and is a hot topic. Concealed carry means more guns around us. Those who not paying attention might assume that open concealed carry is something new, something rare, perhaps reckless at best and dangerous at worst, but that is far from the truth. The Daily Caller newspaper states that, “concealed carry is currently legal in 44 states, and in 30 states you don’t need a license to openly carry a holstered pistol.” The norm states that one had to be licensed to hide the licensed gun. Over the years various restrictive gun laws have been created state by state, largely in an effort to suppress the ability of minorities and criminals to carry guns. The ability to lawfully carry a hidden gun became

This same technique is used later in the article to emphasize the fact that many college students use mind altering substances such as drugs and alcohol; and that adding firearms, concealed or not, would add a new variable to possible suicides and intra-student violence. In addition to all of these statistics, the author also uses reason to make the point that college classrooms are places where you should be able to speak freely and without fear of possible retaliation. The author feels that if students do not know who may or may not have a concealed weapon on them, they may be less likely to speak their mind and learn all that they can.

Considering the stable condition of the US military and the homeland security systems, the country has the most advanced security system that assures citizens of their safety. Regardless, there exists no need for such extreme measures such as civilians being in possession of assault rifles as a strategy to self-defense. If necessary, cases of self-defense on the part of civilians are well handled by ownership of merely concealed pistols that from records are efficient in subduing any intruder while waiting for law enforcement back up. From self-defense and securing property, civilians’ reluctance to support the gun laws on such high caliber weapons has been underwhelming. Their standpoint has been in possession of such assault weapons. The same standpoints have been the cause for such raging debates on the support or disregard of the government proposition to have the assault guns banned from civilians possession (Miller 533).

Gun control on campuses all across the United States of America has been a controversial and popular debate topic for me ever since I woke up one morning on April 20, 1999 and witnessed, what at that time was the deadliest campus shooting in our history, at that time. Obviously I am talking about the shooting that occurred at Columbine High School in Columbine, Colorado where Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris attacked their school and opened fire on helpless students, brutally murdering 12 students, a teacher, and then killing themselves. I may have been young at the time of the shooting, but it definitely was my first interaction with deadly violence in a campus setting and opened my eyes to the harsh reality of how crazy our world can be at

By concealing the weapon, citizens can go about their day normally without being distracted by a handgun on someone’s person. Many Americans are beginning to grasp the concept that gun control laws are rapidly becoming useless. John C. Moorhouse and Brent Wanner, authors of “Gun Control Law Do Not Reduce Violent Crimes” State that the reason gun control is ineffective, is because it does next to nothing to stop criminals from getting their hands on firearms (Gun Control Laws Do Not Reduce). To reduce gun crime, more needs to be done to stop criminals, instead of focusing efforts on law abiding citizens, they are not the ones to worry about.

On April 16th 2007 at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute, a student with psychological problems began a two hour killing spree that left 33 dead (Reader). The massacre that occurred at this school is now the worst recorded incident in the history of the United States and eclipses the University of Texas massacre of 1966. In the wake of tragedies like these, students, teachers and administrators propose more measures to make us feel safe on campus. But why weren't these measures in place before? School administrators and police have a responsibility to protect their students and faculty on campus, and these instances clearly shown a lack of fulfilling that responsibility. And yet several campus' refuse to allow law-abiding and

Governor Greg Abbott plans to sign into law two bills that will expand the rights of

Many Americans tend to be on opposing sides when dealing with such a controversial issue such as gun control. A more specific category of such a broad topic as gun control is the practice that some Americans participate in, called concealed carry. Concealed carry is the practice of carrying a weapon, typically a handgun, on one’s body that is hidden from the public. This political issue hits many different institutions within America, such as many special interest groups, the constitution and Judicial branch of the government, and also the principle of Federalism.

To ensure the safety of students as well as professors and staff, open carry should be prohibited on college campuses. When open carry on college/university campuses was introduced, it caused chaos all over the United States. Allowing campus open carry would decrease the number of students because they would feel unsafe. Knowing that students are carrying more than just textbooks in their bags is not reassuring. School should be a safe environment and no one should ever have to feel like they need a dangerous weapon to be carried with them in order to feel safe.

Jose Molina General Purpose: Persuade audience that having a concealed gun on a school campus for protection should be allowed. Specific Purpose: Highlight the importance of carrying a concealed gun on a school campus for self-protection from potential harm. (Attention Getter) Have you ever just walked around campus, and thought to yourself how safe are the thousands of students that are roaming the grounds from 7am and potentially even earlier, all the way till 10 at night?

“Colleges and universities occupy a special place in American society. They are much more than a series of buildings and collection of individuals. Instead, they are dynamic living and learning environments where individuals with varying levels of maturity interact, often under stressful circumstances. While recognizing the right of responsible individuals to possess firearms under other circumstances, the unique characteristics of a university campus make the presence of firearms problematic. The shootings that have occurred in recent years at US colleges and universities have generated passionate debate about how best to prevent such violence and whether persons should be allowed to carry concealed guns on campuses. Experts believe there is no credible evidence that students or staff carrying guns would reduce crime. In fact, research has shown that the brains of most college students have not fully developed regarding impulse control and judgment” (Dickerson). Therefore, guns should not be allowed on college campuses because it would lead to an escalation in violent crime, distract from the learning environment, and lead to accidental discharge incidents.

The arguments against open carry on campus follow the same lines as arguments against concealed carry on campus. Since open carry as a whole is a relatively new subject in the debate about gun control, the statistics used will have to be from the concealed carry studies. While these are two different things, they are fundamentally the same. The major arguments are that it will increase crime, that the gun could go off on accident and injure someone, a person could also snap and go on a killing spree, and that there is no need for guns as police already carry and protect the school. The first argument to look at is that it will increase the crime rate on campus and in the surrounding areas. According to a peer-reviewed study in the Econ Journal Watch, “shall issue” laws saw an increase in aggravated assaults between 1977 and 2006. A paper by the National Bureau of Economic Research also found, between 1977 and 2010, an increase of 2% in murder rates in “shall issue” states. Criminals are more likely to carry a gun when they think a potential victim could have one. This is according to a survey of incarcerated felons by the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research in which 75% of the felons agreed with this mentality.