How Campus Gun Controls Empower Criminals

Here’s how this problem impacts your life, audience: Sexual assault happens very often on campuses. It can happen to anyone sitting in this room with me here today. 1 in 4 women experience sexual assault while they are at college. Also, according to the national sexual violence resource center, one in 5 women will be sexually

Since those horrible days in 1966 and 2007 there have been at least 6 other major shootings at American College Campuses. Among those six, a custodian shot and killed 7 people while injuring 2 at the California State University on July 12, 1976. Also involved in a horrific shooting, Douglas Pennington was a parent of 2 students of Shepherd University. He killed 2 people before committing suicide. Some say this is reason enough to prohibit the use of guns all together, but there is still a voice that rings out heavily across the Nation- nearly 3 million voices, to be literal. That voice is the N.R.A. (Jost, 2007, 126)

According to the NCSL, National Conference of State Legislatures “Over the last five years, campus safety legislation has been a hot issue across the country”. Authors like Jazz Silva are standing up for student’s rights that some State Legislatures might not care about. Not only are weapons dangerous but it is unsafe to students who may struggle with mental health issues. College campuses are safer than the communities that surround them. The University of Louisiana system states “93% of the violence against students occurs off campus.” Allowing guns on campus would lead to an escalation in violence, can lead to an increased number of suicides by college students, and the possibility that a weapon can go off by accident.

As a young woman preparing to go to college, I am scared. Recent statistics show that one in four women will be raped in college. One out of my four best friends who gossip about boys and stress about homework will suffer the most traumatic event of their short lives. If only that best friend had a concealed weapon to protect herself. If only someone who hears the rape will have a concealed weapon to protect her. It is important to note that no lives have to be taken in this quest for protection. A concealed weapon does not have to

In Troutdale, Oregon June 10, 2014 a 15-year-old High School freshman brought an assault rifle to school and shot 14-year-old freshman Emilio Hoffman. Two school resource officers, Nick Thompson and Kyle Harris, were armed security guards at the high school during the shooting. The school Resource Officers were able to respond as armed security before the shooter was able to fire additional rounds into classmates. This timely response should be required for all educational establishments that are prime targets for mentally disturbed gun owners (Barkoukis, Leah). According to a survey asking 100 LBCC student if they agree with campus security to be armed, 72% responded in favor of armed staff (Survey). Only 12% of students disagreed with

According to The Washington Post, in the past, shootings have been prevented or stopped by concealed-carry holders. Examples include an Uber driver shooting and wounding a gunman in Chicago, A Bystander in a Philadelphia stopping an owner of barber shop from killing anymore of customers, and a church member in Colorado knocking down and wounding Matthew Murray after he killed four people at her church.

Students walk college campuses thinking of homework, friends, social happenings, but rarely thinking about their safety. Students on college campuses are defenseless against an armed assailant because an armed assailant can shoot and harm many students in a short time before the police arrive. There are opposing views about allowing concealed weapons on college campuses, and the debate has been making news lately with the number of school shootings and people getting killed and injured rising. According to Robert Birnbaum in The Magazine of Higher Learning, “More Guns advocates argue that college students and faculty should be able to carry weapons for their own protection, particularly since history has shown that colleges can’t protect them from assailants” (Birnbaum 7). For students to properly defend themselves against armed assailants, they should be allowed to carry concealed weapons on campus.

There has been an increase in gun sales and conceal and carry permits nearly tripling from 4.7 million to 12.8 million in response to mass shootings like Sandy Hook (Johnson). As time goes on, there has been an increased amount of debates about whether or not the United States should be adding additional regulations to firearms. Some say the U.S. should not because it would be considered as the government infringing on the people’s rights in the words of the Second Amendment: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.” On the opposing side, others feel that guns are something that should not be

With the recent history of gun violence on college campuses, questions have been raised on how incidents like these can best be prevented. One proposed solution is allowing firearms to be carried on campuses. With many states passing the open carry law, the topic of guns on campus has become a major issue; however, there are many reasons to why allowing guns to be carried on campus would not help prevent situations like these. A college campus is a place where individuals of different maturity levels come to learn and develop. Research has shown that college students are not fully developed in regards to impulse and judgment, so allowing a student to be able to carry a gun would not be a logical choice. In addition, allowing guns on campus could lead to an increase in reckless shooting incidents, an increase in gun related crimes, and add to the difficulty to law enforcement personnel. A college campus needs to be a safe place for all. To ensure the safest environment for college students, guns should not be able to be carried on campus with the exception to law enforcement.

Colleges should not be allowed to take away your personal protection unless they can provide a truly safe environment for students. Sadly, most campuses can’t guarantee that assaults won’t occur, so people must be allowed to arm themselves for protection. While some schools have security or law enforcement, rarely can they reach the scene of an assault fast enough to prevent it. If the victim or a bystander has a self-defense weapon, there is a much greater possibility of stopping the attack. Attackers also avoid areas that allow firearms, and knowingly target places that don’t allow them. On October 9th, the Crime Prevention Research Center released a revised report showing that 92% of mass public shootings between January 2009 and July 2014 took place in gun-free zones. If college campuses nationwide reflected on the findings of this report, it would become apparent that allowing concealed weapons on campuses would significantly lower the odds of attacks occurring. Campuses that allow conceal carry are utilizing one of the biggest measures to deter assaults. According to John R. Lott Jr., PhD, "when states passed concealed carry laws during the years we studied (1997-2005), the number of multiple-victim campus shootings declined by 84%. Deaths from these shootings plummeted on average by 90%, injuries by 82%.

Approximately 20 to 25 percent of women are sexually assaulted within the duration of their college careers; this rate is also three times higher than

Just like Collins, Savannah Lindquist, another rape victim, was raped and left with one wish, “I can’t even begin to tell you how much safer I would feel if I knew I had a reliable method of self-defense available to me” (Lindquist) . That wish could have been granted if women were empowered and given the right to carry guns on campus. A woman should not be left defenseless when she is sent to college to live alone with other young men, and a gun will ensure protection and prevention from these sexual assaults on campus.

In the “Allowing Guns Won’t Make Campuses Safer” article, the president of Drexel University in Philadelphia John A. Fry, who happens to be the author of this article, made plenty valid points to support his point of view. He goes back into recent American history and provides incidents where guns have led to extreme violence. For example, last year a student killed six and injured thirteen near the University of California in Santa Barbara. Another incident was in 2013 when a twenty-three year old shot his father and brother before killing three others at Santa Monica College, and that is just to name a few. Mr. Fry said, “Only in America do we respond to shootings with the need for more guns. Arming college campuses will do little to reduce mass attacks, and will likely lead to more shooting deaths” revealing his stance on guns on campuses and in our country.

Zenobia Harris argues in an article in the VSU student newspaper The Spectator titled, “Guns on Campus Will Hurt Not Help,” that students and faculty carrying guns on campus will do more harm than good. She presents a selected study from The RAND Corporation as well as citing a CNN article, balanced with a counter point to show that the cons outweigh the pros when it comes to high stress situations involving

Numerous studies have shown that whenever guns are introduced into an environment, the result stands to reason that having guns on college campuses would only increase the risk of gun violence to students, faculty, and staff. Let's consider another gun lobby talking point, which supposedly explains the need to force guns onto college