Guns on Campus May Just Save Your Life

17 February 2008

Prior to Virginia Tech, Luby’s Massacre was the deadliest shooting in American history. On a sunny October 16, 1991, shooter George Jo Hennard drove into Luby’s Cafeteria in Texas, which at the time had laws banning the concealed carry of guns that are similar to the laws found today that ban firearms on most college campuses. Hennard shot and killed 23 people and wounded 23 more before killing himself.

Dr. Suzanna Gratia Hupp was in the cafeteria that day with her parents and watched Hennard kill both of them. Hupp, despite not being from a gun owning family, had acquired a firearm and left it in her car due to the state’s restrictions. She later testified to the Texas state congress in favor of concealed carry. Hupp said, “I'm not saying that I could have saved anybody in there, but I would have had a chance… My state has gun control laws. It did not keep Hennard from coming in and killing everybody! What it did do, was keep me from protecting my family!”

Since Luby’s Massacre, many states have adopted some form of concealed carry laws. These laws allow licensed individuals to carry firearms into many locations including restaurants, movie theaters and parks. The one place most states limit or allow the limiting of concealed carry is on college campuses. Yet by allowing concealed carry on campus, state law makers and school officials would be taking a step towards making college campuses safer.

Concealed carry on campus would be restricted by the same laws that are safely and effectively used throughout the state. In Massachusetts, to get a concealed carry permit you must be 21, pass a training course and then go through background checks before you can be approved by your local police department.

I am not saying everyone on campus should have a handgun. If someone does not want a firearm it will cause accidents due to carelessness. But that is no reason that trained college students and professors should have their second amendment right to carry a firearm infringed. Every day these students and teachers, like millions of others in the United States, carry a firearm without incident, yet they are denied the ability to protect themselves on campus if an emergency ever occurs.

Many people claim that with concealed carry on campus more guns would be on campus which would lead to an increase in crime. This is similar to a claim made before many states changed the laws stopping citizens from carrying a firearm to allowing them to carry a concealed firearm. In many cases, crime rates in states actually went down once concealed carry was implemented.

On several college campuses, concealed carry is already a part of everyday life. According to MSNBC, Utah began to allow concealed carry on campus in 2006. According to the crime reports on the University of Utah’s police department’s website, there was no jump in gun related or other violent crimes on campus in 2006.

There was actually a decrease in forcible sex offenses, robbery, aggravated assault and burglary, according to the police website. Illegal weapons possession throughout the entire campus totaled zero in 2006.

The claim that firearms on campus would be a distraction was also proved false in Utah. In an MSNBC report, Timmy Allin, an out of state freshman at the University of Utah, had no idea that guns were even allowed on campus. This demonstrates that not only are guns not a problem on campuses that allow them, guns do not detract from the learning process.

According to a report by the state of Virginia, the tragedy that occurred April 16, 2007 on the Virginia Tech (gun free) campus occurred when shooter Seung-Hui Cho went on a 10 to 12 minute rampage that killed 30 people and wounded 17 more. On average Cho shot someone every 13 to 15 seconds.

Boston University’s (where I go to school) police department has an average response time for a crime of three minutes after they receive the phone call according to their website. If there was a massacre style shooting on the BU campus, by the time the BU police arrived onto the scene of the shooting, a shooter like Cho would have shot at least 12 people, that is assuming that he could hit only one person every 15 seconds and that the call time for the emergency was non-existent.

In a situation where every second could mean a lost life, you do not want to wait even 180 seconds (three minutes) for the police to arrive. By having concealed carry on campus it is not a guarantee that someone in the area would have a handgun in an emergency. But if there is just one person with a firearm in the area, there is no 3+ minute wait.

One trained person carrying a firearm concealed in an emergency situation is more effective than a hundred trained cops 10 minutes away. One person carrying a concealed handgun could be the difference between one person being shot and ten or more being shot while the police are on their way.

I wrote this as an Op-Ed for a class of mine, but in light of all the recent school shootings, I feel I needed to post this on the Internet.