Guns allowed on college campuses: Now what could be bad about that?

Fatal shootings on college campuses have been impossible to ignore.

Oct. 1 at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Ore., a gunman killed nine people and himself, leaving nine others injured. On Friday at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, Ariz., a shooting left one dead and three wounded. Later the same day, shots killed one and injured another at Texas Southern University in Houston.

Does this make allowing concealed weapons at Texas college campuses seem dumb or even wiser?

A lot of folks believe that this means young kids will be running around with dangerous weapons.

Largely left out of most articles about “campus carry” is that a concealed handgun license is required. The license is very hard to get.

An applicant must be over 21. A clean police record is required and a lot of other rules must be followed.

I’d like to think that campus carry would help to prevent the horrible events we’ve been seeing.

“Professor, a little creative penmanship can change that F to a A,” I say, gently tapping my holstered gun.

To my knowledge, no mass shootings were done by holders of concealed handgun licenses. They’re the good guys.

Unfortunately, they’re prevented from carrying their guns into areas that are vulnerable to twisted persons moving unchallenged, intent on doing harm.

Police cannot be everywhere. They can’t be in every college classroom to protect a professor or others from a disgruntled student who has easily obtained a weapon by some means.

Obtaining a weapon will never be a problem for those intent on carnage. The professor has a better chance of protecting himself (or herself) and others nearby if he or she is a licensed carrier.

Unfortunately, that’s today’s world, and we have to adapt.

In this professor’s view, encouraging concealed weapons on campus creates danger rather than protecting against it.

I oppose campus carry for many reasons, including these:

▪ Having a gun handy makes it easier for young students, who often experience emotional extremes, to impulsively kill themselves. When deadly weapons are not nearby, students have time to cool off emotionally and seek help for their problems.

▪ On every campus, a few students suffer from mental imbalances that could make them dangerous to others, but very few schools have the sort of security that could protect professors and students from an unstable, armed person.

▪ Student parties often involve drinking alcohol to excess, which can spark fights over trivialities. If a drunken student has access to a deadly weapon, the dispute can end in murder. Lacking weapons, students can still get stupid drunk but without the deadly consequences.

Making guns legal on college campuses, whether concealed or not, seems like a dumb law.

As a disabled veteran, I wouldn’t feel comfortable going back to college today, knowing there could be gunfire at any moment.

It’s time for Congress to get its act together and pass gun laws that will make it safer for all of us. However, that won’t happen as long as Republicans keep getting reelected.

Firearms deaths are part of the price of freedom. Where people are allowed to own effective means of self-defense, some will misuse them.

Certainly we could decrease firearms deaths by decreasing access to firearms, as other countries have done, but it would also decrease our freedom.

This is America; we choose not to do that.

On campus, it will make little difference. Concealed-carry license holders are among the most law-abiding groups, so professors have little to fear.

Also, most students are under 21 (thus ineligible for concealed carry), and only 5 percent of age-eligible Texans have a concealed-carry license, so most classes won’t include a license holder.

If a shooter does attack, there probably won’t be an armed citizen to stop him.

Let’s think about this for a moment. Stressed-out young adults, alcohol-fueled parties and guns.

What could possibly go wrong?

It’s difficult to put a hard figure on the number of colleges in the United States, but a conservative number would be 3,700.

In turn, there were somewhere around 21on-campus shootings so far this year.

Statistically speaking, the odds of a campus being the site of a multiple shooting are less than 1 percent. Sure, that’s too many, but is it worth arming large numbers of college students?

Proponents like to point out that a student has to be over 21 to be eligible for campus carry. They refer to this group as “adults.”

Seriously? Most college students are still trying to figure out college, much less become responsible gun-toting adults.

Although an armed student could conceivably stop a mass shooting, remember this: the shooter will be far better armed, probably more skilled as a shooter and would have the element of surprise on his side.

What puzzles me about allowing concealed weapons on college campuses is when someone begins shooting, there will be panic and chaos.

So, when other students pull out their guns, how does anyone know who is the bad person?

Then when police and SWAT teams arrive, do they know who to confront, because there might be several people brandishing weapons?

To me, this is a scenario for more killing. Keep guns off campus except for the police.

We, including our political leaders, are missing a key component to the issue that is right before our eyes. We’re legislating morality, which has never been successful.

We’re overloaded with laws and lost sight of people and causes. America is now a very angry country. We’ve lost sight of how we got here and what has made us great.

Sadly, our political leaders are not helping or leading with appropriate and permanent responses. They instead are focused on politics and their party.

Instead of providing solutions, they’re taking sides and placing blame, when in reality we all hold a bit of the responsibility.

Most Texans, along with the majority of higher education officials, faculty, students, parents and campus law enforcement, made it crystal clear that they didn’t want guns on college campuses.

Did our state legislators and governor listen or did they merely give in to special-interest groups and the Republican power brokers?

They are complete knuckleheads for passing the campus-carry bill and I can only hope that dire consequences don’t hit the newspaper headlines a year from now.

This story was originally published October 16, 2015 at 5:42 PM with the headline "Guns allowed on college campuses: Now what could be bad about that?."