...a disorganized, untrained armed response is likely to make the situation far more dangerous to all involved.

Errr…....Texas has probably the most stringent training program of all CHL states. You must demonstrate proficiency, safety and knowledge of the law concerning deadly force.

You need to research your rants more.

It’s highly unlikely that concealed carry would make mass shootings more likely - it is, however, highly likely that when someone is insane enough to decide they want to kill a few dozen people, a disorganized, untrained armed response is likely to make the situation far more dangerous to all involved.

Jesse:

How much freakin’ worse could it have got?
It’s better that no one had the wherewithall to defend themselves?  Seriously?

Support banning many types of guns! Remember, although the government says it is impossible to identify 12 million illegal aliens, they will have NO problem finding and confiscating a few hundred million guns and a trillion rounds of ammunition!

Nu uh! Don’t you know we’re an entire nation of super marksmen, John and Jane Rambo, and we never, ever miss.

Keith,

The scene Jesse has set is an insane person who decides to fill a few dozen people. So, you just want them to be defenseless because you think a trained citizen with a gun is abhorrent?

That about it, Stud?

Blech, I hate this “fight fire with fire” nonsense.  Okay, so more and more people are finding it easy to turn to guns to “solve” their issues.  And the answer to that problem is….more guns?!  So instead of fostering a better support network for people with mental illnesses, we should just ignore their problems until they go violent and then blow them away.  Perfect solution.

gwangung:

And if you can’t get out?

You never know the variables; you can’t.  So you’re saying that if I’m armed and a loon is shooting up my dorm I should leave it in the drawer?  You’d do that?  Seriousl?.  He’s killing your friends and you’d do nothing?  Seriously?  And if could get out and you were armed, you’d run and leave the rest to their fate?

How much freakin’ worse could it have got?

Easy. Years of incidents in which a few people get killed firing their guns when there isn’t an insane killer on the rampage, but rather are used for low-grade situations that people don’t use guns for now.

I’m not worried about students carrying guns when there’s a mass murderer on the loose. I’m worried about students carrying guns around when there isn’t one on the loose. The latter scenario is much, much more common.

Magis, do you even know how you’d respond?  No.  And THAT’S THE POINT. 

It is a far different thing to know how to use a gun and to know how to use it when someone is indiscriminately killing people in front of you - especially when you don’t even know who the person is. 

Yes, when you don’t know who a shooter is and you have six people wandering the halls with guns, it could get a *lot* worse.

So instead of fostering a better support network for people with mental illnesses

Our laws vis a vis mental illness would not have saved a single person at Virginia Tech.  It’s not just that we don’t have enough resources; we also abide by the principle that people have a right not to be involuntarily committed without very good reason.  The VA Tech shooter didn’t meet that threshold.

Please tell me how the police (when they arrive on the scene of a mass shooting) are supposed to tell the difference between crazed mass-murderer and the law abiding citizen with a gun? If they see fifty people running, ducking, and screaming, and five people shooting, they will shoot the people with the guns. They aren’t going to stop and ask who has a permit.

I didn’t necessarily mean that he should have been involuntarily committed.  Part of the problem with mental illness is that the social stigma against it so often harms any potential of getting the person proper treatment.  And with all of these soldiers coming back with PTSD we’re going to see more and more violence as a result.

Yes, when you don’t know who a shooter is and you have six people wandering the halls with guns, it could get a *lot* worse.

Thank you. That’s the type of common sense that seems to get lost in this idiotic debate.

This “let’s arm everybody” isn’t even the most batshit stupid thing people say about these situations any more. It used to be, until we had flaming assholes like John Derbyshire and Mark Steyn calling the victims “cowards” because they didn’t “rush” the gunman. (Oh, how I wish Steyn could have been at Virginia Tech that day…)

Wow… surprising number of familiar commenters turn out to be second amendmenters.

Two anecdotes come to mind… there was the fast food stickup, where another customer pulled a gun and the two shot each other to death. No innocent bystanders got hit, though, I believe. The other, the church shooting, when parishioners took the guy down without any weapons. Granted, he had a shotgun, not a handgun, which is more effective in a rush.

Cops get tense when you’re within thirty feet, because you can clear the distance and engage them physically before they have a chance to respond with a gun. Citizens defending themselves isn’t a simple question of carrying a gun or running away.

And of course, there’s no possibility of escalation - where Psycho A starts shooting, and is then shot at by Heroic Citizen B. Heroic citizen C, hearing the shots and rounding the corner, will of course automatically and what, telepathically, be able to tell that Heroic Citizen B is on the Good Guy team - presumably because of his white hat and excellent teeth, and never, ever fire off a couple rounds to take out B.

And B, of course, seeing C round the corner with the gun, especially if C shoots at him, is going to automatically realize that the person firing at him is a good guy and not another one of the bad guys who is, um, also firing at him.

Not to mention the practical question - if the students can carry their weapons anywhere on campus, but cannot have them in the dorms, where are they going to be keeping them? Piled up just outside the dorm entrance? In their cars, where they can be easily stolen? In the campus armory, for God’s sake, and they can check them out before class and return them (and walk back to the dorm “unprotected”) at the end of the day?

Funny convergence of energy between me and Bitter Scribe on the rushing question.

Seriously, though. A cop shows up, there’s blood and guts everywhere, and you see someone with a gun out. Don’t you shoot them? How do you know if he’s a good guy or bad guy—there are a lot of people with bullet wounds about the place and this guy is clearly not a cop with a gun out.

If I was going to school in Texas, even if they passed this stupid law, there’s no way I’d carry.

God, in the olden days, people had to climb a bell tower and start picking off students. Under this plan, all you have to do is fire one shot into the air and let all the armed students pick each other off.

I suppose from one point of view disarming as many people as possible may save more lives in the long run.  It’s pretty rough though to go from that point to then say to an individual being attacked that they essentially have no right to defend themselves with an effective weapon.  There are no magic solutions, and everything has a trade-off.  Despite that, I can’t bring myself to say that there should be no concealed carry on college campuses or most other places.  These are supposed to be adults after all, and a concealed carry permit in most places takes quite a bit to get.

ha, I personally like guns as a hobby and have owned them.  I’m also definitely for sensible gun laws like NO YOU CAN’T FUCKING CARRY A GUN TO SCHOOL.  Jesus fuck.

Unhinged Liberal is sort of correct in its first post: Ten years ago I got a Washington State concealed weapons permit because I’d taken a shooting safety class and they said it was easy.  Which it was.  All I did was go to the permit office, fill out a form, pay the fee, and get fingerprinted.  When a background check didn’t turn up any disqualifying crimes, I got my permit.  Texas does require that you take and pass a safety course.

It’s wrong about everything else though.  More guns correlates strongly to more people getting shot.  And as I can report from personal experience, it’s wildly unpleasant even if you survive.

The scene Jesse has set is an insane person who decides to fill a few dozen people. So, you just want them to be defenseless because you think a trained citizen with a gun is abhorrent?

Hmm.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation found that Southern states have the highest murder rates.

And experts believe the high Southern murder rate is a key factor behind America’s high homicide rate in comparison with other democratic, industrialized nations, according to an article in The New York Times.

They note that much of the distinction in murder rates between the South and other sections of the country comes from a difference in the character of Southern homicide.

It was found that many murders in the South are of a personal and traditional nature such as a barroom brawl, a quarrel between acquaintances or a fight between lovers. In other places, the newspaper reported, homicides usually begin with another crime like a botched robbery, and typically involve strangers.

In 1996, the U.S. murder rate was 7.4 per 100,000 people. The rate that same year state by state showed 12 of the 20 states with the highest murder rates are in the South.

States topping the list of murders per 100,000: Louisiana (17.5), Mississippi (11.1), Alabama (10.4), Tennessee (9.5) and South Carolina (9.0).

So the idea is to let students shoot back at the rare school shooters, in exchange for faster and more lethal escalation of quarrels and fights?

Yeah, that’ll work out well.

There are an awful lot of assumptions being made about an armed citizenry both by the pro- and anti- people here. 

The concealed and open carry laws have been in place in quite a number of US jurisdictions for a fairly long period of time.  Have they measurably reduced or increased the number of shootings?  Have they had no measurable impact either way?  When these discussions come up I see a lot of people jumping to their pre-set positions, which is a little weird for this blog where people are generally citation-happy.

What has the impact of these laws been?  Surely we want to look at the data to debate this.

Yes, when you don’t know who a shooter is and you have six people wandering the halls with guns, it could get a *lot* worse.

Ummm, you don’t know who the shooter is?  He’d be the one that’s shooting.  Yes, I know how I’d respond.  And, here’s something that ought to scare you.  The average armed citizen is a WAY better shot than the average cop (SWAT type folks excepted).

Please tell me how the police (when they arrive on the scene of a mass shooting) are supposed to tell the difference between crazed mass-murderer and the law abiding citizen with a gun?

Odds are by the time they show up; it’ll be over.  Mostly police just call the coroner or ambulance as the case may be.

I’m not worried about students carrying guns when there’s a mass murderer on the loose. I’m worried about students carrying guns around when there isn’t one on the loose.

Logically, if you don’t have the second you can’t have the first.

A note on PiatoR’s cross-post:
The homocide rates to which he refers are fairly simple: north and south.  They don’t correlate directly to the questions that I posed so I think that the question is still open.

Here, Seeker:

In states that have implemented conceal-and-carry laws, crime rates have dropped significantly. According to the statistics from the Bureau of Justice, in Florida crime rates dropped 30.5 percent after conceal and carry was passed. In Virginia, crime rates dropped 21.9 percent. In Arizona, they dropped 28.7 percent. In North Carolina, they dropped 26.4 percent. England, which has a very strict gun control policy, has seen an increase in crime and a doubling of gun crime since the gun ban, as noted in an August 2007 Times article. 

Student Life
University of Missouri

Magis, the odds that I’ll have to deal with the prospect of a homicidal gunman gone mad ever, in my entire life, is something approaching 0.

If you allow concealed carry on campuses, I’d be living with and going to class with people carrying concealed every single day on a regular basis. The risks of some incident occurring will be much higher with people carrying guns around than the risk of ever getting killed by a homicidal maniac with a gun when civilians are unarmed.

It makes a lot more sense to place yourself at slightly greater risk of harm from an incident that is almost assured never to happen than it is to protect yourself from that almost-never-occurring incident by placing yourself at the constant risk caused by surrounding yourself with a large number of very young adults carrying guns.

God, in the olden days, people had to climb a bell tower and start picking off students.

The best part about that little incident is that the Texans down below taking shots at the top of the tower didn’t actually stop Whitman from shooting and their shooting made it more difficult for the cops to who went up there to corner him on the tower because the people down below with guns only saw men with guns and started aiming for them instead.

Tyro:

The risks of some incident occurring will be much higher with people carrying guns around than the risk of ever getting killed by a homicidal maniac with a gun when civilians are unarmed.

Assumption?  How much greater?  I haven’t looked it up, but I’ll bet you a jillion electrons that there are more deaths due to homicide with some sort of weapon than there are deaths due to accidental shooting.

I’ve driven for almost 40 years without a serious accident.  I’ll think I’ll get rid of my seat belts because they chafe my neck.

Allowing college students to carry guns is absolutely mind blowing bat shit crazy. Have you people met college students?
Gun fetishists seem to be a lot like fundie baby Jesus followers: completely blind to reason. Life is NOT an action movie.

Magis: Your presentation of your data is faulty.  Crime rates in general have been dropping across the United States for at least ten years.  Not at the same rates in all areas, but the general trend has been down.  And I think you’ll notice that the United Kingdoms, with their very strict gun control policies, have a significantly lower rate of death by gunshot wound than the United States.

Finding data on international death rates is tricky, but this makes a good stab at it, though the data is about a decade old.  Places with lax gun control laws see more deaths by murder than do places with strict gun control laws.  It is not a coincidence that Washington D.C., which seems to be the anti-gun control lobby’s test lab, tops the list of cities with the worst murder rates (among large cities in the U.S. and Europe) by almost twice as much as the next-worst, nor that eight of the top ten are in the U.S.

Uh, Magis, if your seat belt ever strangled an acquaintance because it mistakenly thought there’d been a head-on collision, your analogy might hold.

If professors got to carry guns, why shouldn’t everyone be able to conceal & carry?  Certainly a young woman’s safety while walking home from class at night is no less important to protect than the life of a professor. 

Considering a majority of the crime that occurs on campus is theft, assault or rape - and not killing sprees with firearms - isn’t a more sensible idea to make self-defense a gen ed requirement?

Keith,

The scene Jesse has set is an insane person who decides to fill a few dozen people. So, you just want them to be defenseless because you think a trained citizen with a gun is abhorrent?

That about it, Stud?

Unhinged Liberal

There’s no protection from motiveless, random and unrepeatable occurrences. They’re called Black Swans and they can be brutal. But that’s life.

Letting a bunch of unhinged red necks looking for an excuse to shoot someone (black, liberal and/or gay looking, you know, “unhinged”) carry guns on the off chance that a 1 in a million occurrence might happen is fucking stupid. All it does is increase the liklihood of accidental shootings.

If professors got to carry guns, why shouldn’t everyone be able to conceal & carry?  Certainly a young woman’s safety while walking home from class at night is no less important to protect than the life of a professor.

Actually, I’ve made the suggestion in the past - have gun carrying by women be encouraged (or even mandatory), and make guns forbidden for men.  If they want defending, they can yell to the nearest woman.

Letting a bunch of unhinged red necks looking for an excuse to shoot someone (black, liberal and/or gay looking, you know, “unhinged”) carry guns…

Shorter Keith:

Gunowner = Homicidal Larry the Cable Guy. 

Of the over 25,000 Concealed Carry Permits issued in my state only one–count ‘em one–of the holders of said permits has used a gun in the commission of crime.

Tyro hit the nail on the head. I had reason to research this a few weeks ago, and back in the days when students brought their gun to school more often, students (and teachers, and staff) got shot more often.

When people carry guns around as a matter of course, people get shot. By accident, and on purpose.

Ummm, you don’t know who the shooter is?  He’d be the one that’s shooting.  Yes, I know how I’d respond.  And, here’s something that ought to scare you.  The average armed citizen is a WAY better shot than the average cop (SWAT type folks excepted).

So…you’re a cop entering a school with a mass-murdering shooter.  You see a guy with a gun out.

What do you do, hotshot?

Do you wait for him to see you and start shooting at you?  Or do you drop him before he can get the drop on you?  How do you know whether or not the guy with the gun is the bad guy or just some asshole with a concealed carry permit? 

And concealed carry?  Makes it really easy for the mass-murderer to get his gun in the school in the first place.

The best part about that little incident is that the Texans down below taking shots at the top of the tower didn’t actually stop Whitman from shooting and their shooting made it more difficult for the cops to who went up there to corner him on the tower because the people down below with guns only saw men with guns and started aiming for them instead.

Oh, but Magis just definitively proved that if everyone has a gun, they’ll always manage to kill the shooter before the cops even get there.  So, clearly, the problem with the Whitman situation was that the cops should have waited for the private citizens to take care of Whitman and then showed up after all of the shooting was over.  Because that’s what the police are for:  cleaning up after private citizens take care of their own problems by shooting each other.

Which is why police uniforms tend to come in dark colors.

kaninchen:

Magis: Your presentation of your data is faulty.  Crime rates in general have been dropping across the United States for at least ten years.  Not at the same rates in all areas, but the general trend has been down.  And I think you’ll notice that the United Kingdoms, with their very strict gun control policies, have a significantly lower rate of death by gunshot wound than the United States.

No, it’s not.  Seeker6079 asked for data with a factor correlating to guns.  The figures you see were, IIRC, for the first full fiscal year following the implementation of a “shall-issue” CCP.  It is true that the rates are lower in the UK, but the point was the doubling of those rates after stricter laws.  In every case that I know of, the institution of a CCP law lowered crime rates, regardless of how high they were in the first place.  I know that is counter-intuitive, but it seems to be the case. 

The next part confuses me.  You say that the murder rates are higher in areas permitting firearms but then say that D.C. is the highest.  Am I reading what you wrote wrongly?

Apologies: I will attempt to clarify:  D.C. does have fairly strict gun laws, regarding guns purchased in city limits.  They are often prevented from being enforced by NRA litigation and Congressional override.  D.C. is also awash in guns purchased in Virginia and Maryland, and so there are a lot of guns around.  A lot of people in D.C. get shot.  It’s a bit of a special case—the city itself has gun laws but those laws are practically ineffective.  Places that have had gun laws long enough for guns to be rare have much lower rates of death by murder.

trollprincess &  Mnemosyne:

Throught you might like this from the Texas Tower Wiki…

Once Whitman began facing return gunfire from the authorities and civilians who had brought out their personal firearms to assist police, he used the waterspouts on each side of the tower as gun ports, allowing him to continue shooting largely protected from the gunfire below but also greatly limiting his range of targets. Ramiro Martinez, an officer who confronted Whitman, later stated in his book that the civilian shooters should be credited, as they made it difficult for Whitman to take careful aim without being hit.

Stop makin’ it so easy, kids!

Jesse,

I wrote about this back on March 30th.  As someone who works at a university in Texas, this issue is near and dear to my heart. 

Also?  Police and military train for years to learn when to shoot, and they get plenty of on-the-job training, too.  Even they get it wrong sometimes despite all that—or perhaps because of it.

But civilians who’ve had a “stringent training course” will do so much better!  Right.  As Ed said, the last thing a professor needs is a hungover, stressed-out, bleary-eyed, sleep deprived student in his lecture hall who is also ARMED.  Good idea.

I’m really sorry I stopped following this comments thread, cuz there’s a great discussion here.

All of this conversation about crime rates, we need to differentiate crime from gun-related violence (and accidents). I’m not sure how the data cuts each way, there—any one know? My point: I’m not worried so much about increased purse-snatching if there’s a big spike in gun violence. If we’re talking about trading a decrease in crimes like rape in exchange for more gun violence, I’m not sure how I feel. The devil is definitely in the details here, and I haven’t seen anyone put up enough detailed information on it.

Honestly, I’m not that bothered by guns. I’d like idiots to be disempowered to some degree when it comes to them being stupid or being assholes, but I don’t know how feasible that is through gun regulation. I’m also moved by the role of guns in American culture, even though I’ve never experienced much of that gun culture myself.

Places that have had gun laws long enough for guns to be rare have much lower rates of death by murder.

Well, I know the Sullivan Law in New York City is over 100 years old.  I doubt there is such a place in the U.S.

Here’s the bigger question.  Seriously now.  Do we have a high murder rate because our gun laws or because we have a fucked up society.  The correlation with the gun thing is tenuous at best.  In Switzerland there is a full automatic assault rifle in almost every home (Swiss Army thing).  Yet their murder / violence rate isn’t as high as ours.  It wasn’t as high in Canada or Australia (or Britain) or France or Germany or (add many) even before those nations had a lot of gun laws.  Everytime we have a tragedy we yell GUN CONTROL instead of looking for the more deep seated reason like poverty, racism or piss poor mental health care.

If you could take a magic wand and get rid of all the guns (hunting included), swell.  But, until that day, I’m keeping mine, thanks very much.  Last statement, honest, if you’re going to come up with gun ban laws I hope they work real good.  My models thus far are Prohibition and the War on Drugs.

Yeah.  I won’t teach at a college where students are permitted to carry.  It’s not even what might happen during a VTech-like spree that worries me—my concerns are way more quotidian. Classrooms can be heated, emotional places: students seething over lack of authority, political debates,  assignment/course failures…and general overweening entitlement issues.  Throw in guns and immaturity—not a good cocktail by any count.

Kaninchen—EXACTLY!

Mexico has strict gun laws, right? Texas doesn’t, though, so you see a lot of gun violence in Mexico, especially on the border. The same principal applies to DC—which we must note is also heavily impacted by poverty.

Japan doesn’t have Mexico’s problem neighbors, and it seems to have a more effective gun ban. They’re also richer, but—well, I think the numbers still shake out to pretty strongly suggest no guns means no (less) gun violence.

Speaking sentimentally, liberal gun policy is awesome and American. Speaking practically, limiting access to guns seems to make sense.

Wow.  Nothing attracts cross-comment in this blog like guns, it seems - not sex, not birth control, not abortions.

Magis does have an excellent point about our culture (and, I’d add, socio-economic problems) driving violence. Still, it is kinda a non sequitor.

The argument is whether reducing access to guns reduces gun violence.

And originally, if arming citizens is an effective public security policy.

The argument is whether reducing access to guns reduces gun violence.

And originally, if arming citizens is an effective public security policy.

So tell us, already.

Texas has had concealed carry for 13 years. How many bloodbaths have occurred or been prevented in this time? Right now you can take your gun anywhere except a bar or a church, and 300,000 Texans do so.

No comment, promised.  None needed.

[...]

Prior to January 1978 when Bill C-51 came into effect, Canada had very
liberal gun laws. From 1977 to 1991, Canada’s violent crime rate has
increased 89% (583 to 1099 violent crimes per 100,000 population)
compared to a 59% for the US in the same period. (476 to 758 violent
crimes per 100,000 population).[34] While the Canadian rate has been
decreasing since 1991, the same is true of the US rate. (Besides, a 4%
decrease hardly compensates for a 400+% increase!)

As previously mentioned, if a prohibition somehow eliminated all
firearms, and, therefore, all firearm-related homicides, _without_ those
homicides becoming non-firearm homicides (i.e. no one simply uses
another weapon or bare hands),the US murder rate would still be roughly
_double_ the Canadian rate. If the USA without firearms would have more
murders per person than Canada with firearms, there must be other
factors at work.

[32]Coalition For Gun Control fact sheet.
[34] U.S. Source: “Uniform Crime Reports for the United States
1991”, Federal Bureau of Investigation, p.58; Canadian Source:
“Crime Trends in Canada 1962-1990”, Cdn. Ctr. for Justice
Statistics, p.15.

I’ll bet you a jillion electrons that there are more deaths due to homicide with some sort of weapon than there are deaths due to accidental shooting.

Who said it would be accidental? If people have guns, there is a small but non-zero chance that they’ll use them. The chance is small, but it’s larger than the chance that a homocidal maniac will decide to load up on guns and start shooting. I place myself at greater risk surrounding myself with lots of people who are armed than I am if people aren’t armed but we risk not being able to confront a gun-using serial killer.

I’ll bet you a jillion electrons that there is a lot more one-on-one violence involving guns than there are deaths from people who go on shooting sprees. It’s thus in my interest to protect myself from the much more likely scenario than from the highly unlikely one.

If concealed carry required proper and serious firearms training, I’d be willing to entertain this notion for about 5 seconds—all the time it would take to envision what would happen in a chaotic free-for-all like VA Tech if everyone else started pulling their weapons.

As the state of training stands currently, though, even without deranged gunman you’re just going to have a lot of accidents and bar fights and classroom arguments that culminate in bullets instead of fists.

I do a little target shooting at the range once or twice a year, and even my gun-crazy 2nd-Amendement-loving friends who take me (mostly ex-military types) think that this kind of proposal is a recipe for disaster.

Magis, i don’t actually have any problem with Massachusetts-style gun laws that allow gun ownership and concealed carry once you take a safety class and apply for a permit.

However, the issues of safety strike me that it’s a far greater risk to arm a large population of college students living in close proximity than it is to worry about how to deal with a spree-shooter when the civilian populace is unarmed. In college, I trusted my friends and the people I knew and lived with. I can’t say that web of trust extended to the other 9000 people there.

It’s thus in my interest to protect myself from the much more likely scenario than from the highly unlikely one.

Stay out of Vermont. Anyone lacking intent to injure another person can carry a gun either openly or concealed. Exceptions are courts, state institutions, schools, and school buses.

As the state of training stands currently, though, even without deranged gunman you’re just going to have a lot of accidents and bar fights and classroom arguments that culminate in bullets instead of fists.

Vermont, which requires neither permit nor training to carry concelaed, has the third lowest murder rate in the U.S.

Hector, how many shooting sprees were there in vermont? I’d bet the person-on-person gun-related killings far outnumbered the number of murders to do shooting sprees.

You could compare other states that were less armed, as well… in all cases, the risk dying from a person-on-person murder caused by someone having a gun close at hand was far larger than the number of shooting sprees that might have been prevented “if only someone were armed!”

In any case, if I didn’t live in close proximity to lots of people, then, yes, like many vermonters, I’d probably have no problem with the fact that someone, way down the street, over in their house, had a gun somewhere. 10,000 students on a campus to protect against the possibility that there might be a spree shooter at some point in the indefinite future? Strikes me as a riskier proposition than the possibility of a spree shooter.

Vermont, which requires neither permit nor training to carry concelaed, has the third lowest murder rate in the U.S.

I’ll take your word on that. And how do they do on accidental shootings, non-fatal GSA stats, etc.? Also, is that per-capita?

One of the many reasons I liked Howard Dean is that he took a balanced and nuanced approach toward gun control legislation—taking into account issues like venue (e.g. urban vs. rural), different types of firearms (there is a difference between a revolver and assault rifle), etc. I just wish that more people who care about the topic would take a similar approach, rather than the binary one we so often see.

To the point about guns making women safer: they don’t, period.

I’m from Israel, where there are a lot of guns around because of the proportion of people who serve in the military. A couple of things to ponder:

1. When I was doing my military service (during the “first” Intifada), the IDF was *not* issuing weapons to female soldiers serving in dangerous areas. At the time, the West Bank and Gaza were a lot less militarised than they are today, with few guns in Palestinian hands - so getting a gun off an IDF soldier was a major coup, and something that was constantly being attempted. It was quickly shown that women, because they were seen as easier to overpower, were the preferred targets for this, exposing them to additional risk.

A civilian woman, not on alert due to not facing an endemic insurgence situation, and with no military training, is even more of a target (in this case, for purse snatchers, wannabe gang members, the unhinged, etc.). This is not an argument against concealed carry as such; but at some point the gun might come out, and then you’ve made yourself a target. Which of course holds for men as well as women - brandishing a gun makes you a target.

2. During every significant spike in violence in the region (2003, 2006, 2009), when there was large mobilisation of reserve forces who were then issued with weapons, domestic and partner murders/attempts spiked. It’s just so much easier for an abuser to kill his victim in a flash of rage with a gun than with his fists - takes no time either, preventing her from trying to escape, scream for help etc.

As for rape, the majority of rapes are acquaintance rapes. You’re a lot less likely to be on your guard and have your gun handy in such a situation. So gun ownership is neither here nor there in terms of protecting most women most of the time.

In short the whole guns for girls thing falls under the exposing yourself to extra risk (accidents, being shot with your own gun) in order to protect yourself from a remote risk (stranger rape).

And another thing: can people please wake up to the fact that you can’t actually protect yourself with a gun? You can exact retribution on someone who’s just shot at you, but you can’t actually stop them shooting you, or stop the bullets hitting home. The whole “gun for protection” thing is such a Wild West myth.

There’s a good parallel to anti-terrorism measures here. Let’s say that we took so many anti-terrorism measures to really reduce the number of deaths that might occur during a terrorist hijacking or suicide bombing on an airplane. As a consequence, all airfares went up, say, $100 or so. Well then in that case, more people would decide to drive. More drivers would result in more deaths—deaths that would far exceed any caused by any very rare terrrorist events.

All of virginia’s public universities have had a total of 1 spree shooting over the past 100 years, which resulted in the deaths of 33 people. Are you really telling me that armind the student body—tens of thousands of people who live in close proximity to each other—would result in fewer than 33 deaths over 100 years? I find that difficult to believe. My guess is that there are other methods that place the students less at risk from these rare events than giving them all guns and placing them at risk of comparatively common events.

You could tell me that a few unfortunate deaths on a regular basis might be a worthwhile tradeoff compared to a smaller total number of people dying in one horrific shooting spree, but even the one horrific shooting spree isn’t an assured event. Even Whitman managed to kill plenty of people, so you’re not even talking about preventing shooting sprees, just the hope that it might lessen the total number of deaths from a rare incident like that, while exposing everyone else to comparatively more common incidents.

It was quickly shown that women, because they were seen as easier to overpower, were the preferred targets for this, exposing them to additional risk.

And another thing: can people please wake up to the fact that you can’t actually protect yourself with a gun?

Wow. Thank god we found this out before women started joining the police force. For some reason (their innate passivity? lower physical strength? fear of loud noises?) they would just stand by and let some miscreant wrest their handguns away from them.

This whole “arm the cops” idea seems foolish now. If the cop takes his gun out of the holster, he becomes a target. And his gun is useless for protection, because miscreants (shoot cops on sight? enjoy the challenge of a good gunfight? shoot first and ask questions later?)

You’d think there would be a police officer being killed every day, instead of a rare tragic event that attracted colleagues from two thousand miles away to the funeral.

(Luke)Woodham drove his mother’s car to his high school. Wearing an orange jumpsuit and long trenchcoat,[1] he made no attempt to hide his rifle. When he entered the school, he fatally shot Lydia Kaye Dew and Christina Menefee, his former girlfriend. Pearl High School Band director, Jeff Cannon, was standing 5 feet from Dew when she was fatally shot. He went on to wound 7 others before Joel Myrick, the assistant principal, retrieved a .45 pistol from the glove compartment of his truck and subdued Woodham while he was trying to drive off campus. The outraged educator demanded “Why did you shoot my kids?”. Woodham replied “Life has wronged me, sir”

This incident happened in Australia.  Where was Luke going nex?  For the public good, Mr. Myrick’s handgun has been confiscated.

That’s not an apples for apples comparison, Hector B.

Police officers of both sexes are trained extensively in gun use - how, when, who etc. Non-combat military personnel (there were no female combat troops in the IDF until very recently) are given basic training, not much more. They’re a lot more like civilians than career cops are - and to add to the validity of the comparison with US, in Israel they’re literally teenagers, as conscription happens at 18.

In any case, police officers do have a higher mortality rate than other professions - engaging gun toting criminals is not a safe passtime. That’s why it’s better left to them and not well meaning but untrained college kids.

Sorry, that should read “to add to the validity of the comparison with US college students”.

First thing that comes to mind here: circular firing squad.  Sure, the would be massacre starter would be in the middle ... but where would all the other bullets go?

So, how many anguished students would reach for their piece because they didn’t get the grade that they needed/thought they deserved?

Massacres are rare and the “everybody’s packing” scenario could be defeated by a flak jacket.  It is far more likely that a habitually armed student would shoot another student or faculty member in a crime of passion borne of armed opportunity.

police officers do have a higher mortality rate than other professions

Actually, police officers have an occupational mortality rate in the midrange, about the same as a garbage truck driver. Fishermen are five times as likely to die on the job; loggers, four times as likely. Iron workers and farmers: twice as likely; then roofers, electric linemen, miners, and truck drivers 50% more likely.  Teachers, accountants, and librarians are least likely to die on the job.

But if we’re just talking homicide: A cab driver is four times as likely to be a homicide victim as a cop. (17.9 vs 4.4 per 100,000 workers in 1998.) Note who’s armed on the job and who’s not.

For interest, the occupational mortality rate for men is eleven times that of women.

So police officers still do die more often than other professions, is that what you’re saying? Yay, we agree.

The penalties for killing a cab driver are nothing like the penalties for killing a cop - mainly in terms of how the cops themselves will carry out the investigation into a killing of one of their own, but it’s seen as a more severe event by the wider culture as well. So that will keep cop killings artificially low, but not low enough to make is a “safe” profession like accountancy or something.

As does the fact that police officers are trained professionals and college kids (and eighteen year old female noncombatant military personnel) are, well, not.

I’m not sure what that Parthian shot about male and female occupational mortality rates is, other than a “what about the poor menz?” opening gambit, by the way.

Vermont, which requires neither permit nor training to carry concelaed, has the third lowest murder rate in the U.S.

What statistics are you looking at?  The Kaiser Family Foundation has Vermont eighth on their firearms death list.  Or are you looking solely at the murder by firearms rate and not at the overall death rate?

Incidentally, crime was up in Vermont for 2006 for the same time period covered by my statistics above.  Apparently crime was up in most rural areas during that time period while it’s remaining steady in urban areas.

Teachers, accountants, and librarians are least likely to die on the job.

[sotto voce] Not that we can tell with some people…

What statistics are you looking at?  The Kaiser Family Foundation has Vermont eighth on their firearms death list.

I think the high rate in someplace like Texas means that Texans can console themselves with the fact that while they’re more likely to die by a firearm than those in Massachusetts, in the even that someone decides to be a spree shooter, they might have a better chance of surviving.

Saying people need to carry concealed in schools is like maintaining a cabin with an underground bunker and a year’s worth of food in case of the apocalypse or sudden world war. Sure it might marginally improve your chances, but why waste you time? And if everyone around you was an edgy survivalist, it might make the rest of your non-apocalypse life quite unpleasant.

Teachers, accountants, and librarians are least likely to die on the job.

Interestingly, schools and libraries are the places lease likely to allow people to carry a concealed gun around in. I can’t speak to accountants’ offices.

I’m not sure what that Parthian shot about male and female occupational mortality rates is, other than a “what about the poor menz?” opening gambit, by the way.

I think the statistic reflects the fact that men tend to work at more physically demanding jobs which carry a greater risk of death than women do on our society.

It has to do with more dangerous occupations 1)paying better and 2)getting away with excluding women for a longer period of time because they are dangerous.

Oh for fuck’s sake. Concealed carry on campus might stop a couple of murders, at the cost of several dozen suicides.

Bitter Scribe, I am so w/ you on that.  On the subject of concealed carry…the proponents should spend a couple weeks hanging out at colleges.  At my university, the students can’t be trusted w/ beer, glass, food, drinks (alcoholic/non-), windows, doors, toilet paper, unsupervised use of bathrooms…and people want to give them guns?!  No thank you. 

The above really isn’t too far from the truth.  Students looove to throw food, drinks, beer bottles down the halls and stairs.  They love to throw stuff out windows.  Security doors are propped so friends, acquaintances, thieves, murderers and rapists have ready access to the dorms (and the kids bitterly complain cuz their ipod and laptop walked while they left their room unlocked and wide open to go take a shower), you don’t even wanna know about the bathroom stuff…these are not people I want to see w/ access to weapons.

I’m suddenly seeing myself transported back to one of my very first nights living in a college dorm, coming home wasted from a local college bar and walking into my room, my roommate handing me a huge joint, him turning on Jimi Hendrix at full blast at 1AM the night before the first day of class, and then deciding there was too much pot smoke in our room, so it would be a good idea to open the door and air the pot smoke out into the hallway for our RA to smell, consequences be damned.

And I’m imagining that crazy roommate packing heat.

And I am very scared.

All that stuff you mentioned - beer bottles thrown from seventh story windows, setting off fire alarms just to be a shithead, idiotic bar fights between warring fratboys because someone looked at someone’s girlfriend… yeah, drunk college kids are the last people on earth who should be wandering around campus with guns.

All that stuff you mentioned - beer bottles thrown from seventh story windows, setting off fire alarms just to be a shithead, idiotic bar fights between warring fratboys because someone looked at someone’s girlfriend… yeah, drunk college kids are the last people on earth who should be wandering around campus with guns.

All that is being proposed is that adults 21 and older who already have concealed carry permits and are already carrying firearms around in public every day—and have already had all the background checks, paid their fees, been fingerprinted, have no criminal record or DUIs and meet the other requirements necessary in order to get a concealed carry permit in Texas has—should be able to take their firearm with them on campus when they go to class.

Nobody is talking about just handing drunk freshman guns and saying “Hey, carry this in your pocket.” You guys are either being deliberately ridiculous, or you simply don’t understand what is being proposed.

Ms Kate, there are some jobs where physical strength is de riguer for the job, like working in the oil fields south of here in Kern County.  I have an acquaintance who is 6’ 2”, 200 lbs who works such a job,  I’m 5’ 9.25”, 180 lbs, and I couldn’t do what he has to do on a daily basis. 

There is some truth to what you say, but I believe a raise a valid point as well.

so it would be a good idea to open the door and air the pot smoke out into the hallway for our RA to smell, consequences be damned.

Heh, when I went to the Harvard of the Midwest, in the dorm I started out living in, someone put signs by the water fountains asking the residents not to empty out their bongs in the water fountains because that tended to clog them up.

Concealed carry on campus might stop a couple of murders, at the cost of several dozen suicides.

Concealed carry on campus might stop a couple of murders, at the cost of several dozen suicides.

Concealed carry on campus might stop a couple of murders, at the cost of several dozen suicides.

Concealed carry on campus might stop a couple of murders, at the cost of several dozen suicides.

Concealed carry on campus might stop a couple of murders, at the cost of several dozen suicides.

College age people are at greater risk of suicide than pretty much every other cause of death, certainly vastly moreso than an encounter with a spree killer. One of the things that keeps successful suicide attempts minimized among people in that age group who are in college? Lack of gun access on campuses.

I’m sure Magis or some other bright bulb will argue that hey, those people had the temerity to be suffering from feelings of isolation and hopelessness, so they deserved what they did to themselves. I’m sure the hundreds of mothers and fathers and countless other relatives and friends who will find themselves bereaved because of your policy preferences will find that immensely comforting.

Vermont, which requires neither permit nor training to carry concelaed, has the third lowest murder rate in the U.S.

What statistics are you looking at?  The Kaiser Family Foundation has Vermont eighth on their firearms death list.

fbi.gov crime statistics, because we are talking about crime.

The Kaiser Family Foundation uses cdc.gov statistics. The CDC separately tabulates homicide, suicide, accidental, legally justified, and unknown intent killings, with handguns as the instrument as well as long guns. The KFF lumped them all together. But I feel my chance of being a suicide victim will not increase if Texans are allowed to carry guns concealed on campus.

Which reminds me: We could cut gun deaths in half by eliminating suicide. The age group most likely to commit suicide in Vermont is the 85 and over, followed by the 75-84 year olds. We need to persuade them they have something to live for.

I’m not sure what that Parthian shot about male and female occupational mortality rates is

As a man, I thought it was interesting.

Dear Dan:

If I require words in my mouth I shall put them there myself.  Multipication is nor argumentation.  I hate to be the one to tell you this but people who are going to commit suicide don’t care much about gun rules.  Further, oh ye shinging intellect, just because there is a rule against guns on campus doesn’t mean they can’t go downtown and buy one and do it someplace else.

Further, oh ye shinging intellect, just because there is a rule against guns on campus doesn’t mean they can’t go downtown and buy one and do it someplace else.

Of course someone absolutely determined to commit suicide can always find the means to do so if they really want to.

That said, your assumption seems to be founded upon the notion that anyone who has suicidal ideation will always follow through on it.

As someone who HAS personally experienced tremendous feelings of suicidal ideation in my life, I can tell you that that the only thing that prevented me from acting wasn’t a sudden change of heart, but rather the inaccessability of a desirable means to follow through when I experienced the intense ideation.  In that moment, alone in my apartment, the only thing that prevented me from acting was the fact that I didn’t have a gun, I didn’t want to hang myself, and I didn’t have any pills that I knew would end my life.  I wanted a quick and relatively painless death, and that just wasn’t an option that night.  Had I had a gun or pills available at that precise moment, I fully believe that I would have acted on my ideation at the time.  This was 12 years ago and I was going through a rough time in college, and I was absolutely miserable.  I was also incredibly drunk and depressed.  I looked around for pills but couldn’t find anything other than Advil, and I knew that would only make me incredibly sick, not kill me.  I didn’t want to go driving around aimlessly looking for a gun, because I didn’t want to kill anyone else - I was way too drunk to drive, and I knew it.  And I wouldn’t have had the foggiest notion of where to even find a gun in the middle of that drunken winter night.  I also didn’t want to wind up in jail with a DUI.  I just wanted to die right then and there.  I wound up curling up in a ball, crying myself to sleep, and praying that I wouldn’t wake up.  Ultimately, I got help for my depression, but if I would have had a gun readily available that night, I am certain that I would have ended my life.

And today, I am immensely grateful that I didn’t have a gun available that night.

Dan:

“One of the things that keeps successful suicide attempts minimized among people in that age group who are in college? Lack of gun access on campuses.”

Really? Do you have a source for that or did you just completely invent that? I suspect the latter.

Like I said already, I don’t think you understand what’s being discussed. This bill would not suddenly grant people the right to carry concealed or grant access to weapons—it would only allow people who already have weapons and concealed carry permits to carry their weapons onto campus when they go to class.

It won’t allow guns in dorms, and in TX you have to be 21 to get a concealed carry permit. So who would be able to carry a gun on campus? Faculty and older students living off campus who have concealed carry permits—these people already have access to firearms. If they want to shoot themselves, they already can.

DTG in STL:

You claim that the ONLY thing that stopped you from killing yourself that night is that you didn’t have a gun. But you passed up all sorts of other methods. Quick? Jump off a building. So you didn’t want to drive to get a gun because you were drunk—you could have called a cab. Painless? You could have cut your wrists in a nice hot bath, or done the car exhaust thing. There are all sorts of things you could have done to end your life, but you didn’t—I can only assume that you didn’t actually want to die. You thought you did; felt like you did—but didn’t.

Because people who REALLY want to die—like for real—usually do. The suicide rate in Japan is far higher than ours, yet there essentially no guns in Japan whatsoever. Where there is a will, there is a way. I just don’t think you truly had the will.

But maybe I’m wrong. Maybe if you had a gun you would have peaced yourself out. But maybe if you weren’t drunk, you wouldn’t have gotten to that point in the first place. What role does alcohol play in suicides? Maybe since college-age people are so unstable, liable to off themselves at the drop of a hat, we should raise the drinking age to 30. Then nobody will be ever be able to drink in college, right? Less violence, less rape, less suicide. Because laws banning things totally work.

After all, banning legal concealed carry on campus is doing a great job so far of preventing suicidal, unbalanced people from bringing their guns onto campus and shooting their fellow students.

Why in debates about carrying guns is the word “carry” always welded to the word “concealed”?

(It’s sort of like how the word “trade” is always welded to the word “free” in the Post and Times, even when they’re talking about something else entirely.)

It’s like the people supporting more availability of guns know the majority would object if they actually had to *see* all those guns being carried around.  Am I wrong?

DTG in STL

I suffered some depression as well.  I contemplated suicide and I did hold back, some how, and I did have firearms available.  I think you would have found away and I think I would have used what I had if the situation was slightly worse.  Who knows.

Blaming a means of suicide for suicide is not logical.  As I said above, blaming guns takes us away from the real debate, the crappy and victim-blaming mental health system we have in this country.

Trystero, there are plenty of gun owners who advocate open carry. Supporting this bill is not supporting “more availability” of guns—it’s saying that people who already have guns available to them and are allowed to carry them don’t have to leave them in their cars when they go to class.

Why in debates about carrying guns is the word “carry” always welded to the word “concealed”?

Because concealed carry is not the same as open carry. Reading La Althouse’s blog, I learned that going about your daily business with a pistol strapped to your hip in Wisconsin is perfectly legal (but don’t try it in Milwaukee).

But seeing open carry tends to disturb passers-by. And this is the situation where the carrier is most likely to have his gun taken away, thus supplying the gun for an otherwise unarmed confrontation. Ten percent of police homicide victims are killed with their own gun.

Curious, I looked up causes of death for 20-24 year olds on the CDC website. (The college age group is broken across the 15-19 and the 20-24 yos.) Gun suicide is indeed number one, followed by traffic accidents and/or suicide by strangulation/suffocation/hanging. But in Vermont, suff/hang/strang suicide is almost as common as by gun.

Guav, when I researched gun violence at schools in the 1940s and 1950s (I posted the link above, but here it is again) I found a significant number of suicides.

Adolescents and young adults who kill themselves often do so on impulse. Having the means to act on an impulse makes acting on that impulse more likely.

It won’t allow guns in dorms, and in TX you have to be 21 to get a concealed carry permit.

But doesn’t this simply leave people vulnerable to being killed by a spree shooter running through a dorm rather than a classroom building?

Seriously, if your big concern is about making sure that people can defend themselves in the event of a shooting spree, then the Texas bill makes no sense. This strikes me, and most of us, as just some empty posturing by the gun nuts. And I say this as someone who is fine with private gun ownership.

“This bill would not suddenly grant people the right to carry concealed or grant access to weapons—it would only allow people who already have weapons and concealed carry permits to carry their weapons onto campus when they go to class.”

Well, that’s not strictly true. It would also give people who don’t already have weapons or concealed carry permits, but who want to carry weapons on campus, a mechanism for making that happen.

For young adults who spend most of their time on campus, a concealed carry permit is currently of limited use, and so of limited interest. If this bill becomes law, I expect we’ll see an uptick in concealed carry applications among college students.

But doesn’t this simply leave people vulnerable to being killed by a spree shooter running through a dorm rather than a classroom building?

Plus it has a disproportionate impact on Freshmen, Sophomores, and Juniors, who are much less likely to be over 21.

If your prof isn’t going around tooled, three-quarters of undergrads are going down anyways.

Angus Johnston: I personally have not been talking about the 40s & 50’s, so your first reference isn’t all that relevant to what I’m talking about.

Adolescents and young adults who kill themselves often do so on impulse. Having the means to act on an impulse makes acting on that impulse more likely.

Well I completely agree in a general sense. But there is no shortage of ways to immediately kill oneself without guns. When guns are available, those serious about suicide tend to use them more often than other means. In the absence of firearms, those serious about suicide substitute other means. And yes, there will be some much smaller number of people who might not have killed themselves if they didn’t have immediate access to razor blades or a gun or rope, but I don’t think that we should design our laws around that.

Well, that’s not strictly true. It would also give people who don’t already have weapons or concealed carry permits, but who want to carry weapons on campus, a mechanism for making that happen.

Motivation perhaps, not mechanism.

If this bill becomes law, I expect we’ll see an uptick in concealed carry applications among college students.

Slightly, maybe. But you have to remember, even though concealed carry is legal in most states, most people do not have an interest in owning or carrying a firearm in the first place.

Tyro:

But doesn’t this simply leave people vulnerable to being killed by a spree shooter running through a dorm rather than a classroom building?

Sure. But students in a dorm aren’t nearly as vulnerable to a mass shooter as students in a classroom. In a dorm, everyone is spread out in their own little lockable rooms, and there’s not all that many people in a room. Someone who wants to kill as many people as possible is going to go to a classroom, not a dorm—in a classroom you have everyone together in one place, with limited escape options.

Aren’t we talking about two separate things?  Self-defence carry in general and its impact on crime rates, and self-defence carry to deal with spree killers.  It seems to me that the odds of running into a spree killer are so remarkably small that to plan on that basis is a bit odd.

In my own experience and that of gun-owner acquaintances, the worry is that carry rules can conflate urban and rural.  I’ve never wanted to be armed as I go about my day-to-day business.  I have felt quite uncomfortable without a carry piece when I have been in the deep dark woods, and been very grateful once that the cabin I was in had a ready shotgun when it looked like it might be necessary.

I think the statistic reflects the fact that men tend to work at more physically demanding jobs which carry a greater risk of death than women do on our society.

It has to do with more dangerous occupations 1)paying better and 2)getting away with excluding women for a longer period of time because they are dangerous.

Ms. Kate is quite right.  And I’d add 2) a) There has traditionally been a good deal of tolerance for the men working those jobs making the environment highly toxic for women who were capable of meeting the physical demands and wanted to work them.  Also that women, despite the conventional wisdom that they are physically weaker than men, are not objectively weak and are often capable of lifting thirty kilos or whatever the job entails.  (On a somewhat different topic, the entirely valid reasons for not physically resisting abusers and/or rapists have to do with a distinct lack of social power, training, and practice.  These reasons apply similarly to women using firearms to defend themselves from abusers and/or rapists.)

kaninchen at 1343h is correct.  It was interesting to note, for example, that in many police and fire departments the formalization and increased rigour of the physical fitness requirements for many N.Am fire departments date to the first large-scale female efforts to gain entry.  It is also interesting to note that those departments said in the same breath that “these are the bottom line requirements of the job, one can’t be a firefighter without them” at the same time as fighting application of those standards to those firemen already on the job.  For the longest time it led to some pretty comical staffing as pot-bellied older firefighting vets shared their stations with the uber-hyper-fit young men who were the only ones who could get past the ludicrously high fitness standards put up to keep doze girlz out.

And something else worthy of note, given the self-defence angle we are talking about: It’s probably no accident that the higher and higher (almost military) physical fitness requirements placed on entrants and the increasing intra-cultural expectation for American cops to be bulked-up to weightlifter levels corresponds fairly well in time to the spike in police brutality and excessive aggressiveness.  It’s correlation that may be partial causation.

Four major incidents of mentally unbalanced people taking out dozens of people on college campuses over the past 43 years is proof of a pandemic “campus shooting spree” problem?

Well, considering that there have been tens of millions of people who have attended college in that timespan, and all but 60 of them or so have gone through college without dying at the hands of a deranged, unbalanced individual, I’d say the odds are pretty good that you’ll not die in college at the hands of a mentally unstable gunman.

Your chances of being killed by al Qaeda or a lightning strike are probably higher than your chances of being killed in a campus shooting spree.

Your odds of dying at the hands of another VT-type killer are probably less than one in ten million.

You’re more likely to win Powerball than you are to face your demise by being the victim of a random campus shooting spree.

So yeah, that’s total justification to arm all college students.

After all, banning legal concealed carry on campus is doing a great job so far of preventing suicidal, unbalanced people from bringing their guns onto campus and shooting their fellow students.

Four major incidents of mentally unbalanced people taking out dozens of people on college campuses over the past 43 years is proof of a pandemic “campus shooting spree” problem?

Well, considering that there have been tens of millions of people who have attended college in that timespan, and all but 60 of them or so have gone through college without dying at the hands of a deranged, unbalanced individual, I’d say the odds are pretty good that you’ll not die in college at the hands of a mentally unstable gunman.

Your chances of being killed by al Qaeda or a lightning strike are probably higher than your chances of being killed in a campus shooting spree.

Your odds of dying at the hands of another VT-type killer are probably less than one in ten million.

You’re more likely to win Powerball than you are to face your demise by being the victim of a random campus shooting spree.

So yeah, that’s total justification to arm all college students.

DTG:

In 2007, the Utah Supreme Court overturned the University of Utah’s ban on CCP firearms on campus.  Colorado State University is also now allowing firearms on campus.  There have been no gun incidents, drunken frat or otherwise.  There has been no reported problems, none.  There has not been an increase in suicide.

Sure. But students in a dorm aren’t nearly as vulnerable to a mass shooter as students in a classroom.

Actually, students in a dorm and a classroom are equally at risk of a mass shooter—that risk is roughly zero. The odds are so astronomically small that the increased risk from being in a classroom vs. a dorm are roughly identical. Plus, keep in mind that the VT shooter started his spree in a dorm.

The fact that we’re looking at arming students to protect against shooting sprees makes about as much sense as giving each university its own meteor-destroying laser to protect against impacts.

In 2007, the Utah Supreme Court overturned the University of Utah’s ban on CCP firearms on campus.  Colorado State University is also now allowing firearms on campus.

How many shooting sprees did they have to contend with in the 100 years before they allowed general possession of firearms on campus? What was the casualty rate that would have been prevented “if only someone had a gun to protect themselves! OMG!”

In 2007, the Utah Supreme Court overturned the University of Utah’s ban on CCP firearms on campus.  Colorado State University is also now allowing firearms on campus.  There have been no gun incidents, drunken frat or otherwise.  There has been no reported problems, none.  There has not been an increase in suicide.

Okay, that’s neat, but my previous post was written in response to this silly nonsense…

After all, banning legal concealed carry on campus is doing a great job so far of preventing suicidal, unbalanced people from bringing their guns onto campus and shooting their fellow students.

Guav seemed to be making the assertion that gun bans on campuses have failed to prevent campus shooting sprees.  My contention is that given that in the past 50 years there have only been four major campus shooting incidents, that have resulted in roughly 60 student deaths on four campuses, in a nation of several THOUSAND campuses, and 100 Million+ students who have attended college over the past 50 years, that his assertion was absurd.

There is no pandemic of campus shooting sprees anymore than there is a pandemic of avian flu throughout the U.S.

Lifting bans of guns on campuses for the purpose of reducing campus shooting sprees isn’t likely to reduce the number of campus shooting sprees, because there hasn’t been a statistically significant number of campus shooting sprees in the U.S. in the last 50 years.

The fear of dying from an Al Qaeda highjacked airliner flying into your dorm is more rational than the fear of being killed by a lunatic campus gunman, because your odds of being killed by a campus gunman are LESS THAN ONE IN TEN MILLION.  And 50 times as many people have died at the hands of Al Qaeda highjacked airliners flying into buildings in U.S. history than have students who have been killed by crazed campus gunmen on random shooting sprees.

And the fact that there haven’t been any incidents in the past 2 years that two relatively small states (in terms of the total number of college campuses they have compared to the other 48 states) have allowed guns on their campuses proves nothing, because that is an infinitessimally small sample relative to the 50 years we’ve had where guns were banned on campuses throughout the nation and only 60 students (out of more than 100,000,000) died because of crazed gunmen.

Yeah, you’re right—your chances of dying ay the hands of a shooter on campus are infinitesimally miniscule—whether the shooter is one of these rampage types or a concealed carry permit holder.

Yeah, you’re right—your chances of dying ay the hands of a shooter on campus are infinitesimally miniscule—whether the shooter is one of these rampage types or a concealed carry permit holder.

We don’t really know what the chances are of dying at the hands of a CCW holder on a campus are, because we don’t have very much data to examine - two years in two smaller states doesn’t provide much insight.  We have 100 years of data throughout the country to see what the odds of dying at the hands of a mentally unstable gunman are.

And besides, you’ve now changed your justification for allowing CCW on campuses from “we need a way to safeguard ourselves against deranged shooters”, which I shot down by demonstrating that there isn’t a significant risk of being killed by a deranged shooter, to “there haven’t been any incidents in two years in two states that have allowed CCW on their campuses.”

My nephew accidentally drank a few ounces of bleach when he was six years old, and he didn’t die.  He got very ill, but it didn’t kill him.  Should we now say it’s perfectly safe for six year olds to drink a few ounces of bleach because the one time my young nephew did it, he didn’t die?

We don’t really know what the chances are of dying at the hands of a CCW holder on a campus are, because we don’t have very much data to examine - two years in two smaller states doesn’t provide much insight.

Not on campus, no—but why do you need data for concealed carry on campus? Does an adult who carries a concealed weapon every day with no problem suddenly morph into a different person when they walk onto a campus? We have several decades worth of data throughout the country to see what the odds of dying at the hands of a concealed carry permit holder are.

And besides, you’ve now changed your justification for allowing CCW on campuses from “we need a way to safeguard ourselves against deranged shooters”, which I shot down by demonstrating that there isn’t a significant risk of being killed by a deranged shooter, to “there haven’t been any incidents in two years in two states that have allowed CCW on their campuses.”

I have? Neither of those quotes are mine, so I don’t know who you think you’ve shot down, but it sure as hell ain’t me. I only initially weighed in on this discussion because of all the ridiculous pants-wetting I saw from people who were apparently under the impression that the NRA was going to show up on TX campuses and pass out free loaded weapons to every freshman and drunk frat boy they saw. All I was pointing out is that this bill does not “arm” anyone, student or otherwise—it simply allows concealed carry permit holders—people who already have access to firearms and carry them—to bring their weapons onto campus.

Keep in mind that people can already illegally carry guns on campuses—there is no way to prevent that. There are already people illegally carrying concealed firearms on probably every TX campus. Those are the people you should be worried about, not the people who go out of their way to comply with the law.

So much of this thread has been, as it matures, about what are the chances you’ll need to ‘carry.’  They’re never good, they never have been.  Is it a rational argument, for any thing any where, that the odds of preparation must be directly correlated to the threat?  You can get into the ‘ant’ and ‘grasshopper’ argument about the efficacy of preparation.

The actual question was, whether allowing already licensed CCW people to carry on campus will cause more harm than good if those guns come on campus.  Will permiting allowed CCW people to posses on campus lead to fratricidal frat shootouts?  Will there be more suicides?

I’ve seen nothing that leads me to believe that the cost/benefit ratio is negative.

Magis, if you believe that people should be able to carry guns on campus on principle, then I respect that POV. I think it’s wrong, but it’s a belief of principle that doesn’t have to be justified from a utilitarian perspective. However, people are trying to justify bringing concealed guns on to campus because they believe it will improve safety. Improve safety from what? Improve safety from very, very rare events.

On the other hand, you might actually believe that the “concealed guns to protect campus!” claim is a good one, in which case we have very different concepts of what “risk” is. I think that my evaluation of the comparative risks is much more accurate. I’m also looking at the opportunity costs. I’m not going to protect myself against a 1-in-ten-million (for example) event if doing so puts me at risk of a (for example) 1-in-100,000 event. Allowing people to carry guns on campus entails a certain amount of risk. There is no way I can see how accepting the risk of allowing guns on campus will outweigh the risk posed to me by a spree shooter. A campus surrounded by gun owners has its own set of risks. You can accept them or not. But don’t go around claiming that the risk of not having guns on campus is higher because of the possibility of a spree shooter being on the loose.

For me personally, I just find the ban on campus carry silly.

Let’s say I live in TX and have a concealed carry permit. That means I am at least 21 years old, have a clean criminal history, am not under a protective order, not chemically dependent, not delinquent in paying fines, fees, child support, student loans, have completed training and undergone a complete federal background check. I safely and legally carry my firearm in public, sporting events, hospitals, amusement parks and churches ...

... yet for some reason, you guys think that as soon as I set foot on a college campus, I turn into a crazed homicidal murderer or a depressed suicidal time bomb. It’s totally irrational.

I don’t think that allowing guns on campus is going to have any significant positive impact on school shootings, but nor do I think it’s going to have any significant negative impact on homicide or suicide either.

There’s not much of a chance of being caught up in a school shooting/rampage situation. But there is a much greater chance of being a victim of street crime: rape, mugging or murder—the sorts of things that people who carry firearms generally are trying to defend themselves against. If you can carry everywhere else except for on campus, then whenever you have class, you have to leave your firearm at home—thus totally disarming you from the time you leave your house until when you return. Sort of defeats the purpose of carrying a firearm for protection.

Tyro,

You are approaching this like an insurance actuary.  Let’s say I have the right to ‘carry’ on campus.  Just because I have the right doesn’t mean I actually will.  However, if the level of violence on campus rises I might.  Spree shootings aren’t the only crime on campus.

I’ll a real world stories regarding my campus.  When I went back to my campus for my Masters I rented an apartment just two blocks from campus.  Just three houses up was a little mom and pop Chinese store.  They sold lots of Chinese stuff but also other things.  On my nightly walk I’d stop in for some pop or whatever.  It was a family run thing.  One of those imigrant family things where they all worked their asses off.  That included grandma and grandpa.  One afternoon, in broad daylight, grandma (whom we all adored) was working.  A robber came in and demanded money.  She gave him everything in the cash drawer (not much).  He went out.  He decided not to leave a witness (over $68) and went back in and shot that sweet little old lady to death.  From then on, I ‘carried’ on my nightly walks.  Irrational?

The point some of y’all don’t get is that I should have the right to carry protection if I’m a citizen of good standing whether the ‘actuarial’ threat quotient is great or not.  Unless you can show that there is a high probability of danger of me doing harm, that should be my right.

Sorry, it’s late.

I’ll relate a real world story….

That is NOT our usual seeker6079, it’s some asshole using 6097.

Listen douche, if you don’t have the fucking backbone to actually use a name, if you need to hide behind minor alterations then you are a gutless piece of shrivelled dick.  Pick a name and say what you want.  It’s the internet, for christ’s sake, you can pick any name and be anonymous.  Why the total micro-penis use of other people’s handles?

The imposter’s fake sign in has been deleted, and I hope he realizes that every time he creates a new one and I delete it, every thing he’s ever written under that name is deleted.

BRAVO to our smiling webmistress Amanda for getting rid of the douchetastic coward who was posting under variants of other names!

Also, that there’s something intensely sad about someone who just doesn’t understand that he’s really not wanted.  Perhaps no one wants him, and so he doesn’t know what it’s like to actually have people that enjoy his presence and aren’t eager to get rid of him.  Wouldn’t surprise me.  But seriously, dude, get therapy. Trolling is just making your problem of being completely unlikeable worse.

Thanks, Amanda.  I thought that was pretty bizarre.

Imposter Troll trolled Thanks Amenda, you really showed HER!!

SFW, not antifeminist link:

http://blog.oflaherty.dk/wp-content/Whatmessageareyousending_87FE/attention_whore.jpg

Magis, the incident you cited way above about the gun toting assistant principal is not from Australia but from Mississipi (or however you spell that). Australian assistant principals are hugely unlikely to take their weapons to school and if they did they certainly wouldn’t keep them in their ‘truck’ but in their ute.

JC:

It was cited on an Australian site; my error.

Magis, as the incident did not occur on campus, I really fail to see your point.

I am treating it like an insurance actuary—the risks to the student body of having people armed on campus exceed the risks that there will ever be a shooting spree. People agitating to allow concealed carry on campus are using the shooting spree as an excuse because they reall, really, dislike the idea of schools telling them that they can’t bring their guns onto campus. I’m pointing out how irrational the risk assessment is (in fact, it increases risk) because people are using the issue of the hardly-ever-occurring spree shootings as an excuse.

If the gun advocates would just be up front and say “carry concealed means carry concealed, anywhere, and we’re not going to let a bunch of pointy-haired campus professors and administrators tell them they can’t!” then at least we’d be able to have an honest conversation. Instead, they bring up spree shootings, for which a rational, risk-based argument against carrying on campus can be made, and then you complain that I’m approaching this like an “insurance actuary.” Well of course I am—because that’s why people were saying we should change the rules that currently exist on campuses. If you want to say, “people feel unsafe and firearms will give people the false sense of security they crave from [i hate this word] ‘black swan events’, even if the opportunity costs aren’t worthwhile and there are other ways of mitigating the risk,” then say that and I’ll reevaluate my arguments.

Tyro:

Rights are not granted on the basis of chance occurance or probability of utility.  There is a presumption of freedom absent some overriding State need to curtail it.

However, let us talk about chance.  If we suppose that, as usual, 1-3% of the people people who have the right actually avail themselves of it.  3/4 of the students would not be elibible but the profs would.  If we guess that there were two hundred people in the building, we can guess that one or two people would have been armed.  Perhaps, depending on what room Cho stuck his head in, 30 people might have been saved.

But, you say, the chances of a spree shooting are one in 10,000 (or some such).  Doing a cost benefit analysis, granting the right will probably cause more harm than good.  There will be increased suicides, etc.  It is now incumbant on you to show that from real world stats.  Remember, we’re talking about people who already own guns any way.  This was an argument about where you can carry what you already own and what you already have a right to carry concealed in other places.

Then there is the “law of unitended consequences.”  Let’s suppose a young woman is carrying a gun because she fears spree shootings.  But, instead, is able to foil a would be rapist.  How do you work the possibility of lower personal assaults on campus into the equasion.

Do we prepare to respond to the “100 year” flood only in the 99th year? 

I’m not saying your arguments are irrational, just that that is not how we allocate rights.  I have a CCP and do not go about armed.  I don’t precisely because of the low threat level in my area.  I got it so I can keep an arm fully loaded in my auto.  I travel a lot of lonely roads where any help is unavailable (hard for some urban people to believe, but there it is).  Nonetheless, while I choose not to carry I have the right should I believe the threat level is high enough.

A couple of “for instances:” 

Let’s suppose the right to carry exists on a certain campus.  Let’s suppose there have been several rapes in the vicinity of the dorms.  Let’s say woman X has a CCP.  She’s never carried because she feels pretty safe on campus.  She just wanted the permit “in case.”  But now this happens.  She starts going about armed.  Now there are 10,000 other women on campus and the chance that the rapist will choose her are small.  Is she acting irrationally?  I suppose, in a sense, but not really.  Then, the rapist is aprehended and there are no more instances.  After a year or so of peace, she stops carrying.  Is she being irrational?  It happended before.

Suppose there is no right to carry but there are several shooting sprees on nearby campuses.  Then the Governor, under emergency powers, grants the right on the rest of the campuses in the system.  Sure enough, another copy cat incident takes place and the would-be shooter is downed before he has a chance to do much damage. 

Now the parents of a dead student on one of the other campuses, one who had a CCP but couldn’t use it ask the Governor, “why’d it take you so long?  Why did my child have to die before you did this?”  Irational?  Maybe, but legitimate.

I’m not proposing these questions because I think the situations necessarily do or will exist but rather in the spirit of a philosophical argument.  Speaking of which, Tyro, thank you for your utter civility during these discussions.

Or let’s suppose a young woman is carrying a gun because she fears her psychotic ex-boyfriend who has threatened to kill her numerous times and an order of protection hasn’t stopped him from stalking her. On days when she has class she has spend the day unarmed because she she’s not allowed to bring her gun onto campus and her boyfriend kills her on one of those days. Something like that would never even make it into the cost/benefit analysis we’re discussing, would it?

a young woman is carrying a gun because she fears her psychotic ex-boyfriend who has threatened to kill her numerous times and an order of protection hasn’t stopped him from stalking her.

I have a very hard time picturing the sort of person who fears death at any moment calmly going about her life, trusting to her ability to shoot her ex dead, first.

If I couldn’t get such an ex locked up, I would get the hell out of Dodge.

I have a very hard time picturing the sort of person who fears death at any moment calmly going about her life, trusting to her ability to shoot her ex dead, first.
If I couldn’t get such an ex locked up, I would get the hell out of Dodge.

Except that many women find themselves in exactly that position.  What choice do you have but to go on with life?  Many women can’t, for one reason or another, “get out of Dodge.”  Nor should they have to leave home and friends and family and support groups because of a psycho.  Besides, leaving town is no guarantee that you won’t be followed.  Or, maybe they’ve already run once and they’re tired of running. 

I guess my point above was that there are more things that happen on campus than just spree shootings.  Women are quite likely to find themselves on campus because they are trying to start a new life and take care of themselves. 

A large portion of self-denfense firearms are sold to women these days.

I have a very hard time picturing the sort of person who fears death at any moment calmly going about her life, trusting to her ability to shoot her ex dead, first.
If I couldn’t get such an ex locked up, I would get the hell out of Dodge.

Truly spoken like a man.