School Gun Spirit

How long is the waiting list to get into Handgun Maintenance 101?

Over 8,000 students nationwide are part of Students for Concealed Carry on Campus, the rolls-of-the-tongue organization who argues that students and faculty already licensed to carry concealed weapons should be allowed to pack heat along with their textbooks. Why? Because they can already carry them in other places, so why not campus? Wait, are you suggesting that certain rights and permissions don't apply everywhere?

Oh, totally. But that doesn't sit well with everyone.

"It's the basic right of self defense," said Mike Guzman, a 23-year-old former Marine attending Texas State University-San Marcos. "Here on campus, we don't have that right, that right of self defense."

Not quite, GI Jerk. Your Second Amendment right to bear arms doesn't extend to campus, and self defense is far too ambiguous a realm to posit that guns on campus are implicit. Plus there are plenty of other ways to defend yourself without a gun...just ask Steven Seagal and Chuck Norris. An armed society may be a protected society, but that doesn't mean the best way to prevent campus bloodshed is more guns.

Aside from Illinois and Wisconsin, every state allows residents some form of concealed handgun carrying rights, and 36 of them issues permits to most everyone who meets licensing criteria. The precise standards vary from state to state, but most require an applicant to be at least 21 and to complete formal instruction on use of force. Many states forbid license-holders from carrying weapons on school campuses, while in states where the decision is left to the universities, schools almost always prohibit it. Utah is the only state that expressly allows students to carry concealed weapons on campus, which fits nicely with their other abnormal practices like liquorproof Sundays and Mormon theocracy.

What that leatherneck and his ilk don't understand is how different campuses are from other public places where concealed weapons are allowed. Thousands of young adults are living in close quarters, facing heavy academic and social pressure — including experimenting with drugs and alcohol — in their first years away from home. Yeah, that's the right place for guns.

W. Gerald Massengill (please, no douche jokes), the chairman of the independent panel that investigated the Virginia Tech shootings, said those concerns outweigh the argument that gun-carrying students could have reduced the number of fatalities inflicted by someone like Tech gunman Seung-Hui Cho.

"I'm a strong supporter of the Second Amendment," said Massengill, also a former head of the Virginia state police. "But our society has changed, and there are some environments where common sense tells us that it's just not a good idea to have guns available."

Students at more than 110 colleges and universities went to class wearing empty holsters on Monday. How charmingly unnerving. Yes, now I think I feel much better about letting you have weaponry. If someone decided to open fire on the quad, imagine the chaos armed students would add. While gun rights advocates bemoan regulations because they say they only deter law-abiding students and not mentally ill shooters, that's just not the proper reasoning that justifies relaxing or removing the laws. The whole point of laws is to relegate people to follow them -- of course they're no good to law abiding citizens if others don't stay within them. Laws against murder and rape are not there for those who don't act as such, just like arms bearing citizens...