University students throughout Oregon, as a result of Senate Bill 1550, may find themselves stowing their guns under mattresses once more. The proposed bill would eliminate “affirmative defense exempting concealed handgun licensees from crime applicable to possession of firearm or other instrumental used as dangerous weapon, while on school grounds.”
University students throughout Oregon, as a result of Senate Bill 1550, may find themselves stowing their guns under mattresses once more. The proposed bill would eliminate “affirmative defense exempting concealed handgun licensees from crime applicable to possession of firearm or other instrumental used as dangerous weapon, while on school grounds.”
Simply put, carriers of a concealed handgun license caught on a college campus with a firearm would once again be penalized with a felony. This legislation is a good first step in ensuring the continuing safety of college students in Oregon.
This bill comes on the heels of the 2011 decision that allowed concealed weapons on campuses, provided the handler had a license. The public hearing held on Feb. 8 has sparked grunts and grumblings from groups such as Oregon’s Firearm Federation. Such advocates feel their community is being targeted by Senator Ginny Burdick, who proposed SB 1550.
Burdick has rallied for more sensible gun laws with great gusto―more so than many other politicians around the country. Concern around constitutional rights and student safety have been brought in many of these communities’ arguments against these efforts. Both of these concepts were dramatically brought to the attention of the United States just a few years ago.
The 2007 Virginia Tech shooting rampage was one of the most fatal in U.S. history. Starting at 7:15 a.m. with two shots fired inside a dormitory, this rampage did not cease until hours later when another 31 students were shot and killed. A lapse of two and a half hours (7:15 to 9:45 a.m.) took place between the dormitory shooting and massacre at Norris Hall.
A sense of urgency seemed absent in the email bulletin sent to students during the latter. Retrospectively, students complained about the lack of an informative, timely notification until the shooting had been underway for nearly two hours.
Emotions ran high throughout the country in the days that followed. Even as someone extremely uninvolved in the situation, I found campus security’s lack of immediate evacuation infuriating. When the Norris Hall massacre began, Virginia Tech’s Chief Flinchum and others were in a meeting, discussing the initial shooting.
This dark incident has been dug up from the archives to demonstrate the most dramatic scenario where unnecessary deaths on a school campus could have been averted by an armed populous. At a time when campus officials were, for good reason, handling a situation with delicacy, the general public could have been law enforcement allies, acting immediately.
Immediately, but irrationally. Without SB 1550 in place, the stage could be set for a comparable scene: something resembling Grand Theft Auto more than a competent, responsible director of Campus Public Safety doing their job.
Although attaining a concealed handgun license is a somewhat thorough process, there is no sort of training that would allow armed individuals to practice the sort of rationality that must prevail in this scenario.
Though the gun control issue on campus is one complex enough, tackling issues like mental health counseling simultaneously would be more effective, as this is an underlying issue.
Since a senate bill can not and will not stop every student in the country from bringing weapons onto school grounds, we ought to provide more outreach to the few and far between as opposed to arming the rest of them. This bill, if it was in addition to outreach programs, would be the ridding of one gauze strip in this mummy of an issue: the mental well-being of students.
Our campus lands on the grid-system of southwest Portland; this in turn makes University Housing entirely parallel and perpendicular. A layout, the Housing Handbook comically calls, “a unique urban setting.”
A description of the campus setting as “dense” seems appropriate―perhaps even an understatement. Portland State’s 49-acre campus cowers in comparison to University of Oregon’s 295 acres. Fifty of our campuses would not fill Virginia Tech’s 2,600 acres. And although firearms are not technically allowed within University Housing buildings, it would not matter if this congestion were to collide with chaos.
Many Oregon universities have created restrictions as to where guns are and are not permitted. This creates an issue most applicable with Portland State and its seamless urban integration.
With a lack of distinct campus parameters―something students value as inherently unique―ideas about where “packing heat” is okay and not okay could become convoluted. As our dense campus only becomes denser one need not know how far a bullet can travel to realize the implications of open fire in the area.
Here in Oregon, 50 percent of families own one or more guns, and the state’s generally pro-gun stance is a heritage that no number of transplants can alter. But it is not the intention of SB 1550 to rip pistols from the hands of such activists―it is merely the call to keep weaponry where it belongs―in the homes and hands of CHL holders.
In early 2011, pre-SB 1550, an article on the issue shared that some universities “already prohibit firearms in sports arenas as a condition of purchasing a ticket to a sporting event.”
If SB 1550 is not passed in the coming session, these sorts of prohibitions will continue to undermine our ability to be virtuous human beings.
Academia needs to talk the talk as a place where the concept of “Chekhov’s Gun” can be earnestly evaluated—without worry of being caught in the cross hairs of one.
