Editor’s note–This is a response to the September 15 article, “More guns is never the answer.”
Banning guns on public property is a terrible idea. Well intentioned, but ineffective and even counter-productive. Guns are important for the protection of citizens, especially in places where the vulnerable congregate, particularly schools.
Let’s start with the gun ban in Washington D.C. The ban, which had lasted since the mid-1970s, proved worthless. At times when homicide rates dropped in the city during the ban in the mid-1980s, and again in the 1990s, “the shift reflected national trends,” according to a 2007 article in The Washington Post.
Moreover, the article states: “Guns were used in 63 percent of the city’s 188 slayings in 1976. Last year [2006] out of 169 homicides, 81 percent were shootings.”
This clearly shows that handguns are now sold with a magic potion; how else could a gun fly under the all-seeing radar of the (ominous music please) GUN BAN?
Or maybe murderers have pants with pockets. Guns are here, and people, most of the time desperate people looking to commit illegal acts, will use them. But this is not the end of the story. Shootings, and survival, happen with unlikely circumstances. For example, the murder of one, and wounding of four churchgoers at New Life Church in Colorado Springs proved that campus security should be armed. During that shooting, it wasn’t that the gunman only had five bullets and ran out.
Rather, a volunteer security guard shot him.
Even reports that suggest he committed suicide, and hence concluded that the security guard and her gun deserve no credit must contend with this question: Why would the murderer shoot himself unless he knew his rampage was over?
You may contend that places with traditionally less restrictive gun laws do not necessarily have lower violence rates than D.C. You’d be right, but the two things are unrelated. Individuals murdered likely cannot defend themselves in a timely manner, even if they possess a weapon.
Instead, the issue centers on crowds: churches, schools, and yes, universities. First, if a shooter preys on a crowd, and just one good guy can fire back, lives are saved. And second, if the shooter suspects that someone in a given crowd will respond in kind, but doesn’t know whom, the shooter will, most likely, stay home.
There seems to be a given fear regarding students or faculty carrying concealed weapons. I’ll admit that it can be uncomfortable knowing you are around guns. After all, you are not the one in control of the gun, and maybe fear the armed person might slip at any second and shoot someone. To be sure, this has happened.In fact, the National Safety Council data for 2001 shows that 600 gun accidents caused deaths.
But even if we absurdly assume that every accident involved someone carrying a concealed weapon (ignoring sport or police accidents), the number still pales in comparison to more than 10,000 homicides by gun for the same year.
Portland State’s gun policy, an article of PSU’s Conduct Code, currently does not consider “absence of criminal penalties [for carrying concealed] … express authorization.”
So why not change the current policy to at least consider trained Campus Safety Officers as expressly authorized? Based on an editorial in the Willamette Week, per student, Portland State actually has a pretty good ratio of officers to students (better than Portland police to residents, in fact). Shouldn’t we take advantage of that by training and arming our good officers?
On-campus officers could respond much more quickly than the time it took police to arrive at Virginia Tech. It is true that a less restrictive state law allowed VT’s shooter easy access to guns, a law that has since given way to stricter federal control. But it is also true that VT did not allow good students and faculty to defend themselves, with their “safe-zone” policy.
Hardly anyone thinks gun control is a bad idea. Criminals cannot be allowed to buy weapons. But keeping guns out of the hands of even our own Campus Safety officers and teachers surely provides no defense against the potential criminals who will abuse the gun policy–and there is no sign that they are going away.
Guns are admittedly unnerving. But let’s be adults and deal with their existence, and not shy away from defending ourselves because of an inherent fear of them. Bowing to this fear betrays only the fear of our own power and responsibility to protect each other and ourselves.