Campus Concealed Carry

I fail to see how more guns on campus is a good thing. The only argument for is this:

If someone comes on campus to go on a rampage, the legally carrying students can stop him.

But if they are doing a full legal concealed carry, with guns in holsters and all, attempting to draw said weapons will just make them more casualties. And if they DO draw said weapons, an all-out firefight could potentially kill more people than one rampaging shooter VS the campus police (every campus i have attended or seen in my state has armed guards or police) who are trained to understand that bullets WILL NOT STOP the moment they touch something.

I would rather the policy do there job than open the campus up for the following:

• Accidents from "badass: types with guns stuck in the front of there pants
• More accidents from drunk people playing with guns
• Crimes of passion
• Accidental shootings if a police or carrier mistakes another carrier for a rampage about to happen.

While the breath's in his mouth, he must bear without fail, / In the Name of the Empress, the Overland Mail.

When this happens, they are breaking the law anyway, as this means they are not using a holster.

My thing is, why are colleges some sort of exception? Those arguments are all decent arguments against conceal carry, but why are colleges different from anywhere else? There is fuck all special about a college compared to, say, downtown. There are cops with guns there too. Rampages happen there too sometimes. And crimes of passion happen out in the world as well.

I don't want to focus on those arguments against conceal carry, my issue is why there's any sort of separation between conceal carry in a college versus out in the world. It's not the same as the idea that at a primary school, there are minors about.

I've got to echo Barkey here. What's so magical about a college campus that my ability to carry a gun drops to nothing? I can carry a concealed weapon all around that campus but put one foot over the property line...

Now, to your points about the risks of it, all those exist in the "real world" yet we don't see any major problems with it. No crimes of passion and no cops shooting armed citizens accidentally. We have seen negligent discharges that resulted in death or injury but these are all preventable by obeying the basic rules of firearms handling - and we don't seem to ever use car accident rates to ban or restrict [i]those[/i] - and the law prohibits concealed carry around places where alcohol is going to be in abundance. Admittedly that doesn't stop accidents, but we don't see very many issues with drunks and guns in other situations and colleges are hardly special in that regard.

Lastly, I want to point out that crimes on colleges echo crimes everywhere else. A local college had 3 rapes in the last year, and one attempted, to say nothing of assaults and robberies. The question in my mind is; how would that be different if concealed carry were allowed on campus?

Or we could work on being nice for other reasons other than fear.

Laws are made to be broken. You're next, thermodynamics.

Lots more effort, and possibly unachievable.

What I like about conceal carry is it's sort of an "Opt-In" kind of defense. Don't want to do it? Don't do it. You won't get gunned down by someone conceal carrying if you aren't trying to rob them or harass them.

I, for one, wish I had the opportunity to opt in. Then again I might be going to FLETC later this year, which means I can opt in whenever and wherever the fuck I want.

I think it's less about being nice and more about thinking twice before you commit to robbing someone.

For someone who's not planning to break the law, what exactly is the benefit of concealed carry? I mean, if the goals to prevent crime through private gun ownership, wouldn't advertising that you have a gun be preferable?

^

For you, yes. One of the lines of thought is that with conceal carry, someone looking to break the law has no clue who is dangerous and who is not, and will thus consider that everyone might have a gun.

Open carry identifies threats openly. Personally, I'm fine with either. That and the fact that conceal carry is kind of a pain in the ass sometimes.

But with open carry you're more dangerous than someone with conceal carry, because it's easier to draw a firearm from an open carry position. I would assume this helps cops too, because people in states where it's allowed who do open carry have a tendency to be good law abiding citizens. Not saying cops are going to turn their backs on people open carrying and trust them, but there's a certain culture that goes with people who carry, and it's usually one of responsibility. If you're a cop and you respond to a crime you can usually count out anyone who is carrying openly because of that.

It's hard to really explain guys, but most regular people who aren't into guns don't carry in states where it is legal to do so. There are always exceptions, but by and large the people who do carry are really into knowing the related laws and such.

I'll use my buddy Chad as an example. Chad and I went to high school together, and he moved out to Utah. He carries, and fully is aware of his right to carry in his state and what that means. He's a gun nut from hell in his spare time, but his regular job? He's a network administrator. He's got a wife and a baby on the way, he is in no way the stereotypical crazy guy in a bunker somewhere. He likes cops, and has considered dropping his career to go and join the police force, or at least become a reserve deputy. He's fundamentally aware of when he should and should not fire a gun, and when it is legal to do so to defend yourself or others.

Chad really is the average civilian who carries a gun in a state that allows it. He's been carrying long enough to where it isn't a distraction for him, his .45 compact is basically to him another item like a wallet or car keys that he has on him wherever he goes.

Conceal carry doesn't make much of a difference in warmer climates. It's really hard to hide a gun from the trained eye anyway.

My point is, if you get rid of concealed carry, then the people who want to rely on private gun ownership for protection can carry their guns openly, the people who don't want to rely on it can just not carry guns, and if you spot someone carrying a gun but trying to hide it, you can be pretty sure they're up to no good. So what's the problem?

Probably because Europe does a better job addressing criminals' motives than the USA does. That still doesn't change that, all else being equal, arming law-abiding citizens is a more powerful tool than leaving them to wait for police to arrive.

A guy can lose it outside of college, too. College isn't the only place people lose girlfriends to another man, and many jobs have worse pressure than homework. Your remark strikes me as way too reliant on adolescent stereotypes.

Nope.

EDITED IN: Open carry is probably a bad idea, though. It becomes harder to tell those with criminal intentions from those without them. Someone with open carry may reduce the risk of being attacked himself; unless someone else with a gun sees him as a threat. And its protection of others (assuming criminals expect the open carrier to give a damn about others and know what to do about it) would only be in the short run anyway. A criminal who sees someone with a gun may wait until that person is gone, and then inflict crimes in an unarmed area. A criminal in an armed area that looks unarmed may begin to commit their crime, but get stopped by others drawing their guns, whether through scaring him into dropping his own gun and accepting that he'll be arrested, or through being stopped by a bullet. And for the most part, even criminals have the sense to avoid the latter.

That's a nice notion, but not completely realistic. Especially not in the USA, wherein the criminals their deterrence-centered approach may have created (though really, more due to the prison component of that than the "arming the public" component of that) aren't about to be turned into good people by a different approach.

That criminals can spot who isn't carrying a gun and know who to target? How is that not obvious?

edited 17th May '12 6:51:34 PM by HiddenFacedMatt

"The Daily Show has to be right 100% of the time; FOX News only has to be right once." - Jon Stewart

Getting rid of conceal carry doesn't just make open carry legal by default. Most states are either or, you would have to instate open carry in the same law that got rid of concealed carry.

Addressing the issue of adolescents with guns freaking out because they are adolescent manchild emotional traffic jams: They are old enough to buy them legally anyway, carry has nothing to do with possession. Even if you can't legally carry on campus, you can still buy one. So unless we go so far as to make it illegal for college students to purchase guns, which is ridiculous, then it doesn't really matter.

On Europe: Yes, there are way less firearm homicides. Because almost nobody has firearms. The violent crime statistics per capita between Europe and the US are rather close though, meaning that people will kill eachother with spoons if you make everything else illegal.

edited 17th May '12 6:46:19 PM by Barkey

Question then becomes: what percentage of assaults/attempted murders result in successful murders?

Not a clue to be honest.

Though for the most part it's me I'm thinking about. I'm trained and capable with a firearm, both in terms of being able to take a person down with minimal effort, and knowing when the right conditions are present to draw or shoot one.

I'm not happy with idiots fucking that up for me, because it's a very important right. One that I'm very pissed off I don't have in my state when I start to think about it too much. If only they treated MP's like civilian cops when it came to that.