Students push for guns on campus - The Washington Times, America’s Newspaper
College students are pushing for their schools to allow them to carry guns on campus, saying they should have the right to protect themselves in a situation like the one in which 32 Virginia Tech students and faculty were fatally shot.
Andrew Dysart, a George Mason University senior, organized a chapter of Students for Concealed Carry on Campus, which hopes to persuade legislators to overturn a Virginia law that allows universities to prohibit students, faculty and staff members with gun permits from carrying their weapons onto campus.
“In a sense, [students] don’t have the same rights to self-defense on campus as the general public,” said Mr. Dysart, who said his four years as a Marine shaped his ideas about self-defense. “It’s really lopsided the way it works.”
Nationwide, 38 states ban weapons at schools, and 16 of those specifically ban guns on college campuses, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Other states allow schools to adopt their own gun policies.
Utah is the only state that specifically allows people to carry concealed weapons at public colleges. Legislation passed in 2004 allows concealed weapons on all state property, including colleges and universities. The University of Utah, which had banned concealed weapons for decades, challenged the law, but the state Supreme Court upheld it last year.
What people don’t seem to understand is that by creating these so-called “safe” zones, what they are really creating are victim or defenseless zones. Do they honestly think that someone bent on committing a crime is really going to say “whoa, hey, that is a safe zone, I can’t carry a gun in there!”? No, what they are going to say is “Hey, I don’t want anyone shooting back at me when I go to rob/murder/rape whoever, so let me go to one of these ’safe’ zones where people aren’t allowed to carry weapons.”
Many colleges generally oppose, for safety reasons, allowing concealed-carry permit holders to bring guns onto campus and resist efforts to change the law.
What are the valid safety reasons for not allowing someone who is already able to carry a weapon legally elsewhere in the state not to carry a weapon on campus? Just because there are students on camps? Come on, these people are adults, not little kids.
“Obviously, the current policy is ineffective,” he said. “It certainly didn’t protect anyone at Virginia Tech.”
