No guns on campus!
The current debate about allowing guns on college campuses or anywhere in public is pretty scary to me. I don’t have a problem with protecting your home or property with a fire arm, but I don’t think it is a good idea out in public places. I would support a higher level of a security force on our campuses verses a 18 year old or anyone having a concealed hand gun on campus. I think that the time and maturity that it takes to be able to respond correctly and safely to a threatening situation takes years and the kind of experience that you are not going to get, or want to get in a concealed hand gun class. Let’s leave the job of public security to the professionals, not your everyday citizen with a few hours of hand gun training and no psychological evaluation.
Most police officers don’t even fire their hand guns in their whole career due to the extensive training that they have and by using more diplomatic means to calming a threatening situation instead of pulling out a gun and blasting away till the situation becomes stable. We have been influenced by too many Hollywood movies were the poor victim saves the day by shooting down all the bad guys and then going on with life like nothing ever happened.
I have never been in a situation where a gun or a shooting took place, so I am not able to comment on someone’s view on that side of the debate. The people that had to be victims of some of the recent school shootings is horrific, and I truly feel for their pain and loss. Would the outcome have been different if guns were allowed on campus? My thought is probably not. In fact, in some cases there may have been more casualties. All I know is that once that bullet leaves the gun the damage cannot be undone or easily fixed or replaced. Bullets can travel very long distances’ and go through walls, so even if you were able to hit your intended target the bullet can still go on and kill an innocent bystander that you may be trying to protect.
We have millions of our solders that have come back from war suffering from post traumatic stress disorder. This seems to prove that when people are in an environment where guns and violence occur is a very traumatic experience. If we allow students, who are mostly immature, the right to carry arms it could create a hostile/unsafe environment and should be avoided at all cost.
I agree- strongly agree with my classmate's stand on the debate, its not a good idea. As I read the opening paragraph, I wondered ...Who is debating? Congress? ACC? Texas? UT? As well as, What would the outcome be, if those for guns on campus would win this debate? I would have liked there to be a source of the debate to better understand the extent of the debate. My classmate made valid points on why he is against guns on campus. More guns, more casualties, gun related violence causes post traumatic stress syndrome, stray bullets can injure bystanders, officers on campus are trained to be diplomatic and rarely if ever resort to weapon use. All true, but where are the examples of these points?My classmate chose a great subject to blog about, we in this class can all relate since we are all college students who will be on campus and could be directly effected if Texas were to pass the gun proposal.The points given by my classmate i feel could have been stronger by using concrete examples similar to the ones I just gave. Its a serious subject, with fatal consequences and could have better been defended.
ReplyDeleteJeff is absolutely right on this No Guns on Campus issue. Not a good idea! I would have like to see a source on the debate, but the general information is more than enough. If we allowed students to carry weapons, there would be more casualties than imaginable. Have you ever driven in your car and wished you could shoot someones tires out, because they cut you off? I have. Human nature, as proven in the past, is not prepared to control natural instinct of confrontation. Give a student, the most stressed individual in the United States, a weapon and you open doors to violence. Not only would you have afternoon duals in the quad between two class rivals, but the number of innocent bystanders would jump dramatically. Especially in institutions that are supposed to be safe, i.e. school or church. I cannot speak for police officers, but I was military police and we STRESSED the justifications of deadly force and rules of engagement. A firearm is the last thing you use and only if absolutely necessary. Will the common student elect to stop a threat and be sure to look past their target for innocent bystanders? Probably not.
ReplyDeleteIn the blog Government for the People 2001 I think Jeff does an excellent job of explaining why he thinks guns shouldn’t be allowed in the classroom. I agree with him but he manages to make some intelligent arguments against it I never thought of. For instance, it always seemed like a bad idea to have a gun on you like you keep your keys, but I never considered age and therefore maturity level of some of those people being only 18 years old. The other major argument he makes that I whole heartedly agree on is how Hollywood has made an impression on people that the victim shoots all the bad guys at the end and no one gets hurt. I bet 99% of the time if you shot a gun all over the place like they do in a movie you even if it was at a “bad” guy someone innocent would get hurt, bullets can ricochet and hurt people or go through walls. Lastly, like Jeff I have never been involved or seen a shooting. I’m sure it’s horrible but I agree with him that I don’t think it would of changed the outcome any if gun were allowed.
ReplyDeleteThere is a character limit so I can only post a link:
ReplyDelete“ No Guns on Campus; The Rebuttal”