A Texas State University student is argueing to be allowed to carry a concealed weapon to school. The group called Concealed Campus, which this student is a memeber of, claims that if students were armed that the university would be more secure. In San Marcos many students are stating that this will in no way make it any safer.
To carry a concealed weapon a person must first pass a criminal background check along with proper training to use the sidearm. Although it is true that having the knowlege to use a weapon is a positive, there is no way of measuring the emotional or intellectual response that a person might have if prevoked.
Even the cheif of the San Marcos police is for this stating "It doesn't make sense to me that you can take weapons to Luby's or the library, but you can't take it to the classroom. This statement makes many of the students question if it is really safer to have armed student and will it reduce criminal activity.
I find this idea to be incredibly irresponsible and in no way should be followed through. I believe that a person does have the right to bear arms as stated in the Constitution. People do not have the right to put others in danger for what they consider is a solution to a much bigger problem. To stop gun violence by adding more guns is one of the most asinine ideas I have heard in awhile and this should concern all parents, students and Luby patrons in San Marcos. The group is next planning to take this to the Texas legeslation which in this state there is no telling how it will be accepted.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
I absolutely agree with you that something like this shouldn't be followed through with. Allowing people to carry guns in public places is pretty crazy. It would ultimately end up leading to more problems. Having armed students will not keep things more secure. It will put more people at risk if you ask me. If something like this were allowed at ACC, who would even want to go to class with a bunch of students carrying guns? This subject matter seems a little over the top.
I completely agree that allowing students to carrying guns to class is an outright foolish idea and would only create more problems. Who wants to entertain the thought that the person next to them might be carrying a weapon? Yes, in order to get your concealed handgun license you must pass a criminal background and the rigorous process. However, in every line of thinking, someone has always been known to slip through the cracks – there is always that “ONE”.
Schools are not battlefields, they are institutes of higher learning and we should keep them as such. In addition, weapons are not toys and they are not for fashion. In time (if a law like this passed), students have the potential to compare and possibly handle each others weapon to see has the better one. Not to mention, that one student who might be already having a bad day (who happens to be carrying a weapon in class) could be unstable at the moment and should not be carrying. Students do have the right to protect themselves, but not at the expense of others.
If students were allowed to carry weapons to class I could foresee an accidental discharge of the weapon, persons who may act or react on impulse to a situation, flaunting, comparing each others weapon, and much more. Students have various ways to protecting themselves and others. One way could be for all students to become aware of their surroundings – they should be observant to all that is around them and not have “tunnel vision”. Furthermore, students should report all unsafe findings to the proper personnel. The pre-list of protecting oneself could go on and on, but as I stated earlier it would be foolish to allow students to carry a weapon in class.
It seems like I have to join the minority on this issue and say why I believe colleges all over the States should allow guns on campus. Many of my peers have written on why they believe it is just "outright foolish" to allow students to carry guns. Now don't get me wrong, I believe ACC has every right to tell me that I can't bring a gun onto their property. If I really don't like it I can leave. My contention is that it is in their best interest to allow students and especially professors and staff members to carry the tools to defend themselves.
Have we learned nothing from the Virginia Tech shootings? There was an outright gun ban on campus, and because of that, when a deranged student, by the name of Seung-Hui Cho, snapped and started shooting, everyone else was defenseless. Had a responsible gun-owner been at the scene, Cho would have gotten maybe three people, rather than thirty. I find it ironic that terrible shootings such as this never happen at a rifle range where people can defend themselves. Massacres tend to occur where people are defenseless.
People these days seem to automatically associate guns with chaos; probably because of selective media coverage. The fact of the matter is that guns are not weapons of chaos, but rather tools of force. Like any tool of force, weather it be a hammer or an AK-47, guns can be used for good or bad. However, statistics consistently reveal that guns are more frequently used to prevent rather than perpetrate crimes. A good friend of mine, whose self-proclaimed specialty is gun control, wrote on ShaunConnell [dot] com that subtracting the number of crimes committed with firearms from the number of people who use these weapons to stop crimes yields a positive result of 1.8 Million (with a big M) crimes stopped per year.
I am not advocating that everyone should carry a gun, just that it would be in any college's best interest to allow people to defend themselves. The first step in doing so is allowing them to carry the "tools."
I agree with the statements made in your blog, The thought of having any random person carrying a gun is crazy. With all that is going on in todays world with people walking into schools and shooting random people, I think that would be the last thing we would want in our schools.
Post a Comment