So I’ve been doing a little digging, and it appears that calls for repealing bans on firearms on campuses began in earnest after the Virginia Tech tragedy in 2007. The shooter killed 32 students and faculty members and injured 17. The shooter purchased one gun online and another in a gun shop. He also had a history of mental health issues, according to news reports, but that didn’t stop him from buying a gun. So what if students on Virginia Tech’s campus were able to carry firearms into their classrooms. What would the scene look like? Who would be shooting who? What would the collateral damage look like?
As a 2012 article in University Business notes, “even with superior marksmanship training, law enforcement officers in a live fire scenario hit their intended targets only around 25 percent of the time.” And a 2013 editorial in the San Antonio Express-News states, “Even trained police officers can miss their mark. An analysis of incidents between 1998 and 2006 from the RAND Center on Quality Policing found officers hit their mark 30 percent of the time when a suspect wasn't firing back. In a gunfight, accuracy dropped to 18 percent. In 2012, police shot a gunman at the Empire State Building, but also injured nine bystanders. Would college students or faculty do better?” That is an extremely important question.
I think it is also important to note that the legislation in question here in Florida is awfully similar to model bills created by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) with the help of the NRA in 2008. So Corporate America voted to support a bill that would allow guns on campuses. The argument that it is our God-given right to carry guns (not sure when God gave us that right) falls a bit flat when one considers who actually benefits from such legislation. Certainly not educators or students. Rather, it’s the gun industry. And it spends a lot of money to make sure people buy guns and to ensure that regulation encourages us to buy guns.
The Center for Responsive Politics found that in 2014, gun lobbyists spent quite a few bucks:
Top Lobbying Clients, 2014
Client/Parent Total
National Rifle Assn $3,360,000
National Assn for Gun Rights $3,080,000
National Shooting Sports Foundation $3,070,000
Gun Owners of America $1,451,994
Citizens Cmte for Right Keep & Bear Arms $501,488
Look, I don’t care if you want to own a gun, but I don’t want it in my classroom. Cultivating a safe learning environment is difficult to do when we have to worry if other people in the room have a loaded weapon in their pocket. Too many bad things can happen, as the Harvard School of Public Health and others have found.
