Gun-free zones have been around for more than two decades. The idea behind a gun-free zone is that banning firearms on places like college campuses makes everyone in those places much safer. It’s a nice sentiment. It’s also wrong.
Airplanes are also gun-free zones. Unless you are a Federal Air Marshal, it’s pretty much impossible to bring a gun onto an airplane. There’s a slew of metal detectors, x-rays, sniffer dogs, pat downs and strip searches, (yikes), all of which pretty much guarantee that if you are flying, you aren’t packing heat.
An airplane is a controlled environment, with just one way in. A college campus is not. The borders are porous. Thousands of students bring cars onto campus every day. They wear backpacks, and coats in the winter. There is not a single security checkpoint in sight. The same way that the U.S. can’t stop immigrants flooding through the Mexico border, it is similarly difficult to stop guns coming on campus.
Well, that’s not entirely true. The Gun Free Zone Act actually does keep guns off campus. These are the sort of guns that belong to average people — you know, the kind of people who aren’t about to go on a shooting spree. Since it is illegal, regular people (the good guys) leave their guns at home.
So far so good, right? By keeping guns off campus, we have already lowered the chances of accidental gunshot wounds and that whole escalation thing, where an argument turns into a shooting (think Trayvon Martin.) Stop digging there, and the gun-free zone idea sounds pretty good.
Problem is, people intent on mass killing do not stop there. The movie theater in Aurora, Colo. where James Holmes killed 12 people and wounded 38 others was by policy a gun-free zone. People like James Holmes don’t give a damn about gun-free zones.
These are people who are already so deranged that they are intent on killing as many people as they can. No Pollyanna feel-good gun-free zone law is ever going to stop them.
So what actually does stop shooters like Holmes? People with guns. In the case of gun-free zones we call those people the police.
In a shooter situation, your options are fairly simple: huddle defenseless in a corner until someone else with a gun comes to save you.
Okay, so maybe we should allow other people who we know are responsible to carry guns on campus. Say — faculty for example.
Ladies and gentlemen, “exhibit B”: Ernesto A. Bustamante. Last year, former University of Idaho assistant professor Ernesto Bustamante shot graduate student Katy Benoit 11 times outside her home.
Time to cut the crap. Between 1999 and 2010, 130 people were killed in school related shootings. 13 people died at Columbine, 32 at Virginia Tech.
Denying students their right to bear arms without instituting appropriate measures to protect them is more than just ignorant, it is fundamentally evil. Gun-free zones make it easier for criminals to commit gun violence. Period.
Not sold yet? Look at places with lots of guns. Gun stores, shooting ranges, police stations. Ever heard of a mass shooting on one of those places? How about an NRA convention? That’s a place full of guns and wackos. Somehow, no one ever ends up getting shot.
Thankfully, not everyone is fooled. Just recently, the University of Colorado did away with their policy against concealed carry. It is also legal now in Wisconsin and and Mississippi. In Utah it is specifically allowed.
By all means, follow Mississippi’s example and require student to pass a voluntary class on safe handling and use of firearms before they are allowed to carry guns on campus. After all, the good guys play by the rules.
Joseph Engle can be reached at [email protected]