I also didn't really appreciate the ignorantly sarcastic tone. I generally like satire but this isn't satire. It's a whine. Regardless, I feel the point about college kids, plus being away from home, plus alcohol/drug experimentation is a valid one. College kids generally don't make the best decisions. I didn't make the best decisions. This recent conversation delves into that a bit It's not a matter of treating people as grown ups, but making certain decisions based on how things work. We know that college age kids typically don't make the best decisions all the time. There are some people who are an exception to this generalization and there are circumstances that are exceptions. But generally, you are a lot more likely to have 100+ people party, with drugs and alcohol, with fights or bad decisions being made in college than you are outside of college. So encouraging firearms within these groups, based on the knowledge that college kids are more likely to make poor choices, especially when fucked up, doesn't seem like the most educated decision. I understand your point about "well they are allowed to have them everywhere but campus." If it works like that - if the kids who already carry guns are now carrying the guns to school - that might be okay. But I don't know if that is the case. We might see an increase in the number of people carrying because of this expansion. When I was living in lower Manhattan, I carried pepper spray. When I got an editing gig in Brooklyn, I carried peppers spray and a taser. At night, I would walk with one hand in my purse holding the taser. In case you don't know, guns cannot be carried in NYC. So I felt generally safe and felt that generally speaking, the pepper spray and taser would probably do an okay job. If guns could have been carried in NYC, I most likely would've learned how to shoot and gotten myself a gun. So if suddenly 5% of the students are carrying guns, chances are there is going to be an increase in the number of kids who typically wouldn't carry a gun. The more people who have guns, the more necessary it is for others to have them. Eventually everyone has a gun and while the number of school shooters may go down, the number of accidents, suicides by guns, and bad decisions turning violent or deadly may rise. That is my concern with gun expansion laws.
Though your point is well-taken, I disagree with the very premise of the point here. There seems to be some belief that we can legislate away every tragedy, every unseemly situation, and every avoidable harm. I think this is a fallacious argument that requires us to sacrifice freedom for... what? A promise? I live in Chicago, on the south side of the city (the "bad side"). As you may or may not remember, Chicago had for quite a number of years an effective handgun ban. Did that make crime any less in Chicago? Did that reduce the terrifying number of gun crimes in the city? Did it make it any less likely for kids on their way to/home from school any less likely to die from gun crimes? Nope - Chicago still remains one of the highest per-capita murder sites in the US, and much of those crimes are committed with firearms. In the middle of the summer (when kids are out of school and the weather is amenable to roaming around), it isn't unreasonable to expect to hear about 5-10 injuries or deaths from gun violence over the course of the weekend. My point here is that I'm not convinced that restricting access to guns - a right, by the way, granted by the Constitution - necessarily results in a reduction in crime. It makes sense intuitively, but I've often found that intuitive understanding of how large collections of people work is wrong. It's simply too difficult to predict how any large number of people will respond to changes like this. This doesn't even begin to address the huge number of guns already out among the general population (more than 300 million per 2010 gun manufacturing sales data) or the difficulty of enforcing flat bans given the huge variability of gun laws in the US. I understand the desire to want to try and "make" these situations "better," but I'm just not convinced. Where's the evidence that programs like this work? How do I know that this isn't simply an attempt to violate our rights (whether you choose to exercise them or not is another matter) in the name of the children? Is there some kind of magical forcefield surrounding college campuses these days that vaporizes guns if they're brought on campus? If not, then what's the point here? How many "school shooters," "accidents," "suicides by guns," and "bad decisions turning violent" are we actually going to be stopping here? Data exists around guns availability and suicide - having a gun in the home makes it 7 times more likely that an individual will successfully commit suicide - but does that necessarily require carte blanche restriction on owning guns? Again, a right specifically enumerated in the Constitution and interpreted to be applicable in this way by multiple courts? I think that sets a very dangerous precedent: not just for gun rights, but for the basic rights that we all value and think important to our society. Freedom is slowly eroded away by exceptions. "Sure, you can own your guns, EXCEPT if..." "Sure, you're free to protest, BUT you must stay within the 'free speech zone'..." "Sure, you've got that fourth amendment right thing, EXCEPT if you're talking about electronic communications..." I think it's important to be mindful of these issues and consider whether or not yet another exception to the basic rights our government provided to its citizens is worth it. Whether that issue is guns, free speech, the right to not be searched by police - it doesn't matter in my view. The immediate and knee-jerk desire to restrict things in the name of preventing some kind of tragedy or "for the children" should be challenged at all points.
I suppose that it varies from campus to campus, but most parties of intoxication do not occur on university-owned property. Choosing to CC a gun during your daily routine and at an event where you will be consuming alcohol are two separate decisions, the latter is always discouraged due to safety and legal reasons. I do recognize the liability arguments of allowing firearms onto an organization's property, but let me present you a personal anecdote: My own housing situation forbids me from bringing a firearm onto the property. In spite of this, the larger organization which houses me has seem multiple rapes and robberies occur, some by gun / knife, others by fist. The robberies were best resolved without a gun. But the guy who beat and raped multiple women? I wish that bastard had been shot. The house I live in has been broken in to five times in the past two years. Unfortunately, it's just not that easy to secure a building that fifty people go in and out of every day. Fraternity / sorority / university dorm entrances see similar if not greater throughput. From the property owner's point of view? It's sane. Less bad PR. Less lawsuits. From the individual's point of view? It sucks. Get a knife. Get a hammer. Get a taser.So encouraging firearms within these groups, based on the knowledge that college kids are more likely to make poor choices, especially when fucked up, doesn't seem like the most educated decision.
And this is where anecdotal evidence becomes such a deciding factor in these laws and conversations. Because I grew up in an upper class neighborhood where tgps and iPods being stolen from parked cars still warrants a short blurb in the paper, and later lived in NYC, and then Sydney, I've never experienced a situation where I thought my life or my sex would be taken from me - guns or no guns. To me, adding guns to the places I've loved would most definitely result in more crime, more accidentals, more everything. In your case, these things are already a reality and the question is how do you stop it. I don't know if adding more guns to the situation would result in less crime or not but I can see how at some point it becomes a viable solution where there doesn't seem to be a solution. The problem is a catch 22. If you take legal guns away, the bad guys are the only ones with guns, and bad things happen. But if everyone has guns, bad things happen. Unless you completely remove guns from the country (hey Australia did it) or arm every single person, there debate and turmoil will live on. Sorry for spelling grammar and sentence structure. I'm on my phone.
I feel that. I grew up in a neighborhood where "loud leaf-blowers" were the primary point of contention.Because I grew up in an upper class neighborhood where tgps and iPods being stolen from parked cars still warrants a short blurb in the paper, and later lived in NYC
On a side note, wishing a bastard had been shot is not the same as "that bastard should have been shot" or "it would be great if people could carry guns so that guy would have been shot." I think it is possible to wish someone had gotten shot while believing that it may not be a great idea to allow guns on school campuses. Of course, that doesn't seem to be the case here, but you also seem to be presenting your wish that he had gotten shot as, in a way, a justification for the legalization of firearms on campuses. Legalizing guns on campuses will not bring any more justice to cruel & inhumane situations or the people who bring them about. It may make it easier for people to defend themselves (or not), but justice is not served through vigilantism.
Sure, but I will also say: "If any one of those individuals was armed and trained, they could have defended themselves and his spree would have been ended." My response was directed towards the analogous case of a similar rule being applied in a different situation. Also, when did self-defense become vigilantism?
When you said you wished the man had been shot, you didn't say "I wish he'd been shot in the course of a crime." I'm willing to believe that that's what you meant to imply, but as an independent reader observing the conversation, that's not what I extrapolated from your statement. I simply saw a wish that a person had gotten shot because he had committed heinous crimes. That's why I interpreted your comment as potential vigilantism as much as potential self-defense.