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.