This week, college students throughout America, organized under Students for Concealed Carry on Campus, will attend classes wearing empty holsters, protesting campus policies that contradict legally, state-issued concealed weapon permits. Sheetz, who promoted this cause through Facebook, fliers and e-mails to campus groups, expects several dozen Penn State participants.
“I don’t think it’s fair for me to have to disarm on campus when I am allowed to carry a weapon in the grocery store, the movie theater, the shopping mall,” said Sheetz, one of more than 500,000 Pennsylvanians registered to carry a concealed weapon. “I’d be violating a university policy and I could get suspended or expelled.”
Tyrone Parham, the Assistant director of the Penn State Police has a great quote in this article:
“We think this would create more of a hazard if anyone could carry a firearm on campus,” Parham said. “When you shoot the weapon, you have to be mindful of what’s behind the person two miles down. What happens if you miss your target? Where does that round go?”
These kids are not asking to carry rifles on campus, for crying out loud. A handgun is not meant for long range firing. It is a more intimate weapon. It’s probably not going to travel even a mile in the best conditions. And if it did hit you after a mile, it wouldn’t kill you. There just isn’t enough power in a handgun bullet.
Parham cited a spring 2007 incident on the HUB lawn a few weeks after the events at Virginia Tech.
“A student was dancing around drunk, and students noticed him having a concealed weapon strapped to his waistband,” Parham said. “Obviously, weapons and alcohol do not mix.”
Hmmm. I thought guns were not allowed on campus. Didn’t that drunk kid know it was a gun free zone?
Let’s imagine this drunk dancer gets mad enough to draw his weapon and use it. What happens next? Kids scramble and this idiot has free reign of the campus until one of the 46 cops shows up. How many kids could die in that time? Well, we know at least 32 can, don’t we?
But if this drunk meets a student with his own gun, the playing field is level, and the danger is averted. It happens every day.
This students are citizens and are being placed in a position of vulnerability every day because of the mentality that guns are dangerous. They aren’t. People with guns in a sea of sitting ducks are dangerous. But if you arm the ducks…
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