CHL on campus

Reading this thread has been alarming to myself. I usually frequent a hunting message board where everyone is pro-gun/pro-chl.

I am also a law enforcement officer.

I am amazed at the point of view you liberal sheep have. We have a RIGHT called the second amendment. It isn't a privilege, it's a freaking RIGHT! There should only be a few places a gun shouldn't be allowed. Courtroom, penal institution, voting station, the and secure area of an airport (and of course PC 30.06 places).

Someone please answer this; especially Mulder.

Do you think, honestly, that if someone wants to bring a gun with them and commit murder, that the thought of bringing a handgun into that place is illegal even remotely crosses their mind? HIGHLY UNLIKELY. You agree?



Let me ask something else. What if a guy did come onto a campus thinking of doing something terrible? What if he came on to the school and realized that, "Hey, there might be several people walking around with a gun, I better not."

You have to be 21 to have a CHL. Someone said something about "youth" having guns......

The pros obviously outweigh the cons on this issue. The bottom line is, bad guys will be bad guys and the good guys (CHL holders) will continue to be good guys. Just because it is legal to carry a pistol via CHL on campus doesn't mean that CHL holders are going to come onto campuses and start committing crimes just because they can legally carry a firearm.

Some of you need to re-think your liberal point of view on this issue.

And lastly,


A GUN FREE ZONE IS A VICTIM RICH ENVIRONMENT.

 

Look CaseyH, I see where you are coming from, but I must disagree. As most people here know, I am a strong supporter of 2nd Amendment rights.

That being said, I think that there are significant problem with arming the student body on a college campus. One accidental shooting in a dormitory is one too damned many. Parents do not send their kids to a college to be shot in the dorm. I know, the parents of kids at Va Tech did not send their kids to be shot in class. The difference is that one is sanctioned by law and the other is not.

I am, however, an ardent supporter of having a select group of persons, employed by the university, that are armed, and are there (blending in with the crowd) in the event that an incident happens.

 

Look, by allowing 21+ yr. old people to carry guns on campus does not open up a whole different group of people to carry guns. It's not like a whole bunch of asshats will be carrying guns. It will still be the same responsible people, who pass a background check and don't have any felony convictions who actually take the time and pay the money to get their CHL.

 

You know what is scary? There are tazers available to citizens now. If someone points one of them at me, they're signed, sealed, and delivered to the cemetery.

 

Not necessarily. Your defense to prosecution is that you may have known that the citizen tazer gives a 30 second ride of lightning and you were in fear of your life knowing that if you were incapacitated by a taser it would have been likely/probable that you would have been killed.

 

You're probably right.

"It was a gun, I was in fear of my life. Now I want a lawyer."



And it is sad, but the DAs are only concerned about convictions/statistics. Obviously that's their job, but damn, they don't care who gets shafted in the process.

 

what?

Society has judged (rightly) that law enforcement is more efficiently handled collectively than individually. This is a far more efficient outcome than if every individual was responsible for their own personal law enforcement. This is not a debatable point - it's simply reality that there are efficiencies realized in this way.

I've never been the victim of a violent crime. Nor have the vast majority of citizens. This is not due to my or their prowess at self-defense, rather it's the product of largely effective system of law enforcement - vis a vis a place with an ineffective one (see Iraq, eg - where self defense is paramount).

I have no idea why you are citing some weird supreme court case - I'm not talking about anything remotely related to that. But if you want to get into court cases - the anglo-american legal system doesn't really make self-defense paramount either, and has tended to discourage it as a defense in criminal prosecutions.

 

The fact that you brought out this argument shows the weak sauce you've got cooking.

The fact that a law will not deter someone who doesn't care about the consequencs does not mean the law should be avoided I mean univiresities have rules against underage drinking and MJ use - yet underage drinking happens all the time on campus. Does that mean universities should just declare themselves free drinking zones or free MJ zones?

You're also severely underestimating the effect of university policies. Would I think twice about doing something if the U would suspend or expel me for doing it? Yes of course I would. As would most UNIVERSITY STUDENTS, which is what this whole issue is about. Unless you are arguing that there is a compelling need for private citizen non-students to be able to roll around campus packing heat?

There are several people walking around with guns, they're called campus police, and they can pretty much eject anybody they want from the premises far more easily than a regular cop could. That is one of several reasons why I feel much safer walking around Harvard Yard than I would walking around Roxbury.


.

COnsidering that you've basically presented no evidence and are kind of making yourself look dumb, I don't think that's warranted at this time.

 

while a young person may act responsibly in normal circumstances, groups of young people tend to egg each other on. kids just tend to act stupid when theyre around other kids.

 

sorry my answer doesnt satisfy you.

i think law makers banned guns from campuses bc they want to be able to ensure security.

i think permitting concealed handguns on campus is a knee jerk reaction to the events at vtech. however, we dont see shootings every week.

if a student is worried about safety on campus, then carry some pepper spray.

 

No argument, but I think you missed my point. Laws are collective, and therefore law enforcement is a collective responsibility. Vigilantes often have questionable motives, and without collective law enforcement, criminally-minded individuals would prey on those least effective at law enforcement. Virtually everyone agrees with that.

All of that being said, all that does is make a populace generally safer. If, for whatever reason, you feel unsafe as an individual, the police do little to help you, by design. With few exceptions, the police have little power to protect you from a perceived threat.

If you see creepy guys hanging out on your street, feel threatened, and you call the cops to protect you, don't expect much. The best you'll usually get is a promise to increase patrols. None of that will stop the Greek Mafia from dragging you out of your home and sinking you to the bottom of the river to avenge your besmirchment of Billy Spanoulis' name. If you call the police, they do nothing to prevent it, and your family wants to hold the police accountable, they have no recourse (at least historically). On the other hand, if they refused to investigate your murder after the fact, there are well-established precedents for them holding NYPD accountable.

Rambling post, but my point is this: In the United States, the duty of the Police is law enforcement. The fact that law enforcement makes a populace generally safer is ancillary. Personal protection is a personal responsibility.

 

in most civilized states this wouldn't be a discussion.

and by states i dont mean countries. obviously no other civilized country would have this discussion. but i mean other and generally richer states of our union.

 

http://munchkinwrangler.blogspot.com/2007/03/why-gun-is-civilization.html

why the gun is civilization

Human beings only have two ways to deal with one another: reason and force. If you want me to do something for you, you have a choice of either convincing me via argument, or force me to do your bidding under threat of force. Every human interaction falls into one of those two categories, without exception. Reason or force, that's it.

In a truly moral and civilized society, people exclusively interact through persuasion. Force has no place as a valid method of social interaction, and the only thing that removes force from the menu is the personal firearm, as paradoxical as it may sound to some.

When I carry a gun, you cannot deal with me by force. You have to use reason and try to persuade me, because I have a way to negate your threat or employment of force. The gun is the only personal weapon that puts a 100-pound woman on equal footing with a 220-pound mugger, a 75-year old retiree on equal footing with a 19-year old gangbanger, and a single gay guy on equal footing with a carload of drunk guys with baseball bats. The gun removes the disparity in physical strength, size, or numbers between a potential attacker and a defender.

There are plenty of people who consider the gun as the source of bad force equations. These are the people who think that we'd be more civilized if all guns were removed from society, because a firearm makes it easier for a mugger to do his job. That, of course, is only true if the mugger's potential victims are mostly disarmed either by choice or by legislative fiat--it has no validity when most of a mugger's potential marks are armed. People who argue for the banning of arms ask for automatic rule by the young, the strong, and the many, and that's the exact opposite of a civilized society. A mugger, even an armed one, can only make a successful living in a society where the state has granted him a force monopoly.

Then there's the argument that the gun makes confrontations lethal that otherwise would only result in injury. This argument is fallacious in several ways. Without guns involved, confrontations are won by the physically superior party inflicting overwhelming injury on the loser. People who think that fists, bats, sticks, or stones don't constitute lethal force watch too much TV, where people take beatings and come out of it with a bloody lip at worst. The fact that the gun makes lethal force easier works solely in favor of the weaker defender, not the stronger attacker. If both are armed, the field is level. The gun is the only weapon that's as lethal in the hands of an octogenarian as it is in the hands of a weightlifter. It simply wouldn't work as well as a force equalizer if it wasn't both lethal and easily employable.

When I carry a gun, I don't do so because I am looking for a fight, but because I'm looking to be left alone. The gun at my side means that I cannot be forced, only persuaded. I don't carry it because I'm afraid, but because it enables me to be unafraid. It doesn't limit the actions of those who would interact with me through reason, only the actions of those who would do so by force. It removes force from the equation...and that's why carrying a gun is a civilized act.

 

It might be ancillary but it's the primary reason why they're there. The deterrent effect provided by enforcing the background rules (or essentially a system of prices - the price of crime is the penalty x probability of gettign caught) they provide the baseline by which people can make choices - which is the same as the deterrent effect.

It is not perfect because if the system were perfect it would be obviated, and a different situation may call for a different calculus. If you operate a liquor store in a bad neighborhood you maybe should be armed. But, getting back to the point of the thread, a college classroom is probably a situation that is less likely to be one requiring arms. That is not to say that college campuses are without crime, date rape etc is a problem - but this is not the kind of crime that concealed hand guns are going to prevent, and many of them (drunken brawls) may be exacerbated by such weaponry.

That brings up another point - the college environment really is SO much different. The kinds of things we did in college for fun would get you arrested or committed in a lot of places....a lot of it was incredibly irresponsible, althoguh lots of fun. We were able to act like this because ti was a pretty controlled, contained environment,so I don't see where additinal armed deterrents would have enhacned the situation and most likely it would have inhibited it.