To the Editor:
In his column ("Shooting for Safety," March 9), Ethan Tobias '12 argues that colleges allowing their students to carry concealed weapons would expose their students to severe risks. For a number of reasons, I respectfully disagree. While having trained security and police personnel on campus is an obvious necessity, it is also obvious that they cannot be everywhere at once. As my mother — a former police officer — likes to say, the police are about two minutes away, but sometimes, only seconds matter. For instance, law enforcement intervention was not responsible for ending the tragedy at Virginia Tech. After killing 32 people and wounding 17, the attacker turned the pistol on himself. Had someone on that campus been armed with a concealed weapon, it is not unreasonable to believe that they might have ended the tragic rampage much sooner, or at least might have been able to fight back. Though they would not have prevented the attack, they may have saved many, many lives. Unfortunately, though, many people believe that college students are not responsible enough to carry weapons on campus. Sure, we can join the military and travel the world over to defend freedom, but the thought of being prepared to defend our lives at home — as dormitories are homes for some of us — and at school, gives people pause. Some imagine that there would be a dangerous mix of alcohol, drugs, stress from school and guns, and that Texas can set this dangerous precedent. This is not at all the case. When I am on break — oftentimes in Texas, coincidentally — and go somewhere where I might drink alcohol, I leave my concealed handgun permit at home. This is because it is illegal to be intoxicated while carrying a concealed weapon and I do not want to lose my permit. I would not do anything differently or more dangerous if I was allowed to carry my firearm on a Texas campus. I doubt that any permit-holding student would. In fact, the state of Utah has allowed concealed firearms on college campuses for many years now. There, permit holders recognize the laws behind mixing alcohol and guns, and permit holders prove to be the vast minority in terms of criminal convictions. There is nothing to suggest that if Texas were to allow concealed carry on campus, things would be any more violent than they are in Utah. And importantly, despite the stress and alcohol that is likely a part of college life in Utah, there have been no shootings on a Utah campus since this bill was passed many years ago. With these facts in mind, I would trust someone with a concealed weapons permit not to let the stress of school make them violent. Still, as Tobias points out, there will likely always be someone who goes on a deadly rampage. I would hope that if that happened in my class or the classroom of someone I love, somebody would end the violence as absolutely quickly as possible. Whether that someone is the campus police, city police or the law-abiding, permit-holding student or professor two rows down makes no difference to me. If you were in the classroom, would you ask the permit holder to wait two minutes for the police?
Nolan Broussard '11
