THE ISSUE: Recently, the University of Texas was forced by the Texas legislature to allow concealed carry of firearms on campus. Here, two of The Daily Tar Heel’s Editorial Board members debate the efficacy of allowing concealed carry on college campuses.
See the other viewpoint here.
I could argue that more guns carried, particularly on campus, equals more crime and death, but the evidence does not support that argument in a satisfactory way.
First, Texas is not the first state to experiment with allowing the concealed carrying of weapons on campus. Colorado, Idaho, Kansas, Mississippi, Oregon, Utah and Wisconsin all have similar provisions on their books. The empirical data on gun control laws, particularly concealed carry “shall issue” laws, and their effect on crime rates is murky at best. The law as it stands in Texas will legally allow very few students to carry guns legally anyway due to the minimum age, required education and costs associated with these and the firearm itself. However, certainly faculty, staff and alumni are not so restricted by cost or age. In fact, based on the law as written, theoretically University of Texas could see more guns carried by faculty, administration, staff and alumni on any game day than those carried by students.
But the effect on crime may be beside the point. The reasoning behind this law’s passage is arguably not anything to do with crime. Depressingly, it most likely has more to do with the cynical political jockeying around guns and our rights to them that continues to fester in American culture. This positioning around guns for political points, now on Texan campuses in addition to those of other states, grinds on in its tedious and utterly predictable way.
This law is passed not to effect a change in reality, but to legitimize a particularly American-Western fantasy: that a lone good guy with a gun can take out the menacing bad guy stalking campus with a gun. Good vs. Evil, and with the death of the stalking killer on campus, past evils will also be conquered: Columbine, Sandy Hook, Virginia Tech and let us not forget the ghost of Charles Whitman, who in August of 1966, initiated the modern era of mass shootings from the iconic tower of the very campus in question. By passage of S.B. 11, the state of Texas in effect condones this fantasy, allowing those citizens that hold it precious to imagine themselves or their children rising up to the possible occasion of a mass shooting and becoming a hero without sanction from the state.
Of course, never mind the 2007 NYPD study that gives depressing data on the accuracy of trained police officers to hit their target even at close range, let alone under duress. Austin is telling Texans, “When evil comes to campus, YOU can be the ONE, like David in the shadow of Goliath, to take that one lucky perfect shot and lay evil low.” Yet again, empirical data in aggregate, as opposed to anecdotal accounts, does not support this fantasy either.
Politically, if this situation ever happened, the Texas legislature could say they were in the right legitimating this hero and reap the political rewards of correctly empowering their campus citizens. Yet imagine another situation, one much more quotidian and realistic: A student who, feeling threatened on campus, rather than finding a safe space and calling campus security, shoots at a perceived assailant, misses and kills an innocent student. In S.B. 11, the Texas state legislature also legitimates the conditions that could lead to this tragic potential outcome. Such a thing could happen anyway, but in voting to allow concealed carry on campus, if this kind of tragedy occurs, blood will also cover the legislature’s hands.
