by Ronald Gibson

Created on: November 04, 2008

If you live on a college campus your second amendment right to own a gun is erased by laws that ban guns on campus. Likewise if you live in a state in which anyone can legally carry a gun as long as it is not concealed, and you have a concealed weapons permit, but you go through campus every day and don't return home till the end of your day, then your right to carry a gun has been effectively removed in a community where you will encounter many gun weilding individuals. The reason this is true is because since you have no place to put the gun as you go through campus that will allow you to pick it back up afterwards you may as well leave the gun at home or else hope you don't get caught breaking the law.

While it is true that it can make a person nervous to know that someone near them could be carrying a gun, the fact is that anybody anywhere can be carrying a gun at any time. Is it logical to be constantly nervous? No, that makes no sense. However if you know that a person using a gun to commit a violent crime very likely will be stopped by someone else with a gun then there is less reason to be nervous. You can't change the fact that gun laws do not reduce the ability of a criminal to get a gun. They don't prevent Pscyhos from obtaining a gun. Particularly because most Psychos are undiagnosed until they commit their first and often last major act of violence. What gun control does is render law abiding citizens helpless to the criminals in our society, including those in government.

On another note I used to work as an unarmed guard in a research building at Arizona State University. In that capacity I envisioned numerous scenarios in which I may have to respond to gun violence on campus. Due to it being a gun free zone I was unable to carry a gun to protect myself and the students and faculty on my post. I didn't much like my chances if someone pulled a gun in that area. I figured I'd be able to survive if I acted for self preservation instead of trying to save others but couldn't see any way I could save anyone else. The other important thing I noticed is that I was able to enter campus at any one of a million locations and not one of them had any method whatsoever of restricting who could enter the campus or what they could carry. The campus police does patrols but they are so few and far between it is possible to attend classes full time and still go a week without seeing campus police. Not only that but they have fewer guns than police officers. When I saw the signs on campus regarding the law that came across the floor of congress last year that would have allowed concealed wepons permit holders to legally enter campus while carrying their gun, that claimed that "Republicans want guns on campus." and asked "Do you?" I felt inclined to be irritated at the implication. I personally had already decided before the issue came up that I would feel much safer on campus knowing that any guns on campus would not be limited to those who risked jail time by carrying them, despite the fact that some of those people were relatively safe people that felt forced to flout the law in order to protect themselves.

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