<p>Trig, you haven’t visited the University of Cincinnati have you?</p>
<p>Need isn’t the question. Why should a law abiding citizen be kept from carrying one if it is legal in the state? “Gun Free Zones” are about as effective as “Drug Free Zones”.</p>
<p>I don’t care if it is the safest campus in the states. If it is legal why shouldn’t a qualified student be able to carry? If you don’t want a student to carry then allow the prof’s and staff. If just one of these shootings is stopped it would be worth it. It’s not like students carrying would turn a campus into the OK Corral?</p>
Why not ban everything else that we don’t need. TV’s are more or less obsolete at this point why don’t we ban them. And don’t pull the danger factor argument, as TV’s encourage a sedentary lifestyle which is probably more dangerous as a whole to America than firearms. In addition we acknowledge the danger of firearms, but pay cursory notice to that of TV’s.</p>
<p>“Mini, please tell me you are being facetious…”</p>
<p>Why should I tell you that? Why should a college deprive low-income students the opportunity to defend themselves just because they are poor? Since the overwhelming majority of crime on campus (70,000 rapes; 600,000+ sexual assaults annually) are committed by student criminals themselves, why shouldn’t a college take responsibility for ensuring that female students can protect themselves from students with guns. </p>
<p>This is not a question of individual safety, whereby individuals’ rights to carry are the issue. The issue is campus safety, collective safety, for everyone. And if a few guns can stop some crimes, certainly universal and required gun carrying on campus would stop many, many more.</p>
<p>I also thought mini was being facetious. I live where Cho did his target practice and checked into a hotel and where scores of adults ignored the college kids and Niki Giovani who stood up and repeatedly pointed out that he was mentally ill and needed immediate attention by the medical community. Leaving the endless debate about gun laws aside, I have to say that Cho was a hugely obviously mentally ill young adult and that we can change how we respond as a society to mental illness without resolving the gun debate at all and in that way, we can help reduce risk. So many homicides are also domestic violence with plenty of red flags before they take place as well. </p>
<p>My nephew was in the dorm getting ready for class where the brave senior RA from Georgia and the poor randomly hunted down girl who loved to ride horses…were shot. A girl in my son’s class was four doors away on that hall. I thought it was disrespectful to the dead and injured for the man to appear on campus…provocative but not in a constructive way.<br>
Sadly, many northern Virginians sent their children down here to us, certain they were enrolled in college in a less populous, more peaceful place, safer from random crime than ever in their lives.
I was listening to the murder count in Chicago on TV the other night and thinking…“no Univ of Chicago for my boy” when I had to admit that after what happened near my home, there is no way to predict risk anymore very well…and I had no reason to view Chicago in that manner.</p>
Why not ban everything else that we don’t need. TV’s are more or less obsolete at this point why don’t we ban them. And don’t pull the danger factor argument, as TV’s encourage a sedentary lifestyle which is probably more dangerous as a whole to America than firearms. In addition we acknowledge the danger of firearms, but pay cursory notice to that of TV’s.
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<p>Sorry, were we talking about TVs here or are you just trying to create a ridiculous straw man as a stand-in for making a viable refutation?</p>
<p>The reason guns are at issue here and not TVs is because TVs cause damage (obesity, etc) only to those who choose to use the TV, whereas the danger from guns comes to people other than the wielder - by analogy, you can’t use your TV to make someone else fat.</p>
…because some people do evil things, and campuses are not immune to their actions.
The real question in the concealed campus carry debate is why are licensed permit holders being denied the ability to defend themselves on campus? What reason is there to deny them that ability, especially after the state has judged them competant and safe?</p>
<p>Mini, that is a nice, sarcastic comment. I find it really ironic. Many gun laws have racist and elitist origins. The Democratic Party promoted bans on “Saturday Night Specials” (cheap guns). I guess they don’t think poor people are trustworthy enough to have guns. The Democratic party has been trying to place economic and social filters on gun ownership for decades. Ironically, this is exactly what the progressives of the early 20th century fought against.</p>
<p>I’m not a Demcrat, and I have no idea what you are talking about. I am talking about the need for campus safety and collective security, not some fatuous individual right for individuals to bear the AK-47 of their own choosing. </p>
<p>The real question has NOTHING to do with whether licensed permit holders should be permitted to defend themselves on campus, and everything to do with ensuring the safety of the campus for everyone.</p>
<p>I was kinda replying to the question why do students need guns on campus. The thing about TV’s was showing that we haven’t banned other things that we don’t need. Also TV’s place a strain on the healthcare system, which drives up costs and eats precious resources.</p>
<p>Few people who have a cc permit would actually want an AK47, for among other things they aren’t really concealable. Also why should a college campus be treated differently then anywhere else?</p>
I was kinda replying to the question why do students need guns on campus. The thing about TV’s was showing that we haven’t banned other things that we don’t need. Also TV’s place a strain on the healthcare system, which drives up costs and eats precious resources.
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<p>But, as I pointed out, you can’t take your TV and go out and make other people sedentary and fat, whereas you can certainly go out and shoot somebody if you want.</p>
<p>As for mini’s statistics, who knows where he gets them. I’ve seen him pull out interesting, sometimes questionable numbers in a ton of threads, and almost never substantiate them. Oh well.</p>
<p>It is 70,000 rapes/sexual assaults, and 600,000+ assaults per year.</p>
<p>(That’s the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Addiction of the National Institutes of Health.)</p>
<p>It is likely, of course, that each student criminal commits more than one, so there are probably not 600,000 student criminals. But enough to require that every student carry a gun, and be trained in how to use it. It is especially important that every woman have a loaded firearm to fight off her drunken attacker.</p>
<p>(why you folks are so lazy, when you could have looked it up yourself, is beyond me.)</p>
<p>Are you seriously arguing that? If so, I apologize for misinterpreting your previous posts. My sarcasm detector isn’t working so great today. Could you please clarify without any sarcasm?</p>
<p>I thought I already made it clear. If the issue is campus safety and campus security, then merely allowing individuals to carry is discriminatory, creates a class of second-class citizens, and doesn’t do what is necessary to keep everyone safe. This isn’t about individual rights. Campuses ARE different than other places, and the response to campus crime should be calibrated accordingly. </p>
<p>If you think guns are the solution, then simply allowing individuals to carry them doesn’t go nearly far enough.</p>
<p>Well fortunately, dripping sarcasm or not, thats not how this society works and it definitely isn’t how rights work. You simply can’t enforce force someone to exercise a right. The opposite is equally true. This is exactly about individual rights. People have a right to defend themselves and others from bodily harm or death. Implicit in this right is the right to the best tools (i.e. weapons) available for the job. </p>
<p>As has been said before, a gun is nothing more than a tool, without any moral status of its own. The demonization of guns in society today is sad.</p>
<p>Well, then there should be STRONG incentives for females to carry guns on campus (maybe a break on tuition?), and for the school to provide the training and underwrite the costs for females so that they can exercise their INDIVIDUAL rights. The vast overwhelming of crimes by student felons are committed against females, and so the university has a responsibility to make sure they can protect themselves. It’s easily accomplished, and if, as you say, guns in the hands of potential victims is a way to stave off crime, then you need to make sure that the known (rather than unknown) potential victims have possession of the means to prevent the criminal attacks.</p>
<p>If your concern really is campus safety (rather than some abstract concept about guns), you would show that concern by looking at ways to curb the acts of student felons. But I don’t believe you care in the least about student safety - if you did, you’d be looking toward measures that would increase overall campus security, not creating a subclass with more power than another.</p>
<p>If somebody want to kill people they’re always going to find a way. At the end of the day it’s not a terribly difficult thing to do. Guns are one tool that you can use to do this. Knifes also work. Simple to obtain explosives in a jar of nails would work. But guns are not evil, and knifes are not evil, and those explosives and nails are not evil, the people who use them to hurt or kill others are evil. Guns have their place in society and I truly do believe that one of those places is concealed carry. To protect people who are not evil from those who are.</p>