Gun ban assists gunman
The fact that Virginia Tech was a “gun-free zone” was apparently not enough to stop a crazed gunman from killing at least 32 people and injuring even more. Go figure. Unfortunately the law forbid students and faculty from carrying a gun to defend themselves, but clearly did nothing to those whom the law was intended to stop. There was an effort to change that but it failed: “A bill that would have given college students and employees the right to carry handguns on campus died with nary a shot being fired in the General Assembly.” (H/T: Instapundit)
Update: The Associated Press reports, McCain Backs Gun Rights After Shootings.
Update 2: One commenter decries, “Is this Joshua Claybourn person seriously implying that if other people on campus were allowed to carry firearms that somehow this crazed rampage would not have happened? Seriously?” Based upon recent history, the idea is based on good reason.
32 Responses to “Gun ban assists gunman”
The tone of this post might imply otherwise, but I’m not aware of too many universities (if any) that allow students, or staff to carry firearms on campus. They might not be breaking a state law, but would be in violation of university policy and as such, be subject to explusion, or termination.
IU, for instance, despite have a shooting range on campus, has such a rule in its books.
Is this Joshua Claybourn person seriously implying that if other people on campus were allowed to carry firearms that somehow this crazed rampage would not have happened? Seriously? Or that the number of deaths by gunfire on campus would somehow be lower? Is this guy for real?
Foltz: While I have not researched the matter in enough depth to be an expert, there are a number of universities that allow guns on campus. In one high profile case the Utah Supreme Court overturned a gun ban at the University of Utah. Regarding IU, the school does allow individuals to carry firearms so long as they have obtained “prior written authorization from the campus police chief to possess a firearm on campus.” I believe that one of my law professors had done just that and was known for carrying a concealed weapon.
Either way, no matter what most universities do, it does not negate the underlying error in such a ban.
Is this Jack Armstrong person seriously implying that university gun bans would somehow prevent this crazed rampage and it would not have happened? Seriously? Or that the number of deaths by gunfire on campus would somehow be lower? Is this guy for real?
If we’re thinking about this as a public policy & safety issue (and not simply as a rights issue), then I would suggest that it’s really, really important for people on all sides of this debate to recognize that armchair reasoning about the consequences of such policy decisions has very little chance og getting at the truth. We can probably manage toidentify a number of different plausible causal consequences of decisions to allow guns on campuses: a somewhat increased chance of such sprees being stopped earlier, and a somewhat increased chance of such sprees starting in the first place, and a somewhat increased chance of smaller-scale fatal incidents (accidental or otherwise). But: we are in no position whatsoever to weigh all those “somewhats” off against each other, in the absence of actual data about the consequences of such policies.
We properly refuse to admit a material cause to the greatest acheivements and virtues of this country; we should also refuse to admit a material cause to its greatest shames. The fact that our society produces individuals willing to kill over a score of people in a murder spree needs to be addressed; that he was able to obtain the means to do this is a secondary matter (but not totally irrelevant, either).
Joshua, what do you expect of a state assembly when even good, conservative god fearing schools take away their students 2nd Amendment rights without even blinking? http://www.liberty.edu/index.cfm?pid=4153
Point well taken philospher. Instapundit links to a research paper which has attempted to research some of those angles, it seems. That paper is available here.
JC, that’s an old paper by John Lott — someone whose reputation on this issue (and more generally) has been rather badly diminished. See, e.g.,
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2003_04/001040.php
Or about his losing fight with Stephen Levitt:
http://www.chicagomag.com/ME2/dirmod.asp?sid=&nm=&type=PubPagi&mod=Publications%3A%3AArticle+Title&mid=61BFC65300D24DB58350C761094153A1&tier=4&id=47B61F0DF3B247D6AB98038FB5DDEFFA
There is also some discussion there of his ludicrous incident of sockpuppetry under the alias “Mary Rosh”.
So… on the list of people worth citing on this issue, John Lott’s name does not appear.
“a somewhat increased chance of such sprees being stopped earlier, and a somewhat increased chance of such sprees starting in the first place, and a somewhat increased chance of smaller-scale fatal incidents (accidental or otherwise)”
CW permit holders actually have a very good safety record, and I don’t think it would be a bad idea to permit them to carry on campus. I know at least one of these sprees was in fact stopped by an (illegally, I’m pretty sure) armed teacher ( http://www.holology.com/shooting.html ). As an interesting footnote, that fact is almost never mentioned in news accounts of the episode.
I think this is a pretty stark reminder that banning guns from a particular community certainly does not guarantee that gun violence will not occur in that community.
As to the larger question of whether a gun ban reduces or increases the rate of violent crime in a community, I suspect there’s not a whole lot of data on crime rates in communities where guns are banned, because those communities are relatively few.
Do colleges now need to have gun detectors like they do in high schools, airports, etc?
Perhaps a locked entrance with ’swipe’ access would do this university some good…
A Symptom of our “Chain Letter Society”?
Read an analysis of the influences in our “Chain Letter Society” that may be precipitating events like the tragedy at Virginia Tech and how our focus on winning and being number one may be fostering a generation of children with fully inadequate coping skills who have a misguided sense of self-worth…here:
http://www.thoughttheater.com
Do colleges now need to have gun detectors like they do in high schools, airports, etc?
That’s simply not feasible for most college campuses. Too many points of entry. Many large universities have public streets running through them.
philosopher, that’s good to know about Lott. Prof. Reynolds, who linked to it, is generally a respectable academic on the subject so the fact that he linked to it carried some weight. I wonder why, if the author is not to be respected, Reynolds would link to him. Ah well.
I think you are perhaps overstating Reynolds’ respectability in these regards. He’s been on the slow boat to hackdom for quite some time now, as Andrew Sullivan among others have been pointing out with some frequency. (To be clear: I am not making any claims about his official academic output, but just what goes on on his blog.)
Armed students on campuses? Reynolds is kidding right? Forget statistics. You’re a journalist Josh, why don’t you call up your local precinct to see what the police chief thinks about the idea. (I already know what my mayor and police chief think. The NYPD gets apopletic at the very thought of a gun-totin’ populace. I’ll bet the mayor’s Office of Tourism does too!)
Consider an armed university for a moment. Imagine campus security responding to shots fired at a drunken frat party, or how excited parents from the 2 coasts will be when they hear that their kid (who’s likely never even seen a gun except in a news story) wants to apply to Firearmed University and live in a dorm with armed 18 and 19 year old kids living away from home for the first time…
I am not anti-gun, I was a pretty good shooter as a kid and have shot skeet as recently as two years ago. Informed discussions about guns and gun-safety are a wonderful idea, but I think common sense is totally MIA in this post.
You’re a journalist Josh, why don’t you call up your local precinct to see what the police chief thinks about the idea.
I’m not a journalist. I’m an attorney. And I’ve never found police chiefs to be de facto sages on matters of civil liberty.
Trusting Andrew Sullivan’s opinion on what constitutes hackdom is like getting marriage advice from Britney Spears.
I’m not a journalist. I’m an attorney. And I’ve never found police chiefs to be de facto sages on matters of civil liberty.
I wonder why the Gun Bill never got out of the House Committee on Militia, Police and Public Safety? Possibly because Virginia’s police chiefs, those “sages on matters of civil liberty,” as you call them, went bonkers?
Do you think Virginia Tech might have thrown in against the bill, too? I mean, how good for business is it to advertise “armed dorms” to parents around the country already nervous about their kid leaving home for the first time?
It’s your blog. You can limit this particular discussion to an issue of civil liberties if you want, but it’s my feeling that the discussion will be lacking.
The question at hand is the public safety one, not the civil liberty one (which is itself a perfectly good question, of course — it’s just important to keep one’s arguments straight). But even so, I don’t know that police chiefs should be treated as having any special insight into these kinds of public safety questions, either.
I don’t think anyone is arguing to let any student who wants one to keep a gun in his dorm room. The reflexive cringe that thought induces in most people is justified by the peculiarities of campus life–lots of not-fully-mature individuals living in close quarters with overconsumption of alcohol a common occurrence.
But I think IU’s policy (mentioned by Josh above) of letting authorized individuals keep and bear arms on campus is a good one. It’s no guarantee that a shooting spree would be stopped, but it’s a good balance of rights and public safety. Authorized individuals might include concealed carry permit holders, ROTC officers and students who served in the military, etc.
Eric
Virginia’s House Bill 1572, the one referenced in Josh’s post, would have given college students and employees the right to “carry handguns on campus,” so some here may be arguing for allowing students to keep one in his dorm room, I’m not sure.
philosopher
Considering your point that there is an “absence of actual data about the consequences of such policies,” I would think it would be germane to hear from the law enforcement professsionals who would have to develop strategies to address those consequences, nevertheless.
that should have read:
so some here may be arguing for allowing students to keep them in their dorm rooms, I’m not sure.
Sister Mauriella would roll over in her grave if she saw that…
In arguments like this, you can usually throw out the extremes on either side. The outright ban is ridiculous. Someone adequately practiced in marksmanship and armed would have come in really handy down there yesterday. On the other extreme, you can toss aside the “everyone should be armed” argument that was flying around some of the talk shows yesterday. Having some percentage of the crowd, grimacing and eyes closed, squeezing off rounds, wouldn’t have been very helpful. Remember, people who shoot for a living (soldiers) kill their own sometimes by mistake in the heat of battle. Even a lifelong shooter can mistake a buddy’s face for a bird. So yes–allow concealed carry. But only for those who can show competence.
Couldn’t this just as easily be designated a public health issue? I certainly see the logic in answering the question “What do we do when crazy people get guns” with the answer “Have citizens with more guns kill the crazy person.”
But, seems to me that a better solution (if potentially infeasible) is to stop or contain the crazy in the first place.
And from the “no new laws… enforce the ones we have” department… Maybe he stole the gun. If not, is there any restriction on selling guns to non-citizens? If so, punish the seller. If not, why not?
The problem is that we don’t always know who has intermittent explosive disorder or antisocial personality disorder. It seems that people who are trained in the use of firearms are as likely to be burdened by these disorders are anyone else, more needs to be done to screen people with such disorders before they’re allowed to join the military forces or buy a gun. In fact, families with a history of these disorders should be banned from carrying guns. The general phenomenon of “going postal” has not had a mental disorder universally associated with it, so there are no good risk factors for being prone to such behavior, other than being a young male and having a very bad day.
So it seems to me that if you increase the number of young men carrying guns, you increase the number of incidents like this that occur.
Unfortunately, the old psychology consisting of “some people are good, some are bad, arm the good guys because they outnumber the bad guys” is just to simplistic to effectively apply.
To me, the public health issue very much outweighs the civil liberties issue. The Second Amendment was meant as a right of “the people” – as opposed to government – to bear arms (bear arms has a distinctly military connontation), and it is the one amendment that simply went out of date as technology and society changed. It’s time to reform that part of the Constitution.
JohnS–actually, HB1572 was specifically tailored to allow students *with concealed handgun permits* to carry their weapons on campus. Additionally, it allowed colleges to prohibit storage of weapons in dormitories.
http://leg1.state.va.us/cgi-bin/legp504.exe?ses=061&typ=bil&val=hb1572
Eric,
Thank you. And Va law says you must be 21 or older to get such a permit.
“So it seems to me that if you increase the number of young men carrying guns, you increase the number of incidents like this that occur.”
This is exactly the sort of armchair reasoning I was advocating against, above.
“Considering your point that there is an “absence of actual data about the consequences of such policies,” I would think it would be germane to hear from the law enforcement professsionals who would have to develop strategies to address those consequences, nevertheless.”
Maybe. But I don’t see why we should expect them to have any particular insights as to these sorts of policy issues, any more than a physician who has no training in epidemiology will have any special insights into policy questions about immunization. They might understand what to do with someone who’s got a disease, but the larger questions about social programs to prevent their spread will draw on a different type of expertise.
Fair enough, philosopher. Still, it’s difficult for me not to engage in armchair reasoning at times like this, if only to try to make some sense of senselessness.
It is probably not entirely fair to say that rates of gun ownership are directly correlated with gun violence, but it is fair to say that most crimes like this are committed by young males.