A victim's father speaks out on guns on campus

A trio of college professors, obviously using a research grant paid for by the National Rifle Association, published an op-ed article in the Dallas Morning News last month supporting the carrying of concealed weapons on campus. If you are interested in reading their drivel, you can find it here. But what I found even more interesting was a response to the article written by someone who identified himself only as victimsdad. Here is what he had to say:

While I hesitate to question my academic colleagues who are recognized authorities on the issues upon which they speak, I would challenge you to re-evaluate your position on the guns on campus issue. Based on your various academic fields which are not directly related to public safety, violence, or criminology, I would have to say that your opinions, while as valid as anyone's, are not definitive or particularly expert on the issue and you might do well to yield to other, more experienced voices.

Still, I think it is important to address your position, seeing as it has been seized upon by the supporters of guns on campus who see you as some sort of authorities. No matter that for every academic who supports your position, I and others can produce fifty or more who will unequivocally oppose your position, they are not getting the media attention you are getting right now because we represent the default argument. You, for reasons that I'm sure you believe in wholeheartedly, are bucking the tide and are getting noticed as a result.

I will even make a prediction that, in the coming months, you will be approached, wined and dined, jetted around the country, and get lots of free range time by various gun factions. They will trumpet your position in order to bolster their own. Enjoy yourself, but watch your back. You will be making a deal with the devil, several, actually, and it could turn out badly. I, myself, have been physically and emotionally assaulted, threatened, and vilified by them on many occasions. I hope you know what you are getting into. These people do have guns, and many of them are simply not particularly stable or well-socialized as was recently proven in Pennsylvania.

So to my point. Not everyone wants to live in a world of paranoia and fear. As a college professor for the past 25 years and a victim of gun violence myself (my seventeen year old son was shot and killed during a fast food restaurant robbery), I would not work on a campus that allowed concealed carry. Virtually every student I know would avoid going to a school with such a policy. I would not attend an athletic event or patronize a university that had such a policy. I simply do not want to live in that world. The presence of guns does not make everyone feel safer, especially the millions of us who are already victims of gun violence. Do your own poll. Even in Texas I'm sure the numbers would be significant.

It is unfathomable to many people in this country that gun owners are so attached to their guns in the first place. There are gun owners, and then there are gun owners. In my interactions with this group over the past ten years, I have found the most extreme, rabid, ideologues of the lot range from borderline mentally unstable to full-blown sociopaths. I kid you not. To not be able to care and have compassion for humanity -- innocent men, women and children who have been gunned down -- is not normal. Their superficial and insincere sympathies are insulting to us as victims. Once they say "I'm sorry for what happened to you, but..." their credibility is gone and they move to a place that is without merit in an issue that matters so much to us. To care about inanimate objects that give a false sense of security in the face of a perceived constant threat is simply not how the human brain is supposed to work.

Yet, this small minority is making quite a mess of things. Those of us who have lost family members to gun violence are doing all we can to make a difference while the supporters of guns and (dare I say by logical extension) gun violence use hyperbole, extremism, lies, paranoia, and belligerence to, wittingly or unwittingly, protect the gun industry's profits, nothing more.

This problem should be solved rather easily. Other countries have done so. Every US state and most major US cities have annual gun death rates greater than the entire nation of Canada. That is nothing to be proud of. With all the guns in this country we should be the safest nation, not the most dangerous. Texas alone should be safer than any other state, yet it is not. The gun supporters' logic clearly fails on this simple point. We have catered to the gun industry for decades. Look at the legacy we now have. It's time to move in the other direction so that others do not become like the Virginia Tech families and like me. It is a horrible fate.

You will note several things about those who are the most extreme supporters of what they call "gun rights," if such a thing could exist. They religiously protect the makers and sellers of these weapons while violating their own mantra, "enforce the laws we already have." Then why aren't they helping weed out the bad gun dealers? Why aren't they working to prevent straw purchases? Why aren't they supporting efforts to interdict inter- and intrastate gun runners? They're all breaking the law, but at every turn the gun owning community works tirelessly to prevent us from enforcing these laws. It is not being consistent nor rational and they are not being good citizens. These are the people you are aligning yourself with in your position.

Next, let's get some background out of the way. The multi-billion dollar a year gun industry created this problem by paying legislators to vote to ensure that they could sell guns to anyone at anytime for any purpose. This is clearly documented in many sources, including those who were instrumental in these practices who have seen the error of their ways and have exposed the unethical behavior of the gun industry. The industry hid behind its own twisted, historically inaccurate, and rather illiterate interpretation of the Second Amendment that only coincidentally supported its agenda. Yet they will take advantage of it to no end as it affords them the "right" to make money. Needless to say, by comparison, the First Amendment affords no such right to the press or media.

Effectively preventing killers from getting guns is the only rational response to this spate of tragedies. Of course, virtually none of the most recent high profile and deadly multiple shootings have been carried out by gang bangers or common criminals but by what have been called for years, "law-abiding gun owners." Turns out this demographic can't be trusted after all, despite teleological claims to the contrary. So, now the call is for us to all own guns so that we can protect ourselves from "lawful gun owners," too. Not only is this offensive but ludicrous.

You cite without reference several times, "peer-reviewed" sources that prove somehow a negative, i.e. that carrying concealed weapons somehow depresses criminal activity. In point of fact, no such "peer-reviewed" studies exist. If you are referring to Mr. Kleck's and Mr. Lott's rather shoddy and discredited research, the only peer review they received was being welcomed with open arms by the gun community who has since elevated their specious claims to the level of mythic status. If their research had been subjected to a real peer-review in a more rigorous arena, say, breast cancer research, they would be laughed out of the building. Furthermore, why do you ignore other scholarly studies by those like Jon Vernick, Garen Wintemute, David Hemenway, Jens Ludwig, and the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy that just as clearly demonstrate just the opposite using more rigorous statistical methodologies? You may not agree with them, but it does not lend credibility to your position to ignore them.

Finally, I would have to question how you view human nature when it comes to supporting such a response to school violence. Not one professor, student, administrator, or campus security officer that I have talked to since Columbine or Virginia Tech is in favor of allowing concealed carry holders to carry guns on campus. I can understand the gun culture's lack of understanding about the contemporary college/university environment and human nature, but not yours.

In order to try to reach a conclusion about this issue, let's look just at the logistics for a second. Leave behind the ideology. You should already know that colleges and universities already take campus safety and security very, very seriously. Already, (sadly) many schools have sworn and armed police forces. Virginia Tech does. Theirs is actually larger than many small towns. In fact, the biggest problem at Tech was not the lack of an armed militia of students and faculty, it was the unfortunate conclusion reached by the first officers on the scene. They thought the crime was over. Furthermore, there is some question as to the administrative response that inhibited the investigation and further tactical response to the initial shootings.

This was a criminal incident that re-defined tactical response, much like the 9/11 tragedy. It hadn't really been done before and no one thought that the shooter would continue the rampage. It was not a pattern that anyone recognized. We know better now and many policies have changed as a result, just as they changed after Columbine. Hard lessons to learn, but we learned it the only way we know how, through experience. Now, there is much less likelihood that another Virginia Tech can occur simply because of readiness and preparedness, much as there is far less chance of anyone successfully storming an airliner cockpit post-9/11.

As a result of the Tech shootings, many changes have been made to address this type of crime in the future. Many of them we as faculty are probably not even aware of. Schools that do not have armed police officers, like mine, are often in urban communities where a squad car is rarely more than a minute or two away. I feel safe there and yes, seconds count, but even if you have one hundred students on a campus of 5000 carrying concealed, and that would be a very high percentage indeed even in Texas, you know that the students and faculty are compartmentalized in their own classrooms or dorms for most of the day. The chance that they will be in a position to respond any faster than campus security on patrol is minuscule. The chance that the shooter will walk into their classroom is even more remote. Could they be in the right place at the right time? Maybe, but not very likely. Even if they are, will they get off a shot before they are killed? President Reagan was shot, along with Jim Brady and others, while surrounded by a bevy of Secret Service agents, probably the most highly trained personal protection force on the planet, by an insane man who was still able to get off every round in his small revolver that he had never before fired. He was not in a "gun-free zone," to be sure.

And so, the only relevant question is this: With all the safe moments that occur every day on our campuses, what will be the result of legalizing the carrying and possession of firearms in this environment? To that, those of us who know college students well can only answer with two words -- Beer and Hormones. Should we increase campus security and develop effective policies to mitigate crime? Absolutely. Should we attempt to do this by (and I'll even use the gun side rhetoric here) allowing concealed carry holders to carry their lawfully allowed firearms in the classroom, in the stadium, and about the campus, AND to allow them to possess and store these firearms in their dorm rooms and residence halls? Absolutely not.

The larger and more complex questions that need to be asked here are these: Once the novelty wears off, how secure will those firearms be? How often will people really carry their guns to class and around campus? What kinds of personal, institutional and financial responses will it result in from those who do not want firearms on campus or resist the initiative? What problems will these gun owners, or those with access to their guns, try to solve in a fit of passion or poor judgment? What campus based regulations will have to be reviewed and instated to deal with this infringement of their self-determination and traditional independence?

These are complications that far outweigh the claimed "benefits" to the campus community. Campus regulations alone could be so tough that no one except off duty police officers taking night classes would even be able to jump through all the hoops necessary to be one of the concealed carry chosen few. Glib responses and "solutions" don't go nearly far enough when weighing the costs and benefits nor the administrative response. We can see pretty clearly that this is, once again, yet another way of infiltrating guns into our daily lives in order to sell more guns and make more profit. I am terribly sorry that you have been sucked into this fanatical morass and lent your voices to it.

Furthermore, I believe that experienced gun owners who support this argument or model simply do not understand the mentality of the college student as gun owner. By federal law, one can't even buy a handgun from a licensed dealer until the age of 21. They can, in Texas, possess a handgun at a younger age, but it must be obtained from an unlicensed dealer or as a gift. In other states, the law is more stringent. Now, that can be lot of trouble to go through to get your concealed weapon and I think it's appropriate to conclude that only a very, very small number of college bound gun enthusiasts would even fall into this category, though I will admit there will be some.

Setting the underage minority aside for the moment, let's say that a typical student has just turned 21 and wants to become part of the student protection squad. That means that they are most likely a senior, perhaps a junior. As you are no doubt well aware, seniors are the smallest undergraduate student population on campus and often don't even take classes with first and second year students. You could be a graduate student or an older student, but this model still leaves the vast majority, that is to say virtually all of the student body unprotected at any given time, doesn't it? So, the bad guy doesn't attack upper level courses and sticks to large 101 lecture classes populated by first and second years. People still die.

Teachers, being academics and extremely intelligent people, I find have an abhorrence of violence and an aversion to weapons of any type. Granted, some don't, but not very many. No doubt, you fall into that category, but as I said, there are not many of you. Not only that, but they can be extremely casual about things that are not critical to their field of study. Add to that the fact that the teacher is likely, typically, to be the first one shot in the classroom and arming them makes no sense at all. One cannot defend against ambush. Even the staunchest gun owner has agreed with me on that.

Now back to our 21 year old gun owner. He/she buys a gun and gets a concealed carry permit after taking a training or "safety" course (many of which are a joke when it comes to the various state concealed carry requirements) and they now think they can defend themselves and their classmates. In truth, they are nothing more than a danger to themselves and others. Without police level training, one is useless and dangerous in this sort of crisis. In college there is little time for going to the range and keeping up your skills. You know as well as I do that students have lives. They have much better things to do than drill holes in little paper targets during their spare time, because they don't have any spare time.

Therefore, these people will have virtually no experience or training, nor do they have time to practice. But they will believe, wrongly, that even they can be heroes. In a crisis, they'll be dead. Note that many of these shooters are now wearing bulletproof vests. Even the police have trouble taking them out. The young vigilante squad will be dead, dead, dead.

Guns on campus is a foolish idea promoted by people who know virtually nothing about campus life and culture and who are fanatically bound to their paranoid philosophy of life. We need for them to stop trying to pull us into their mad darkness and instead work with us in the light to effectively keep guns out of the hands of criminals in the first place.

Actually, as I think this through, a far more effective security measure would be to simply install locks on classroom doors that can be actuated from inside. I can't remember the last time I saw a turn button lock on the inside of a classroom door. Keyed locks on the outside are the rule, but the ability of teachers or students to secure a door from the inside is rarely afforded. This simple measure would have likely saved the vast majority of lives at Virginia Tech given the evidence presented.

The bottom line is simple. It is not too much to ask, nor is it controversial to insist that criminals should not be able to buy guns easily and shoot up a college classroom. Not controversial at all. Let's start there. If Texas has the temerity to be the first state to pass a guns on campus legislation, all I can say is that those of us who have gone before will be here for the victims. That's more than I can say for the gun industry and its noisesome supporters.

NOTE: I am trying to learn more about "victimsdad," and if I learn anything, I will pass it along.