It’s college search time in the Pandora household, and while we compared various universities by programs we didn’t expect to have to factor guns into the equation.
Arizona House Bill 2001 which was filed mid-December would allow faculty to “possess a concealed firearm on the grounds of a community college … a provisional community college … or a university … if the faculty member possesses a valid permit.”
A second bill, House Bill 2014, introduced in late December would effectively stop the governing board of any university, college or community college to “enact or enforce any policy or rule that prohibits the possession of a concealed weapon by a person who possesses a valid permit…”
Scratch schools in Arizona off our list. And it’s not just about guns (although that’s a big part). It’s about the trigger-happy, doomsday talk emitting from the state.
But the bills’ sponsor, State Rep. Jack Harper, remained undeterred. “With four hours of range time on gun safety, four hours of classroom time on gun laws of Arizona, an FBI background check, I feel that faculty members with a [Concealed Carry Weapon permit] should no longer be sitting ducks on Arizona’s colleges and university campuses,” the Republican said in a statement on January 20. [emphasis mine]
Wow! I guess without everyone packing heat Arizona colleges and universities are dangerous places. Talk about a Public Relations nightmare. Sounds like you’d be a fool to send your children to these colleges and universities if these laws don’t pass. And while I’m certain this vision is an unintended consequence of the “everybody should be armed” crowd, it does create the impression that Arizona institutes of higher learning are very dangerous places and the way to make them safer is by adding more guns.
Granted, not everyone in Arizona agrees with this approach, but it seems that most of the lawmakers do. Guns in bars? What could possibly go wrong?
Not to mention that the vision of the Hero Gunslinger is a Myth. (read the entire article!)
It defies logic, as this case shows once again, that an average citizen with a gun is going to disarm a crazed killer. For one thing, these kinds of shootings happen far too suddenly for even the quickest marksman to get a draw. For another, your typical gun hobbyist lacks training in how to react in a violent scrum.
Exactly. So, for those of you packing heat please don’t try and save me. In fact, you’ll probably end up hurt… or shooting the wrong person.
At least two recent studies show that more guns equals more carnage to innocents. One survey by the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine found that guns did not protect those who had them from being shot in an assault — just the opposite. Epidemiologists at Penn looked at hundreds of muggings and assaults. What they found was that those with guns were four times more likely to be shot when confronted by an armed assailant than those without guns. The unarmed person, in other words, is safer.
Other studies have found that states with the highest rates of gun ownership have much greater gun death rates than those where only a small percentage of the population is armed. So, Hawaii, where only 9.7 percent of residents own guns, has the lowest gun death rate in the country, while Louisiana, where 45 percent of the public is armed, has the highest.
More gun ownership = more deaths by gun. Color me shocked.
And it’s a shame that we’re going to have to consider rates of gun ownership and gun laws when selecting a university. And before somebody has a fit. It is our right to rule these states out, just like you can add these school to your list.