out of control misconceptions

In some of my mindless stumbling about the internet today, I happened across this piece by Patrick Dorfer, hosted at We The People Politics. Patrick is a senior at Mount Saint Mary College, and the site was created “to provide an opinion, a perspective, and a rationale for anyone in search of reason in a time of great political debate, so that every citizen can become more informed about the issues that affect our country and our world,” to quote its “about us” page. The website is not updated terribly often, so I cannot say a great deal about it, but I will say this much for Patrick – he is horribly misguided.
I am honestly going to skip most of his article, unless I have some extra snark left over by the end of my currently-planned typing – really, it just repeats most of the standard talking points of the anti-gun-rights lobby over and over and over again. Instead, I am going to focus on his five primary points, which are just cribbed from two hoplophobic organizations: the Students for Gun-Free Schools and Protest Easy Guns (the disgusting blood-dancers responsible for the 32-person “lie-ins” in “rememberance” of the Virginia Tech murders – can you get any more morbidly offensive?). Cannot say as though I am terribly surprised – original thought has long since abandoned most colleges in the United States.
At any rate, off we go (and boy do we go… this post got a little larger than I had initially planned).

Concealed handguns would detract from a healthy learning environment.

Ok, the immediate question is “Why?” Simply saying something does not immediately make it so (though politicians’ lives would be so much the easier if it did). The entire nature of concealed carry is that the firearm remains concealed – in fact, in some states, you can be cited, fined, arrested, or even have your license revoked should your firearm so much as “print”, much less actually be exposed. So if the firearm is remaining concealed, and no one except the wearer is aware of it (excluding those s/he may have told, granted), then what is the problem?
Ah, yes. If we go to check one of the “sources” Patrick uses, we come to the core of the problem:

In order to foster a healthy learning environment at America’s colleges and universities, it is critical that students and faculty feel safe on campus. If concealed carry were allowed on America’s campuses, there is no doubt that many students would feel uncomfortable about not knowing whether their professors and/or fellow students were carrying handguns.

What undiluted nonsense. Forgive me for the brief profanity, but screw “feelings”. I do not give a flying squirrel’s left ear if people “feel” safe – I want them to actually have the opportunity to be safe, or at least more safe. Feeling safe, when that feeling is based on a frameless, supportless facade, is completely meaningless, and more than a little dangerous. When you feel safe, you will let your guard down, you will be less observant, you will be more submissive, your reaction time is decreased drastically… the list goes on and on. And if there is anything that the shootings at Virginia Tech and every other school and “gun-free zone” has taught us, it is that “feeling” safe is completely and utterly meaningless.
And, to repeat a previous transgression, screw “uncomfortableness”. I am “uncomfortable” now that students at colleges around America are left without means to defend themselves. I would wager that some of those same students feel just as “uncomfortable”, if not moreso (in fact, Students for Concealed Carry on Campus now claims over 30,000 members – students, faculty members, parents, and concerned citizens). So why is it that the “uncomfortableness” of those who choose to live in fear should outweigh the “uncomfortableness” of those who would choose to defend themselves, if capable?
Oh, and here is a scary thought – you do not know now whether professors and/or students are carrying handguns. As previously mentioned, the operative word in the phrase “concealed handgun” is “concealed“, and I can guarantee you that there are people out there who carry on a daily basis, and no one would be the wiser – ever. I can equally guarantee you that there is at least one professor and at least one student out there who consider their own safety to be more important than their jobs or education, and are currently carrying to their respective colleges… and I certainly do not blame them. So explain to me how permitting concealed carry on campus would change the uncertainty of whether or not someone is carrying a firearm in a concealed manner? Yeah, it is against the schools’ rules. Yeah, it might even be against the law. So are underage drinking, and drugs, and everything else you and I and anyone with a clue know happens at colleges.

More guns on campus would create additional risk for students.

So I guess college campuses across the country will be outlawing alcohol on campus, passing rules banning vehicles from campus, requiring students to hand over their drivers’ licenses upon enrollment (they can have them back when they graduate), installing metal detectors and security guards at every entrance to campus and any buildings, and doing a host of other things that will mitigate any possible “additional risk” for students.
Yeah. Sure they will.
After all, alcohol will be a contributing factor in countless deaths, injuries, assaults, rapes, burlgaries, accidents, and God alone knows what else over the coming year, and yet very few colleges across the country are “dry”, despite a considerable portion of those incidents having been committed by underage students. Furthermore, over 5000 college-aged individuals will die this year in car accidents, and another 400,000+ will be seriously injured. And yet, for some reason, I do not see any major pushes to move the driving age later, to limit the driving privileges of college students, or anything of the sort. And, finally, most college campuses in America are open – anyone can walk onto the property, and, depending on the security systems installed at the campuses, into the buildings. And, considering the densely-populated areas that a lot of colleges are found in, that “anyone” could include murderers, rapists, thieves, burglars, and who knows who else… and yet no one is screaming about securing our campuses.
Instead, they are crapping their pants over the statistical improbability of people randomly/negligently shooting one another for no good reason… you know, like hoplophobes have been screaming about for years. This, in reality, is nothing more than an extension of the “blood in the streets”, “Wild West”, and other specious arguments that those organizations and individuals are so fond of, describing possibilities that still have not come to pass.
Accidents do happen. Life is uncertain. But you just like you cannot legislate away stupidity, you cannot legislate safety – Murphy always shows up, entropy always wins, and you never know what will happen. But limiting my ability to defend myself just so you can fool yourself into “feeling” unprovably safe… that, ladies and gentlemen, is wrong.

Shooters will not be deterred by concealed carry permit holders.

Well, I can tell you this much: “No guns permitted here” certainly ain’t workin’ either. History is replete with criminals and murderers ignoring “gun-free zones”, to the detriment of the unarmed, defenseless occupants and victims within.
For the sake of good will, I will actually grant the hoplophobes this point (despite evidence obviously to the contrary). Surprising, eh? But I am going somewhere with this… The problem is, deterrence is not the only factor.
Imagine how much lower the bodycount would have been at Virginia Tech if a student in one of the classrooms the murderer visited was armed. Imagine a situation where valiant professors did not have to act as body shields, but instead could keep the murderer from killing any more innocents.
You see, deterrence is not everything – it is a damned good start, that is for sure, but if deterrence fails, you have to be able to back it up. And if you are already deterring some criminals with the threat of an armed school population, there are at least a few students in that population who would be able and hopefully willing to back up the promise with action.
I am not trying to say that every mass shooting situation can be shortened or disrupted by the presence of armed and willing individuals – take the recent shooting at the Unitarian Universalist Church in Knoxville. But there are some that can be, and those alone should be more than sufficient weight to provide stronger reasons to allow students and professors to carry firearms in a concealed manner while they are at school. Furthermore, if there is even one mass-murderer who thought twice about attacking a school because he knew at least some of the population was armed, that, my friends, is distinctly a victory. As it is now, every single nutcase, copy-catter, and whackjob knows that college campuses (along with a disturbingly large number of other locations) are nothing more than a shooting gallery, and past events have certainly proved them right.

Concealed carry permit holders are not always “law-abiding” citizens.

Ah, yes, now we are going back to the comment made by Daniel Vice, a senior attorney at the Brady Campaign – “Just getting a concealed carry permit, all that means is that you haven’t committed a crime yet.”
Well, to begin with, concealed carry permit holders have to start out as law-abiding gun owners, otherwise they would never get past the background checks required by most states. That said, the background check system is not perfect (especially because it is based entirely on a disfunctional, ineffective, and hole-ridden judicial system), and criminals have been able to procure licenses due to failures in the system – on the order of about half a percent in Florida, for example. Half a percent. And hoplophobes are decrying this as a “faulty system”. Guess what folks – ain’t no system perfect. Computer bugs happen. People forget to enter data. People forget to delete data. Have you, for example, seen a copy of your credit report recently? Granted, I would be tremendously happier if the background check system were considerably more accurate than it is, but half a percentage point failure rate? That is almost statistically irrelevent.
So how about law-abiding concealed carry permit holders after they receive their permits?
Well, one of Patrick’s sources makes a big deal about how Texas concealed carry permit holders were arrested for 5314 crimes between 1996 and 2001. Honestly, I could not find those numbers, but I did find a different set, compiled in 1999. This information does, indeed, indicate that concealed carry permit holders were arrested for 672 felonies and 2041 misdemeanors, coming to 2713 total offenses. However, only 135 of those felony arrests resulted in convictions, and only 538 of those misdemeanor arrests resulted in convictions, totaling to about a 4:1 arrest-to-conviction ratio.
You see, folks, this is still America, last I checked, and there is still that whole, annoying “innocent until proven guilty” thing (I blame the 5th, 6th, and 14th Amendments, as well as Coffin v. United States). And, in light of that presumption of innocent, an arrest, and only an arrest, means precisely squat. Nada. Zip. Zilch. Nil. Accidental and erroneous arrests are made in America on a daily, if not hourly, basis, and it is really no fault of the police. People see things, think one thing happened, and then the true (or as close as we are going to get to “true”) story comes out in the course of the court trial, and no convictions are handed down. However, without a conviction, an arrest means absolutely nothing. Hell, depending on what state you are in, if you were to shoot someone in an absolutely clear-cut case of self-defense, you stand a pretty damned good chance of being arrested. After all, you shot someone. Does that mean you committed a crime? Of course not. And yet here the hoplophobes are, gleefully dancing in the blood of murdered innocents, and warping and twisting statistics and words to meet their fear-filled desires. Nothing new.
Oh, and for the record, those 673 convictions totaled to approximately two tenths of one percent of the concealed carry permit holders in Texas at the time (1.62% of about 20 million). Yeah, that is significant (yes, it is still a problem, but not the system-shattering one it is made out to be).
On a related note, a study performed by the National Center for Policy Analysis shows that Texans who exercise their right to carry firearms are 5.7 times less likely to be arrested for violent offenses, 14 times less likely to be arrested for non-violent offenses, and 1.4 times less likely to be arrested for murder. The simple truth is that the vast majority of us who go to the time, effort, and cost of pursuing and achieving our concealed carry permits are not simply going to throw away that opportunity for the rest of our lives over something nonsensical. There are exceptions, but there always are in life – deal with it already.

Concealed carry permit holders are not required to have any law enforcement training.

And, for a third time, forgive me, but this comment rates a “No shit, dumbarse!” exclamation. Why? Because concealed carry permit holders are not law enforcement officers. In this instance, I am going to rely on the words of Jeffrey Snyder, mostly because he debunks this comment far better than I could ever hope to, and partially because this argument is so asinine that it really does not warrant much attention:

Permit holders need concern themselves with only one thing: protecting themselves from a sudden, violent assault that threatens life or grievous bodily injury. Rape, robbery, and attempted murder are not typically actions rife with ambiguity or subtlety, requiring special powers of observation, great book-learning, or a stint at the police academy to discern. When a man pulls a knife on a woman and says, ‘You’re coming with me,’ her judgment that a crime is being committed is not likely to be in error.

Police, by contrast, do not carry arms solely for the purpose of defending themselves, but also for the purpose of enforcing the law. They deliberately inject themselves into potentially dangerous and violent situations, responding to calls for assistance, investigating crimes, intervening in domestic violence, and making arrests.

Simply put, if someone walks into a classroom and shoots the first person he sees, you do not really need “law enforcement training” to realize that you should probably disable this murderer before he gets around to you. ‘Nuff said.
Alright folks, now that the five primary points of this academics screed have been more or less shamble-ized, it is time to get down to brass tacks. What I am and a large number of other people are proposing is not that radical. Professors and most students (the age of concealed carry permit eligibility depends on the state) are already legally capable of carrying firearms in a concealed manner. In fact, when some of them walk across the magical demarcation separating “college campus” from “real world”, some of those same professors and students might actually carry a firearm on their person in a concealed manner to the grocery, to the gas station, to their house, to their neighbors’ houses, to Wal-Mart… to wherever. The same exact people could and possibly do carry firearms outside of school… why should they have to disarm themselves when they are at school? What difference is there?
None at all. But there is a difference to murderers, because they have realized that college campuses across the country are defenseless. The students are defenseless. The professors and academics are defenseless. Most school’s security officers are effectively defenseless, being unarmed and basically only able to call the police. And many students and professors have paid the ultimate price for that imposed defenselessness. Why? So people can have a vapid and meaningless “feeling” of safety? Yeah, that would really be a comfort if I was confronted by an armed and determined murderer with no recourse save my own hands, feet, and head.
Patrick, I know you mean well (at least I hope so), but the road to Hell is paved with good intentions. Disarming people for their “safety” is but one of the many cobblestones along that particular path, and I would just as soon not have to travel it with you.
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