Answers to the Most Common Arguments
Against Concealed Carry on College
Campuses
Argument:
"Guns on campus would lead to an escalation in violent crime."
Answer:
"Since the fall semester of 2006, state law has allowed licensed
individuals to carry concealed handguns on the campuses of all nine public
colleges in Utah. Concealed carry has
been allowed at Colorado State University (Fort Collins, CO) for more than five
years and at Blue Ridge Community College (Weyers Cave, VA) for more than thirteen
years. After allowing concealed carry
on campus for a combined total of more than seventy semesters, none of these
eleven schools have seen a single resulting incident of gun violence, a single
gun accident, or a single gun theft.
Likewise, none of the forty “right-to-carry” states
have seen an increased rate of gun violence since legalizing concealed carry,
despite the fact that licensed citizens in those states regularly carry
concealed handguns in places like office buildings, movie theaters, grocery
stores, shopping malls, restaurants, churches, banks, etc. Numerous studies*, including studies by
University of Maryland senior research scientist John Lott, University of
Georgia professor David Mustard, engineering statistician William Sturdevant,
and various state agencies, show that concealed handgun license holders are
five times less likely than non-license holders to be arrested for violent
crimes."
*“Crime, Deterrence,
and Right-to-Carry Concealed Handguns,” John Lott and David Mustard, Journal of Legal Studies (v.26,
no.1, pages 1-68, January 1997);
“An Analysis of the Arrest Rate of Texas Concealed Handgun License Holders as
Compared to the Arrest Rate of the Entire Texas Population,” William E.
Sturdevant, September 1, 2000;
Florida Department of Justice statistics, 1998; Florida Department
of State, “Concealed Weapons/Firearms License Statistical Report,” 1998; Texas Department of Public Safety and the U.S.
Census Bureau, reported in San Antonio
Express-News, September 2000; Texas Department of Corrections data,
1996-2000, compiled by the Texas State Rifle Association
Argument:
"Guns on campus would distract from the learning environment."
Answer:
"Ask anyone in a concealed carry state when he or she last noticed another
person carrying a concealed handgun.
The word 'concealed' is in there for a reason. Concealed handguns would no more distract college students from
learning than they currently distract moviegoers from enjoying movies or office
workers from doing their jobs.
“In most states with ‘shall-issue’ concealed carry laws, the rate of concealed carry is about 1%. That means that one out of a hundred people is licensed to carry a concealed handgun. So, statistically speaking, a packed 300-seat movie theater contains three individuals legally carrying concealed handguns, and a shopping mall crowded with 1,000 shoppers contains ten individuals legally carrying concealed handguns. Students who aren't too afraid to attend movies or go shopping and who aren't distracted from learning by the knowledge that a classmate might be illegally carrying a firearm shouldn't be distracted from learning by the knowledge that a classmate might be legally carrying a firearm.”
Argument:
"Colleges are too crowded to safely allow the carry of concealed
weapons."
Answer:
"Colleges are no more crowded than movie theaters and office buildings,
where concealed handgun license holders are already allowed to carry their
firearms. The widespread passage of
concealed handgun laws has not led to a spate of shootings or gun thefts at
movie theaters and office buildings."
Argument:
"A person with a gun could ‘snap’ and go on a killing spree."
Answer:
"Contrary to popular myth, most psychiatric professionals agree that the
notion of a previously sane, well-adjusted person simply ‘snapping’ and
becoming violent is not supported by case evidence. A person’s downward spiral toward violence is usually accompanied
by numerous warning signs."
Argument:
"A dangerous person might jump someone who is carrying a gun, take the
gun, and use it to do harm."
Answer:
"Even assuming this hypothetical dangerous person knew that an individual
was carrying a concealed handgun, which is unlikely, there are much easier ways
for a criminal to acquire a firearm than by assaulting an armed
individual."
Argument:
"Dorms are notoriously vulnerable to theft. It would be too easy for someone to steal an unattended firearm
from a dorm."
Answer:
"The vulnerability of dorms to theft does not necessitate a campus-wide
ban on concealed carry by licensed individuals. There are numerous other options, from community gun lockers to
small, private gun safes that can be secured to walls, floors, bed frames,
etc."
NOTE:
On most campuses, very few students of legal age to obtain a concealed
handgun license still live in dorms. Even at the
University of Texas—a major university with over 50,000 students—a quick
comparison of campus housing statistics and concealed handgun licensing
statistics reveals that there would likely be no more than ten to twenty
concealed handgun license holders living in on-campus housing.
Argument:
"It’s possible that a gun might go off by accident."
Answer:
"Accidental discharges are very rare—particularly because modern firearms
feature multiple safety features and because a handgun’s trigger is typically
not exposed when it is concealed—and only a small fraction of accidental
discharges result in injury. SCCC feels
that it is wrong to deny citizens a right simply because that right is
accompanied by a negligible risk."
NOTE:
Only about 2% of all firearm-related deaths in the U.S. are
accidental. A person is five times more
likely to accidentally drown, five times more likely to accidentally die in a
fire, 29 times more likely to die in an accidental fall, and 32 times more
likely to die from accidental poisoning than to die from an accidental gunshot
wound.
ADDITIONAL NOTE: The
accidental discharge that occurred in the cockpit of a U.S. Airways jet, on
March 22, 2008, occurred during the application of a poorly designed trigger
lock, which FAA regulations require be in place during landing.
Argument:
"It’s unlikely that allowing concealed carry on college campuses could
help prevent a Virginia Tech-style massacre because most college students are
too young to obtain a concealed handgun license."
Answer:
"Nineteen of the thirty-two victims of the Virginia Tech massacre were
over the age of twenty-one (the minimum age requirement to obtain a concealed
handgun license in
Argument:
"Self-defense training is as effective as a handgun against an armed
assailant."
Answer:
"If you're going to try to manually disarm an assailant, you'd better be
within an arm's length of him, be standing on firm ground, not have any
obstacles between you and him, and be in relatively good physical condition. If the assailant is standing four feet away,
you're probably out of luck. If you're
sitting in a chair or lying on the floor, you're probably out of luck. If there is a desk between you and the
assailant, you're probably out of luck.
And if you're elderly or disabled, you're probably out of luck. Even a well-trained martial arts expert is
no match for a bullet fired from eight feet away. Why should honest, law abiding citizens be asked to undergo years
of training, in order to master an inferior method of self-defense?"
Argument:
"Colleges are emotionally volatile environments. Allowing guns on campus will turn classroom debates into crime
scenes."
Answer:
"Before concealed handgun laws were passed throughout the
Argument:
"The college lifestyle is defined by alcohol and drug abuse. Why would any sane person want to add guns
to that mix?"
Answer:
"This is NOT a debate about keeping firearms out of the hands of college
students. This is a debate about
allowing licensed individuals to carry their concealed firearms into campus
buildings, the same way they carry them virtually everywhere else. College students can already legally
purchase firearms, and every state that provides for legalized concealed carry
has statutes prohibiting license holders from carrying while under the
influence. Legalizing concealed carry
on college campuses would neither put guns into the hands of more college
students nor make it legal for a person to carry a firearm while under the
influence."
NOTE:
Allowing concealed carry on college campuses would have no impact
on the laws regulating concealed carry at bars or off-campus parties—the places
where students (particularly students of legal age to obtain a concealed
handgun license) are most likely to consume alcohol.
Argument:
"In an active shooter scenario, like the one that occurred at Virginia
Tech, a student or faculty member with a gun would only make things
worse."
Answer:
"What is worse than allowing an execution-style massacre to continue
uncontested? How can any action with the
potential to stop or slow a deranged killer intent on slaughtering victim after
victim be considered ‘worse’ than allowing that killer to continue
undeterred?"
Argument:
"Police officers typically spend
four to five months in training; whereas, concealed handgun license holders
usually spend one day or less."
Answer: "Police officers do not spend four to six
months learning to carry concealed handguns for self-defense; they spend four
to six months learning to be police officers. Concealed handgun license
holders are not police officers; therefore, they have no need of most of the
training received by police officers. Concealed handgun license holders
don't need to know how to drive police cars at high speeds or how to
kick down doors or how to conduct traffic stops or how to make arrests or how
to use handcuffs. And concealed handgun license holders definitely don't
need to spend weeks memorizing radio codes and traffic laws.
"Contrary to what some
opponents of concealed carry might claim, concealed handgun license holders
don't need extensive tactical training because they are not charged with
protecting the public--It's not their job to act like amateur, one-man SWAT
teams. All a concealed handgun license holder needs to know is how to use
his or her concealed handgun to stop an immediate threat of death or serious
bodily harm, and that type of training CAN be accomplished in a few
hours."
NOTE:
In some states, such as Texas, the qualification test for a concealed
handgun license differs very little from the
annual re-qualification requirement for police officers.
Argument:
"The last thing we need is a bunch of vigilantes getting into a shootout
with a madman, particularly since it's been proven that trained police officers
have an accuracy rate of only about 15-25%, in the field."
Answer:
"Citizens with concealed handgun licenses are not vigilantes. They carry
their concealed handguns as a means of getting themselves out of harm's way,
not as an excuse to go chasing after bad guys.
Whereas police shooting statistics involve scenarios such as pursuits
down dark alleys and armed standoffs with assailants barricaded inside
buildings, most civilian shootings happen at pointblank range. In the Luby's Cafeteria massacre, the
*In The Line of
Fire: Violence Against Law Enforcement,
Argument:
"How are first responders supposed to tell the difference between armed
students and armed assailants?"
Answer:
"This hasn't been an issue with concealed carry license holders in other
walks of life for several reasons.
First and foremost, real-world shootouts are typically localized and
over very quickly. It's not realistic
to expect police to encounter an ongoing shootout between assailants and armed
civilians. Second, police are trained
to expect both armed bad guys AND armed good guys--from off-duty/undercover
police officers to armed civilians--in tactical scenarios. Third, concealed handgun license holders are
trained to use their firearms for self-defense. They are not trained to run through buildings looking for bad
guys. Therefore, the biggest
distinction between the armed assailants and the armed civilians is that the
armed civilians would be hiding with the crowd, and the armed assailants would
be shooting at the crowd."
Argument:
"Some states
allow citizens to be issued concealed handgun licenses at the age of 18."
Answer: "Among
the thirty-six ‘shall-issue’
states*—states where local authorities cannot require
qualified applicants to "show a need" before the applicant is issued
a concealed handgun license/concealed carry weapons permit—six states allow, without special
provision, for any person eighteen years or older to be issued a concealed
handgun license. These states are
“Based on
the FBI/Department
of Justice violent crime statistics for the year 2006, the crime rates for
these seven states, when ranked with all fifty states and the District of
Columbia, rank as follows:
“Not only
are Maine, North Dakota, New Hampshire, and South Dakota four of the five** U.S. states with the lowest crime rates, Montana
has the tenth lowest crime rate, and Indiana isn’t even in the top 50%. Clearly these states’ lenient concealed
handgun laws are not breeding generations of young violent offenders.
“The
extraordinarily low crime rates in these six states, coupled with the fact that
these states have a combined population of only about 10,900,000 (approximately
1.6 million less than the combined population of America’s two largest
cities—New York, NY, and Los Angeles, CA—and at approximately 1/3 the combined
violent crime rate of those two cities) has led Students for Concealed Carry on
Campus to focus on the majority of ‘shall-issue’ states where the minimum age
to receive a concealed handgun license is 21.”
*Alaska (licenses are
offered but not required to carry a concealed handgun), Arizona, Arkansas,
Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine,
Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New
Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon,
Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia,
Washington, West Virginia, Wyoming
**
Argument:
"It is inconceivable that any logical person would believe that the answer
to violence is more guns."
Answer: "One
might have just as easily told Edward Jenner, the man who discovered in the
late eighteenth century that the cowpox virus could be used to inoculate people
against smallpox, 'It is inconceivable that any logical person would believe
that the answer to disease is more viruses.'"
Argument:
"The answer to bullets flying is not more bullets flying."
Answer: "Actually,
the answer to bullets flying is almost always more bullets flying. That’s why the police bring so many guns
with them when they respond to a report of ‘shots fired.’"
Argument:
"The answer to school violence is prevention, not guns on campus."
Answer: "Prevention
and preparedness are not mutually exclusive.
In a perfect system, the two approaches to safety compliment each
other. Preventive measures, such as
teaching students and faculty to watch for the warning signs of mental illness
and providing counseling to disturbed students, can work hand in hand with
preparative measures, such as developing campus alert systems, providing
additional training to campus police, and allowing the same trained, licensed
adults who legally carry concealed handguns when not on college campuses to do
so on college campuses."
From the horse’s mouth:
"I
lobbied against the law in 1993 and 1995 because I thought it would lead to
wholesale armed conflict. That hasn't happened. All the horror stories I thought would come
to pass didn't happen. No bogeyman. I think it's worked out well, and that says
good things about the citizens who have permits. I'm a convert."
-- Glenn White, president of the Dallas Police Association, Dallas Morning News, 12/23/97
"I
... [felt] that such legislation present[ed] a clear and present danger to
law-abiding citizens by placing more handguns on our streets. Boy was I wrong. Our experience in
"Some
of the public safety concerns which we imagined or anticipated a couple of
years ago, to our pleasant surprise, have
been unfounded or mitigated." --
"I was wrong.
But I'm glad to say I was wrong." --
"The
concerns I had - with more guns on the street, folks may be more apt to square
off against one another with weapons - we
haven't experienced that." -- Charlotte-Mecklenburg, NC, Police
Chief Dennis Nowicki, The News and
Observer, 11/24/97
