Concealed Carry on Campus

[Codename46]

I was wondering what frequenters of the gungeon think about allowing current CCW permit holders to be able to conceal-carry on campus. Of course, this applies mostly to college students who have permits.

I go to a pretty liberal college, and there's this resolution that's going to be voted on by student government soon on whether to take an official stance against a bill the state is going to debate on that will extend conceal-carry to college campuses. Sure SG can't really do too much damage if they do pass the resolution, and the only thing they can do is say in front of the state congressional session and say that the university's SG doesn't support CCW.

The primary concern with naysayers is with regards to the fact that our school is known for being a party school, and with the issue of suicide, as well as the "sanctity of the learning environment". To me it's all bullshit, but I'm having a hard time convincing some of my friends, who are representatives in SG, to take a stance supporting CCW.

What say you?

[billyoc]

1. I support CCW everywhere.

I doubt the SG will have much influence on the Legislature, your time might be better spent lobbying the legislators directly rather than trying to influence the SG.

[iverglas]

2. got google?

http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&q=site%3Awww.democraticunderground.com+concealed+carry+campus&btnG=Google+Search&meta=

Hours of fun.

[iverglas]

3. meanwhile, I'll just quote myself

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=118&topic_id=151185&mesg_id=151323

[razors edge]

4. If the school takes public funding

then it must accept the law of the land, period.

Private property without public funding can do as it pleases.

Pretty damned simple.

[rrneck]

5. I'm still pretty new here but I'll take another poke at it...

since I was thinking about it this afternoon.

College is not the last hurrah of childhood before you have to learn to do whatever it is you will do in that cubicle for the rest of you life. It is the place where you have to assume the responsibilities of a thinking person and an involved citizen.

Since that part of one's life is still transitional (even for graduate students who are are traditionally more mature and who will be the only ones legally able to carry a firearm) there should be some restrictions in place in the peculiar environment that is a university. That environment is a high pressure place filled with people who will invariably be in much closer contact with the gun owner than might be expected in most other social settings. With the flakiness and tomfoolery that invariably occurs on campus, as well as the effect that guns would have on the academic atmosphere in general, it would be better that firearms not be allowed on campus at all. But the rights of those who are legally able to carry a firearm need to be addressed.

So here is my attempt at firearms regulation on college campuses:

No firearms of any kind are allowed on any college or university campus unless:

1. They are carried on the person an individual legally qualified to posses such firearm and

2. That individual has had training in conflict de-escalation and negotiation and

3. That individual stores said firearm/s in an appropriate gun safe when not carrying and

4. The firearm is carried concealed at all times.

5. Any violation of the above guidelines will result in at least a substantial fine for the first offense and expulsion for any subsequent offense.

The idea here is to confine the firearm to the person responsible for it, and make the consequences of failure of that responsibility sufficiently dire to make it stick.

Is that a start?

(damn typos)

[gorfle]

6. I think those are fine qualifiers

I don't have a problem with those qualifiers, except requiring the conflict de-escalation and negotiation training. This is generally not a requirement for concealed carry, and I don't think such training is particularly needed on college campuses any more than anyplace else.

While I am for any CCW carrying on campus, I'm mostly thinking of people myself who are non-traditional students who go mostly to night classes. There are lots of students like me - older students with families, full-time jobs, mortgages, kids, and other responsibilities who are attending university, often at night.

[rrneck]

7. Thanks, The reason I put the training in there

was that I have I have known a few pretty flakey graduate students who, outside the university, might do just fine with the responsibilities of gun ownership, but inside the university might be confronted with situations that would be challenging for someone with a gun. I raised the bar a bit because of the nature of the population to which the person carrying would be exposed, the social situations go along with that exposure, and as a nod for others that might be concerned about those carrying. I sort of make people go a little further to prove they are qualified to carry.

It's tougher for those carrying who are more than qualified to do so, but a university is a really strange place full of a lot of really strange people under a lot of pressure. I guess it's sort of like a first amendment right to say what you want but not to yell fire in a theatre.

But then again I'm not a legislator (and I didn't stay at a Holiday Inn last night). :)

[Endangered Specie]

8. point by point

1. They are carried on the person an individual legally qualified to posses such firearm and
- required for CCW

2. That individual has had training in conflict de-escalation and negotiation and
- CCW classes typically teach that the best way to win a gun fight is to avoid it at all costs

3. That individual stores said firearm/s in an appropriate gun safe when not carrying and
- Most people who would CCW (21 years old) will be living off campus

4. The firearm is carried concealed at all times.
- Open carry is not legal in most states, in Texas, your gun even printing against your clothes can get your permit revoked.

5. Any violation of the above guidelines will result in at least a substantial fine for the first offense and expulsion for any subsequent offense.
- I guess that would have to be university policy, but I would think state penalties are stricter than that.

[rrneck]

9. Yeah, I sort of expected to hear about item

number two. The other three were not a big deal, with the possible exception of number four, where a complaint about an exposed firearm would get you in hot water with the administration real quick.

What I had in mind regarding de-escalation and negotiation training was something a good deal more extensive than what I got at my CCW class. Now, that was a long time ago in the south (hey, we just discovered asphalt not too long ago), so it might be all different now. But what I had in mind was a full, three credit hour, semester long course. Here's why.

It was interesting that gorfle reminded me of people who are older and considered non traditional students attending classes at night. I hadn't thought of that. My concern at the time was that there needed to be some way to separate the firearm from the general school population and still give the owner control of it. That meant securing it in housing with furniture provided by the owner of the firearm (not the stuff that comes with your standard dorm room) so they could screw the gun safe to something heavy, and that means that the CCW holder would be effectively kicked off campus, with the associated increased costs. A small population, but I had to think about them.

My experience at graduate school was probably different than that of most gun owning adults. One of my peers was ex military and could have carried an M-60 to class with no problem. But there were others who, while technically qualified to own and carry a firearm, I wouldn't have trusted with a fucking slingshot. They simply would not have been able to conduct themselves responsibly in contact their younger peers. Most dated undergrads and socialized with them (read: got a lot of drinking and fucking done). I have no reason to believe that they would have been able to adequately control the weapon under those circumstances. Also, in the academic atmosphere where I was, differences of opinion could become very intense and the knowledge that one of these idiots had a gun would have ruined for everyone. Even if one of them never offered to deploy the firearm, the knowledge that he had it on his person would have made him completely insufferable and would have put many of the others permanently on the defensive. Twenty one years old and a trained warrior or police officer is one thing, twenty one years old and a pampered goof off just out of his undergraduate diapers is another.

People grow up a lot between 18 and 25, some don't grow up at all. College is the place where a lot of growing up happens at different rates for different people, and the difference between child and adult can almost be measured in the space of a few months. It seems to me that a place like that deserves to have a higher bar set on the presence of firearms, even though those responsible owners of guns have to carry a higher burden for it in the form of increased tuition costs and time spent.

Some of that could be mitigated for, say, police officers and ex military who have probably had the kind of training I mentioned above. Others might be able to CLEP it or have career experience and CEU's count toward the requirement. I can't imagine a therapist for example having to take the course.

People grow up a lot in college, and if someone wants to have the added power associated with a firearm while still in a place where growing up happens, they need to double down on the training it takes to be a grownup.

But if that doesn't work I'll have to go back to the drawing board.

Apologies in advance if I don't reply quickly, I'm beat and I gotta go to bed.

[slackmaster]

10. Anyone who has been vetted to carry a concealed weamon at a shopping mall should be able

To carry on a college campus, or pretty much anywhere else.

A campus doesn't have some kind of special characteristic that makes it more dangerous for someone to be carrying a weapon that it would be in most other public places.

[rrneck]

11. If you go through a graduate program without

being profoundly changed you wasted your money. At least that's the way it was for the program I was in, and I wouldn't take anything for it.

I started to find some analogy for the university experience to flesh out what I was talking about, sort of like the stresses LEO's experience as opposed to citizens carrying, but I couldn't think of one.

Universities exist to promote intellectual conflict. Students are required to push what they believe to be true far beyond anything they will experience after they get out of college, and there are emotional risks associated with the discovery that one is just plain wrong about stuff they thought was true all their short lives. They require people to stake out positions and defend them that may be grossly overstated or completely wrong, and that can cause a lot of stress. They're like - well - DU forums only a lot more in your face and a lot more expensive.

The university environment that demands that people push the intellectual envelope (and back up what they say) is the same environment that suffers from the correlated effects of requiring people to indulge in excessive intellectual behavior, which include excessive substance abuse, the abuse of women, the destruction of property, and the general failure to conduct oneself as a responsible citizen and an adult.

I wouldn't trust a seven year old child to cary a firearm. Or a ten year old. Or seventeen. Eighteen is not legal yet either. There isn't some big gong in the sky that declares someone to be a responsible adult on their twenty first birthday. A university setting is unique in that it has to regulate and promote the same impulses at the same time in a population that cannot (and should not) be separated and at a time in life when are just beginning to understand what being an adult is all about.

Over and over I hear gun owners tell those who are dubious about their rationality to "just go to the range and talk to the people there and you find out that they're not crazy". That's because they're not. Most graduate students who are gun owners are stable people who hang around other stable people and I think they start to assume all graduate students are like them. They're not. Frequently they have a huge axe to grind, they're dating some undergraduate who got molested by some drunk undergrad at a frat party, and they may well be still trying to work through the "drunk college phase" of their own lives. I'm not saying they can't carry, I'm just saying that at that time and at that place with that population there are unique circumstances that call for more training that can ultimately be put to use in ways in and out of the university.

[aikoaiko]

12. As someone who works on a campus, I agree with you.

:fistbump: