This is my bag. I carry it everywhere on campus. I am very attached to this bag, not just because it’s super cute and looks like a panda bear, but because I bought it on a particularly fun day with my younger daughter in London. The bag is also my security blanket because it is big enough to hold everything I need: computer, graded (OK usually ungraded) papers, lecture notes, pens, paper, personal items, and, of course, a gun.
Oh don’t be shocked. I’m just doing my part to keep college campuses safe from gun violence by increasing the number of guns on campus. Totally logical. That’s why nine states are considering allowing concealed weapons on college campuses. Some states, like Idaho already do. And in Vermont, where I live, you don’t even need a concealed weapon license to slip a nice, sleek revolver into your panda bag right next to your favorite lipstick.
I’m being ironic, but the gun crowd isn’t. They think an increase in gun violence on university campuses requires more people with more guns. According to a story on NPR, Texas is one of many states that seems to now have a legislative majority to pass a law allowing concealed weapons on campus:
“Right now, so-called gun-free zones, I think, ought to be renamed Victims Zones,” says state Sen. Jeff Wentworth, a San Antonio Republican who is sponsoring a bill that would allow handguns on campuses.”
It’s not just right-leaning GOP politicians advocating for more guns on campuses, but student groups as well. The Students for Concealed Carry on Campus has over 40,000 members who advocate for guns on college campus. The group argues that
“College campuses … play host to every type of violent crime found in the rest of society, from assault to rape to murder. Recent high-profile shootings and armed abductions on college campuses clearly demonstrate that “gun free zones” serve to disarm only those law-abiding citizens who might otherwise be able to protect themselves.”
The basic argument of all these groups is that if yet another crazy young man opens fire on a college campus, an armed citizenry can take him down and save lives in seconds vs. the minutes it would take police or campus security to arrive.
This, of course, is possibly true. But equally true is the following statement: Men commit nearly 100 percent of these violent gun crimes; therefore we should just not allow men on campus.
Obviously, the problem with drawing easy conclusions is that the most absurd and illogical statements are “true” even if they’re not correct. It reminds me of a story in my local newspaper. Property crimes are going up. A woman’s house was robbed. She didn’t have it locked. Her statement to the paper was not “I guess I should start locking my door” but “I guess I need to get a gun.”
All stupidity, sarcasm, and downright sophistry aside,
1. the best way to restrict gun violence is to restrict guns (we have a huge amount of evidence from countries that do restrict weapons to support this claim)
2. more guns on college campuses will lead to more gun violence, including suicides and shootings at parties where alcohol levels and aggression are already high (we have all the violence that already happens on college campuses—including drunken rages, rates of reported suicide attempts to counseling centers, etc. to back up this conclusion).
And of course the most obvious conclusion of all:
3.The 2nd Amendment was NEVER intended to arm everyone and if it was, then it should be repealed.
So you don’t need to beware of my panda bag. But until this country gets real gun control, we should all be aware that the student next to you, the professor at the contentious faculty meeting, or even that ticked-off guy at the party who has had one too many drinks might just be armed and dangerous.
9 Responses to Beware of the Bag
andypict - February 6, 2011 at 8:05 pm
Laurie said: “1. the best way to restrict gun violence is to restrict guns”
That’s working real well in Jamaica, Mexico – oh, and here in D.C., Detroit, etc, etc wherever firearms are disallowed. Funny how those darned criminal types just WON’T obey those laws either, huh? :)
Laurie said: “2. more guns on college campuses will lead to more gun violence”
Of the 77 US colleges which allow legally-concealed handguns, not 1 has had a single incident in 5 years. Sorry :)
Laurie said: “3.The 2nd Amendment was NEVER intended to arm everyone and if it was, then it should be repealed.”
The Supreme Court says otherwise, dear. In the recent DC vs Heller case, the Supreme Court held that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that arm for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home.
dank48 - February 7, 2011 at 11:41 am
As a reasonably adult human being, I think the last thing American campuses need is armed and untrained undergrads. Loaded guns and loaded post-adolescents make as much sense as high-proof liquor and high-powered rifles.
As a generally pretty liberal person who owns a few devices that can make holes at a distance, I’m always amazed at how many people on the left take it as an article of faith that we’d all be better off if all firearms were out of private hands and in the hands of the police and the armed forces. (Never mind the splinter/fringe folks who think the cops and the soldiers shouldn’t have guns either.)
That is, a lot of people who consider themselves liberals are in effect saying that the government should have a monopoly on weapons. This accords rather well with Ludwig von Mises’s definition of government as that entity in society with the legal monopoly on violence.
I’m sorry, but the USA in 2011 is quite close enough to a police state, given RICO, The Patriot Act, and the Heimatssicherheitsdienst I mean Department of Homeland Security. A government that doesn’t trust the people with weapons is a government that doesn’t trust the people.
Why, I have to ask, do you trust the government so completely? Juvenal’s “Sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes?” still hasn’t been answered.
trendisnotdestiny - February 7, 2011 at 12:10 pm
To Dank48,
First, I wonder if trust isn’t a reciprocal process between the rights of the collective and individualistic, Dank. While I, too, have a more open laissez faire attitude about gun ownership (coming from a similar area near Bloomington, IN), I wonder if Dr. Essig’s point about more guns is not salient. After all, it is not like Americans have mastered their compulsivities: debt, substances, gaming, violence and excitement seeking behaviors. In fact, we are addicted to a whole slew of unhealthy and clingly behaviors… (internet chess for me)….
In fact, I almost believe that the humility required to address this (an idea that I often gather from your writings) is best accomplished by admitting that more guns creates more possibilities of negative outcomes. Shouldn’t the issue be taken into the context that we live a more individualistic society and some sacrifices is this domain lead to greater collective outcomes? While I do not have strong intransigent beliefs about this issue, I do not see the harm (cost/benefit) in reducing the number of guns (especially in light the recent frat shooting at Youngstown State)…. The public need not participate in an arms race of who has the most wins… One or two guns is enough for those who are desirous or utilitarian, but I wonder if the rest are really more about industry profits and market sustainability.
Respectfully,
Trend
trendisnotdestiny - February 7, 2011 at 12:11 pm
apologies for the grammar and left word errors
trendisnotdestiny - February 7, 2011 at 12:12 pm
apologies for the grammar and left out word errors
dank48 - February 7, 2011 at 4:47 pm
Trend,
No apologies necessary. Coming from an area not terribly far north of Bloomington, Indiana, I probably don’t agree with most folks of my overall political persuasion.
Obviously, fewer guns means less gun violence. A thousand years ago, gun violence wasn’t even a minor problem. Unless I’ve totally misread history, however, people who wanted to kill other people somehow found a way. Or perhaps Herodotus, Thucydides, Caesar, et al. were just kidding us.
As a self-described gun nut, if you will, I would very much like to own, say, an Uzi, a MAC-10, a Thompson submachinegun, a double-barrel sawed-off shotgun, and a silenced semiautomatic weapon. To do so, I would have to spend a bunch of money to buy any of these legally, and I’d have to get a special, expensive tax stamp from the Treasury Department, and I’d have to . . . oh, hell, it’s simply not worth it. Furthermore, I’m sane enough to realize that the fact that I’d like to have these toys and consider myself responsible enough to own them does not mean that I need them.
Nor can I think of any reason anyone else does. Not to mention armor-piercing ammunition for any legitimate nonmilitary purpose.
One minor detail, and this is overlooked simply because the decision-makers in the media want it to be: The news specializes in bad news, simply because we don’t have time to go over all the stuff that didn’t get screwed up today. For this reason (and perhaps others) we don’t hear about every person who uses a firearm legally to successfully defend himself or herself from attack. The stats on this aren’t crystal clear, but that doesn’t mean it occurs so seldom it’s not worth mentioning. Consider how many damn guns there are, how many owners, how many criminals who operate one-on-one . . . some of these creeps find themselves faced with equal or overwhelming force. And no, if the criminal runs away, one does not shoot.
Having said which, futilely, no doubt, I want to say I don’t think passing out permission to carry a concealed weapon is within shouting distance of sanity. Training and education are indispensable, just as with any other potentially lethal objects, such as cars, trucks, and other heavy machinery.
Few draconian measures make sense except to the draconian legislators. Wishing all guns away will make as much of a difference as wishing all ignorant, unprepared, ill-educated students away.
And just for the record, in the light of our current situation, which imo is that the legislative, executive, and judiciary branches have figured out that if they ignore the Constitution they can slice up the pie as they like, I think the last thing we need is a breezy willingness to dispense with the Constitution or any Amendments to it.
George Orwell wrote, during the Blitz, that the British left had a pretty good time making fun of the Home Guard, until it finally dawned on them that, if firearms and ammunition are being passed out to virtually anyone who will take them, it simply makes good sense to lay hands on some for oneself.
Thurber wrote, and I believe, that “He who goes unarmed in paradise Should first make sure that’s where he is.” But, and this is so easily overlooked in a country where education is given more lip service than real respect, Get Training. There’s no more excuse for carelessness with firearms than for carelessness with moving vehicles.
trendisnotdestiny - February 7, 2011 at 5:10 pm
Will give your comments some thought on the matter. Thanks Danks!
antimedia - February 8, 2011 at 9:12 pm
“more guns on college campuses will lead to more gun violence, including suicides and shootings at parties where alcohol levels and aggression are already high (we have all the violence that already happens on college campuses—including drunken rages, rates of reported suicide attempts to counseling centers, etc. to back up this conclusion).”
Yet there are no data to support the conclusion that licensed concealed weapons holders would behave this way. In Texas, license holders are 10 times less likely to assault someone than the average guy you walk past in the halls of your university.
“As a reasonably adult human being, I think the last thing American campuses need is armed and untrained undergrads. Loaded guns and loaded post-adolescents make as much sense as high-proof liquor and high-powered rifles.”
While I would agree with this, it’s irrelevant to the issue of licensed concealed carry on campuses. License holders are both trained and seldom undergrads. In Texas you must be 21 to even apply for a license. Then you must pass both a federal and state background check, receive ten hours of training and qualify on the range by shooting above a prescribed score. License cost is $140 and the training course is generally around $100.
I’m 63 and a licensed Texas CHL holder. Surely you wouldn’t see me as a threat, yet I must disarm before entering my office because my university thinks it’s reasonable to require me to disarm. (Right now they have that option. Hopefully the law will pass that rescinds that option and requires them to honor my license.) You might pass me at the store or eat lunch at the same restaurant as I do. When you do, I’m armed. The only reason you don’t feel threatened is because you are unaware that I am armed.
How are you going to feel threatened on your campus when you still won’t know I’m armed?
dank48 - February 11, 2011 at 3:09 pm
Well, yes. I have to leave my handgun in my car because of my employer’s rules; okay, but don’t complain when I’m not in a position to stop something.
That’s the point of a CCW: technically no license is required to walk around with a gun in plain view, although I’d advise against trying this out for the sake of principle or something. Because the firearm is/firearms are concealed, there’s no perceived threat to anyone who’s behaving like a civilized human being.
And, to change context a tad, for my money they can scrap all the TSA apparatus at the airport, so long as we know that every since flight carries a couple plainclothes US Marshals.
My hijack-control ideal standard is Ethiopian Airlines. Back in the ’70s or ’80s, a couple goofballs tried to hijack an Ethiopian airliner. The mufti marshals disarmed the hijackers, tied them in a couple seats, and had the pilot take the plane over international waters . . . Two cut throats later, sky-terrorism directed at Ethiopian Airlines came to an end.
That’s a nasty story. It’s not nearly so nasty as the ones about planes without marshals.