OldGrumpy wrote:From someone who has a CHL and works on a college campus - not sure I support campus carry. I have heard all the arguments for it but believe me there are just as many against it. Not sure I like the idea of 21 year old men having ready access to firearms. Arguments over girls already result in fights - what would adding potential firearms to the mix do. Before someone comes back about how responsible CHL holders are just remember the dumb incidents that have been posted about irresponsible CHL holders.
The debate over campus carry is
not a debate about WHO can carry; it is a debate about WHERE license holders can carry.
Campus carry would
not make firearms or concealed handgun licenses available to a class of people to which firearms or concealed handgun licenses were not previously available.
Campus carry would
not change the laws at bars, off-campus parties, fraternity houses, tailgating events, or most other places where students are presumed to drink or engage in other high-risk activities.
Although few students eligible for a CHL live in on-campus housing, and although, statistically speaking, only a small number (approximately 15 on a campus of 50,000 students) of them actually possess a CHL, every campus carry bill passed by either house of the Texas Legislature has included a provision to allow colleges to regulate the storage of firearms in dorms.
Campus carry would affect the ability of very few if any students to possess a firearm at home, where 90% of suicides occur.
Campus carry is currently allowed in two states and has been for several years, and aside from a student in Utah who shot himself in the leg while pocket carrying without a holster and a university employee in Colorado who accidentally fired off a round while showing off her new gun (illegal in Texas) to her coworkers, there haven't been any resulting acts of violence.
In light of the fact that most campuses are large, open environments where a person can just as easily walk into a classroom carrying a backpack full of guns as carrying a backpack full of books, why are some college employees and faculty members more concerned with the trained, licensed, carefully screened adults seeking the right to carry legally than with the untrained, unlicensed, unscreened criminals who are already carrying illegally?
Most twenty-one year olds are idiots, but in the places where concealed carry is already allowed, the twenty-one-year-old idiots aren't causing any more problems than the forty-two-year-old idiots; therefore, I don't see the logic in supporting concealed carry but not campus carry.
