fairfax1
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Two articles in the GMU student newspaper:
http://broadsideonline.com/opinion.html
[Thumbs Up] to the George Mason University Board of Visitors for strengthening the Mason policy prohibiting weapons on campus. In addition to prohibiting students, faculty and staff from bringing any weapons onto campus, it prevents visitors from bringing weapons into University buildings or to University-sponsored events. It is wonderful to see the BOV react to the Virginia Tech tragedy by strengthening the ban against weapons of all types on campus, as opposed to cowering before a vocal minority intent on using a human tragedy to advance their own ideological agenda.
http://broadsideonline.com/08-27-2007/nogunsoncampus.html
EDITORIAL
No Guns on Campus
Concealed Carry Would Only Make Things Worse
Over the course of the past several months, a debate has erupted over the proper place of handguns and other weapons within the University community. Dueling Facebook groups supporting and opposing the right of students, faculty and staff to carry concealed weapons on campus sprang up and the national media paid close attention to the issue, featuring Andrew Dysart and his GMU Students for Concealed Carry many times in a wide variety of outlets. Yet despite the massive amounts of publicity that the push to allow guns on campus has generated, the fact remains that such a move would not be in the best interests of George Mason University’s students, faculty or staff.
Dysart is the Mason campus leader for a larger group called Students for Concealed Carry on Campus which states in its mission statement that “After such tragedies as Columbine and Virginia Tech, it is abundantly clear that the only way to stop mass murderers is to have responsible citizens in the classroom and on campuses able to carry their licensed handguns.”
Such logic is incorrect. The invocation of Columbine is a misleading emotional appeal designed to overstate the value policies such as theirs could even theoretically carry. The policies they propose would only allow people with a concealed carry permit to carry guns on campus. In most states such people must be 21 years old.
Massacres like the Virginia Tech tragedy are extremely rare. The mere fact that the media presents each one as though it were part of an epidemic does not mean there actually is an epidemic. Furthermore, there are already “responsible citizens in the classroom and on campuses” who are charged with protecting the safety of people on campus–the police.
“Gun-free zones, such as GMU and VT, just don’t work,” contends Dysart. “Criminals that are set on committing evil acts will not follow the laws and rules of society. VT showed us that college campuses are not really as safe as we have been led to believe.”
Such claims are not borne out by reality. In fact, the opposite is true. College campuses are the best American examples of why gun control works.
By most standards, college campuses should be frequent targets of violent crimes and murders. There are large numbers of young people living together, having sex, and dating one another under stressful conditions, in an environment with frequent alcohol and drug use. All of those are correlated with higher crime and higher violent crime. However, according to FBI’s Crime in the United States report in the decade between 1995 and 2005, the most recent year for which data is available, Virginia’s college campuses saw only three murders and one gun murder.
It strains the imagination to think that if more guns were allowed on campuses the number of murders would decrease.
The idea that an increase in guns would result in a decrease in murders is a ludicrous one. It is not a realistic claim either; the available statistics from 1995 to 2004 prove that the policies that are in place work. While Virginia state murders ranged from 7.5 to 5.2 murders per 100,000, state campuses only went as high as .5 per 100,000. The facts don’t square with Dysart’s claim that only guns can save us.
Virginia Tech was a tragedy, but it was also an anomaly. To use that disaster as an excuse to arm students and kill off a successful policy would almost certainly cost lives, rather than save them.
Two articles in the GMU student newspaper:
http://broadsideonline.com/opinion.html
[Thumbs Up] to the George Mason University Board of Visitors for strengthening the Mason policy prohibiting weapons on campus. In addition to prohibiting students, faculty and staff from bringing any weapons onto campus, it prevents visitors from bringing weapons into University buildings or to University-sponsored events. It is wonderful to see the BOV react to the Virginia Tech tragedy by strengthening the ban against weapons of all types on campus, as opposed to cowering before a vocal minority intent on using a human tragedy to advance their own ideological agenda.
http://broadsideonline.com/08-27-2007/nogunsoncampus.html
EDITORIAL
No Guns on Campus
Concealed Carry Would Only Make Things Worse
Over the course of the past several months, a debate has erupted over the proper place of handguns and other weapons within the University community. Dueling Facebook groups supporting and opposing the right of students, faculty and staff to carry concealed weapons on campus sprang up and the national media paid close attention to the issue, featuring Andrew Dysart and his GMU Students for Concealed Carry many times in a wide variety of outlets. Yet despite the massive amounts of publicity that the push to allow guns on campus has generated, the fact remains that such a move would not be in the best interests of George Mason University’s students, faculty or staff.
Dysart is the Mason campus leader for a larger group called Students for Concealed Carry on Campus which states in its mission statement that “After such tragedies as Columbine and Virginia Tech, it is abundantly clear that the only way to stop mass murderers is to have responsible citizens in the classroom and on campuses able to carry their licensed handguns.”
Such logic is incorrect. The invocation of Columbine is a misleading emotional appeal designed to overstate the value policies such as theirs could even theoretically carry. The policies they propose would only allow people with a concealed carry permit to carry guns on campus. In most states such people must be 21 years old.
Massacres like the Virginia Tech tragedy are extremely rare. The mere fact that the media presents each one as though it were part of an epidemic does not mean there actually is an epidemic. Furthermore, there are already “responsible citizens in the classroom and on campuses” who are charged with protecting the safety of people on campus–the police.
“Gun-free zones, such as GMU and VT, just don’t work,” contends Dysart. “Criminals that are set on committing evil acts will not follow the laws and rules of society. VT showed us that college campuses are not really as safe as we have been led to believe.”
Such claims are not borne out by reality. In fact, the opposite is true. College campuses are the best American examples of why gun control works.
By most standards, college campuses should be frequent targets of violent crimes and murders. There are large numbers of young people living together, having sex, and dating one another under stressful conditions, in an environment with frequent alcohol and drug use. All of those are correlated with higher crime and higher violent crime. However, according to FBI’s Crime in the United States report in the decade between 1995 and 2005, the most recent year for which data is available, Virginia’s college campuses saw only three murders and one gun murder.
It strains the imagination to think that if more guns were allowed on campuses the number of murders would decrease.
The idea that an increase in guns would result in a decrease in murders is a ludicrous one. It is not a realistic claim either; the available statistics from 1995 to 2004 prove that the policies that are in place work. While Virginia state murders ranged from 7.5 to 5.2 murders per 100,000, state campuses only went as high as .5 per 100,000. The facts don’t square with Dysart’s claim that only guns can save us.
Virginia Tech was a tragedy, but it was also an anomaly. To use that disaster as an excuse to arm students and kill off a successful policy would almost certainly cost lives, rather than save them.