Shooting BackGun Rights and Student Responsibility

In “Gun-Free Zones: The Latest in Suicide Pacts” (Spectator VI:3), Kristina Kelleher ’09 noted that the Virginia Tech, Columbine, Beach, Jonesboro, Paducah, Connetquot High, Killeexn, Orange Park, SuccessTech, and West Nickel Mines school shootings all took place in so-called “gun-free zones.” This argument would, most unfortunately, presage another horrendous act of campus violence: the February 14 shootings at Northern Illinois University. Steven Kazmierczak, a former student, entered a crowded lecture hall armed with a shotgun and three handguns, all of which had been purchased legally. He opened fire, killing five students, and then took his own life. NIU security officers, to their credit, arrived on the scene within approximately 90 seconds. But even this prompt response was, unfortunately, far too late. Sparsely mentioned in the press, NIU’s campus is also a “gun-free zone.”

As logic would predict, “gun free zones” do little more than ensure that law-abiding citizens within are unable to protect themselves, making life easy for individuals intent upon wreaking havoc. The fact is that no responding force, short of a police officer stationed in every classroom, will have a legitimate chance to stop a determined shooter. And there are not nearly enough police officers to go around. (Would we even want this?) Additionally, proposals to arm professors are also somewhat presumptuous. If the only armed individual in a classroom is known to be the professor, the obvious implication is that any armed criminal will immediately target the professor. And our venerable PhD-holding friends are unlikely to feel comfortable with such a responsibility; indeed, many would object to gun-ownership on principle.

Thus, it is my contention that the best means to prevent future attacks at Universities is to rearm students.

Those who object to allowing students to carry firearms seem to assume that schools would degenerate into “guns-r-us” zones, full of irresponsible, inebriated, and hormonal young adults firing every-which-way, without discretion. However, a number of states regularly allow students to carry concealed weapons, and their universities have not suffered for it; California and New York are prime examples. Individuals attending university are subject to the same concealed-carry laws that apply to any other citizen. Usually, this means being over 21 years of age, and having gone through appropriate education and training – a process requiring significant time, energy, and commitment. Exceptions to these restrictions simply argue, at worst, for their broader application, and not against the principle; it should not come as a surprise that licensed gun owners are orders of magnitude less likely to commit gun crimes than the average citizen.

Additionally, the simple act of allowing a right does not mean that the right will be utilized. Even something as basic and fundamental as the right to vote is observed by only a fraction of eligible voters. In practice, only 3-4% of Americans have concealed-carry permits, and this number is smaller for younger adults. In a large lecture class, however, with hundreds of students, there is a substantial probability that one or several would be capable of fighting back against a shooter, were firearms allowed to them.

It is true that, had Kazmierczak been subjected to a mental health screening when he attempted to purchase his firearms, he would not have been able to do so; he reportedly spent over a year in a mental health facility, and had been receiving various forms of treatment since high school. And it is also true that Congress passed a law last year to tighten mental-health screenings for gun-purchasers. However, such screenings will certainly not resolve the problem of campus attacks – many attackers did not have recorded mental health problems, and guns can be illegally acquired with relative ease. This is, again, the reason that gun-control laws are inherently doomed. As the events of recent years have made clear, there is no training that will allow a security force to stop a determined school shooter, nor any gun law that will prevent his acquiring weapons. The only real means of preventing another NIU or Virginia Tech is to entrust to students the right to defend themselves.

Looking to our own community, as Gregory Halenda ‘08 noted in “The Second Amendment at Brown” (Spectator V:4), Brown University’s weapons policy is vague to a fault. It implies that even students living off campus are forbidden to own anything resembling a weapon (knives, guns, mace, etc.). Brown places absolutely no trust in its community-members to see to their own defense, instead employing a number of security guards around campus, whose only weapons are a walkie-talkie and a bright yellow jacket. Such dependency upon the establishment is an obvious contradiction to the faith that Brown claims to have in its students to determine the course of their own lives in other important areas, notably education. And, whether they are alert to this or not, students who are treated like children will continue to act like children; they will not learn to accept ultimate responsibility for events that may transpire in their lives. (It is no coincidence that support for capitalism and support for gun rights frequently run parallel.)

This last point is a crucial, and, seemingly, cultural problem. The notion that an individual should be able to see to his own defense has become shocking, and weapons deemed inherently evil. But self-reliance is an ideal near and dear to the American Dream, and self-defense is perhaps the most fundamentally important liberal right, upon which all others are based. One should never need to be entirely self-reliant; indeed, it is incumbent upon the government to see to the defense of its people. However, at the point where an individual is denied the right to see to his own defense – made necessarily dependent upon an external entity – he loses touch with the sense of responsibility so crucial to the spirit of enterprise and individualism. Universities, especially those that wish to instill a sense of empowerment in their students, would do far better to advance, rather than hinder, the right to self defense. And all the more so, given universities’ marked inability to provide it on their own.