Posted by
Graham Shaw on Wednesday, April 18, 2007 11:49:18 AM
The Virginia Tech Tragedy has brought up an issue that needs addressing, should students with permits be allowed to carry firearms on campus? The students of VT had asked the administration to obey the law of their state by allowing them to carry fire arms. The administration refused, they claimed that the on campus security would protect the students… It wasn’t. We as a people cannot continue to rely on other people to protect us, we must take responsibility for our own safety.
If you are granted a concealed carry permit by the state of you live in then you should be allowed to carry your weapon on campus, there is no difference between a college campus and any other area of the state, and the university should not be allowed to run roughshod over the 2nd amendment rights of it’s students.
We are frequently told that we are now adults, it is time that we are granted the privileges of adults.
Should everyone on campus be allowed to carry a gun, of course not, as long as Universities value diversity over common sense they’ll be people on campus who shouldn’t have a gun, and there are already laws in place that prevent a person with a criminal record from owning a gun. The VT massacre was only a massacre because the only person with a gun was the bad guy. We can’t say for sure that armed students would have stopped the shooting, but we can say that unarmed students made the killing much easier.
Graham Shaw is a criminal justice major and can be reached at
gs71170@appstate.edu