Dear Texas Legislature,
I am given to understand that you are considering making it legal for students over the age of 21 to carry concealed weapons on campus. The thought is that doing so would prevent mass murders like the one that happened at Virginia Tech.
It’s a pleasant daydream for these Walther Mittys. One can imagine any number of ways, all out of bad action movies. The tall young professor with the twinkling blue eyes, his class interrupted by a gunman, athletically rolls under the desk, brings up his weapon, and fires two shots into the torso of the assailant… the alternachick literature prof who had been a pacifist until she learned the error of her ways in Guatemala, pulls her weapon from her organic hemp rucksack, and wounds the gunman in the leg…. the elderly don with the tweed blazer and bowtie, calmly firing his antique revolver, ejaculating “You shall not interrupt my lecture on Charlemagne, you cur!”
(“It says, ‘Puppies bark for it’, on the box.”)
Here’s the thing. School shootings are exceedingly rare events. They are great exemplars of the maxim “hard cases make bad law”, because they’re impossibly difficult to contain within a policy, whether that policy is how a school should respond to a student struggling with mental illness, or what safety measures a college should enact, or whether guns should be permitted on campus.
The problem with endorsing concealed carry as a solution to these kinds of rare events are many. I’m going to focus on one, namely that there seems to be a direct correlation between the numbers of students owning firearms on campus, the likelihood that someone will be armed when the shooter bursts through the door in Wachowski-style slow motion, and (this is the crucial bit) that likelihood that accidental shootings will occur.
So let’s kick the tires. The idea here is supposed to be that if students are armed, the bad guys will either decide not to target classrooms, or that they will be stopped by a clear-eyed gun owner. I find the first disjunct implausible; almost every school shooting has been a planned last stand for the gunman. There’s only so much rationality we can assume. The second is less obviously wrong, but let’s do the math. You’d need to assume not just that some students will carry, but that a significant amount will carry, as classrooms do not consist of the entire student body. Maybe one in every 30? That way one can ensure an adequate distribution of firearms in all of the early classes. One would need more gun owners in freshman chem, because many students sleep in.
Two problems from the perspective of public safety. The first is that quite a lot of students wouldn’t be eligible; they’re either too young, or can’t establish residency requirements (at least that’s what they say when they try to register to vote.) So we’re going to have to find our gun-owners in the rest of the student population. This makes it look less and less like a viable safety measure (remember, we need a critical mass of carriers or else we’ve just added lots of guns) and more like a very silly idea whose appeal lies in fantasies.
Okay. So suppose anyone could have a gun! Given enough guns to ensure adequate mass-murder-coverage, we are surely going to have secondary problems, even if we suppose all of the gun owners are perfectly responsible. (That’s a huge spot.) College dorms and apartments are not the most secure locations; are all of their friends and roommates responsible? Never drunk and stupid? Never depressed over a girlfriend or boyfriend leaving? Never angry over a grade or a rejection or a slight? Never dealing drugs? The likely scenario is not a handsome senior bravely facing down the mass murderer (who threatens his delicate girlfriend with a leer…), but a drunken frat boy shooting himself in the leg, or a student murdering his ex-girlfriend and then himself, or an accidental death due to too much alcohol and too little common sense.
And, of course, you don’t get to assume that you’re the hero in the drama. You might be Jack Bauer. You might be the Plucky Extra Who Failed To Get the Safety Off.
So, if (as is likely), few students carry, the chance of shooting the gunman (as the music swells…), with a slightly higher chance of accidents; if many students carry, the chance of shooting the gunman (crescendoooo..) is greater, but so is the likelihood of other incidents. Add to that the rarity of school shooting, and the proposal looks like this: to stop an incident that occurs perhaps once a decade, we will take steps to ensure that other, more common harmful incidents (that don’t garner national attention) are more likely.
Perhaps there are other reasons to want guns on campus, but stopping the next VA Tech ain’t one of them.
Sincerely,
Those of us who have to work on campus.
P.S. Were I in a Swifter mood, I’d suggest we arm the profs. Older, more responsible, established in the community, definitely present in the classroom, and–bonus!! shorter office hours.
79 comments
March 31, 2009 at 1:50 pm
Scott Madin
Niiiiice.
March 31, 2009 at 2:04 pm
dana
I wish it were mine own invention.
March 31, 2009 at 2:29 pm
Bitchphd
The profs aren’t always so sane either….
March 31, 2009 at 4:45 pm
kid bitzer
in addition, consider the fact that the most clear cut lesson of the last few shootings has been that people on campuses should take students’ mental health issues more seriously.
so i’ve got a student in my class who seems a bit alienated and withdrawn. i ask him how he’s doing and he snarls at me. i make discreet inquiries with the counseling center and they tell me that, yes, they are worried about him too. he’s failing several courses, and his ex-girl-friend complains that he is stalking her.
and now his room-mate comes to the dorm advisor and says the guy went out this weekend and bought a large handgun and a boatload of ammo. oh dear.
in the old days, we could have intervened to remove the gun from the campus– not confiscate it, just have him ship it home or keep it elsewhere.
but now he has the legislature behind him, telling us that he has a perfect right to keep that gun in his dorm room. he has not committed any crimes in the past. there’s no rationale for denying him the right the legislature says he has.
all we can do is wait.
gosh, i wish i taught in texas! i’d feel so much safer there!
March 31, 2009 at 5:56 pm
ignobility
Another big problem: A shooter starts firing into a classroom where one student is carrying a concealed weapon. That student takes his firearm out and starts shooting. Someone in the hallway (also armed) hears gunshots, peeks into the room, and sees someone firing a gun. He starts shooting, but at the wrong person! More people arrive, all with guns. Now, no one knows who the original shooter is, but 6-7 people are firing guns. Whoopee! I would certainly feel safer.
March 31, 2009 at 6:06 pm
kid bitzer
wow! there’s so much safeness in that room, no one’s going to survive!
March 31, 2009 at 6:09 pm
dana
That’s a good point. Probably not a huge worry, because the shootings are exceedingly rare events, but I remember during Columbine that the students who were under assault were also under suspicion for a while until the police determined who had been the shooters and that they were dead. More shooters only complicates that problem.
March 31, 2009 at 6:51 pm
Jason B.
Here in Oklahoma we had a recent scare of this same motion. Thankfully the Flying Spaghetti Monster intervened, and we professors were allowed to give deserved bad grades without fear of retaliatory gunfire.
For now.
March 31, 2009 at 8:03 pm
Urk
8 years ago I (and the University of Arkansas, and the town of Fayetteville, and lots of people elsewhere too) lost a really dear and wonderful professor to an armed and bitter grad student, who’d gone out to the local Wal-Mart and bought a pistol and some armor piercing shells after getting bounced from the comp-lit program. It happened at the beginning of the fall semester, my last at the U of A. I’d stayed in town for a semester just to take a class with this teacher while my wife-to-be moved to Alabama.
One of the many ironies here is that the professor, Dr. John Locke, had abstained from the vote, since he was the shooter’s adviser. Another is that Dr. Locke, who’s classes were wide-ranging inquiries into just about anything that he thought might be useful or wise, spoke to us about being prepared to defend oneself (without being aggressive or inviting attack) in situations where we were dealing with someone who was angry.
The night after he died I remember lying on my back next to the fountain in front of the Union, watching the water come up, separate into discrete, individual drops,and then splash back into the larger puddle. It seemed like maybe he would have wanted those of us feeling his loss to think about his own fleeting individual consciousness like that. He had a way of talking about ideas like that and making them not seem like new-age bullshit. In fact, the problem of talking about what happened in his classes is that inevitably words like “Jungian” and “Buddhism” and “mindfulness” come up and then it’s hard to get across the kind of deep and rigorous engagement that he brought to the classroom. (There’s a tribute to him up on the interwebs somewhere, and I’d link to it, but I’m bad at the html.) So I’ll spare you, but they were easily among the best classes I ever took, and, over two semesters I never once felt like a second of my time in that room had been anything less than extraordinary. Just a hell of a teacher.
Now I’m finishing grad school in Iowa, and right outside the lecture hall where the class I TA meets there’s a memorial to a whole group of faculty members and grad students who were killed by another bitter, failing, student in the 90s.
And none of this is very far from my mind most days, and sadly it makes me actually think twice about the joking suggestion to arm professors.
March 31, 2009 at 10:14 pm
W. Scott Lewis
Google “SCCC Handbook: Texas Edition.”
April 1, 2009 at 4:23 am
Chris
One problem with arming professors specifically is that it would make them a target. If the gunman has any rationality, he knows that he is outnumbered but has the advantage of surprise (until he opens fire). So, if there’s one armed person in the room and he knows who it is, who does he shoot first?
I think the reason people consider “solutions” like this may be related to why people are so bad at Bayesian reasoning. Arming students may reduce the chance of being shot given that there is a mad gunman in the room, but it definitely increases the chance of being shot given that there is *not* a mad gunman in the room (accidents, drinking, all kinds of emotional disturbance less severe than these one-in-a-million shooters), which is the vastly more common case and therefore its effects dominate the overall number of shooting deaths.
But there’s something emotionally repugnant about saying “This is worse than the original problem, so we shouldn’t do it” – at least in the absence of an alternative solution.
In a vague sense you could also link this kind of thinking to the wars on drugs and terror. Cures worse than the disease are very common in both cases, but anyone who opposes a cure merely because it is worse than the disease is castigated as someone who doesn’t care about (or even supports) the disease.
April 1, 2009 at 4:52 am
hmprescott
Bitch, Ph.D. I realize you’re making a joke, but as a faculty member with bipolar disorder, I find it rather insensitive. I agree with kid bitzer that campuses need to take mental health issues seriously, but that means putting more resources into outreach and treatment, not profiling and reinforcing stereotypes about persons with mental illnesses as more prone to violence than the rest of the population. This simply isn’t true.
April 1, 2009 at 6:03 am
Anderson
Dealing with bipolar disorder *and* a complete lack of a sense of humor must be particularly crippling. My condolences.
April 1, 2009 at 6:41 am
dana
We should keep in mind that “all mass murder shooters are mentally ill” is not the same as “the mentally ill are likely to become mass murder shooters.”
Plus, as I said in the post, the thing with something like Virginia Tech is that it’s such an outlier that it makes any conclusions questionable. (E.g., claims that all students who show signs of depression/bipolar disorder should be banned from campus, evaluated for signs of violence, etc.) The main reason to take mental health issues seriously isn’t school shootings, but the presence of students who need mental health counseling and who, when they fail to get it, have mundane mental health problems.
April 1, 2009 at 6:50 am
Jackmormon
You might be the Plucky Extra Who Failed To Get the Safety Off.
God, that would so totally be me.
April 1, 2009 at 6:52 am
kid bitzer
why, jm? because you like having unsatisfactory sex with football players?
April 1, 2009 at 6:54 am
Jackmormon
Their helmets are so intimidating.
April 1, 2009 at 7:04 am
kid bitzer
they just wear those because they’re afraid of quarterbacks who run and gun.
April 1, 2009 at 7:12 am
kid bitzer
“We should keep in mind that “all mass murder shooters are mentally ill” is not the same as “the mentally ill are likely to become mass murder shooters.” ”
this is very true.
but the reverend bayes tells me that if the sane outnumber the mentally ill among the population at large (as they sometimes seem to), and if the mentally ill outnumber the sane among the population of mass murderers, then the mentally ill *are* more likely to become mass murderers than the sane are.
so “all mass murderers are mentally ill” does entail “the mentally ill are more likely than the sane are, to become mass murderers”.
given the numbers, this probably raises the odds that the person in front of you will go postal, given that they suffer from mental illness, from, e.g., one in 300 million to one in 120 million. low enough that other more local considerations overwhelm it.
still, the error that you warn us against, while a genuine error, enjoys its grip on the human mind because of its close similarity to a truth.
April 1, 2009 at 7:28 am
Neil the Ethical Werewolf
A buddy of mine named John Woods, whose girlfriend was killed in the Virginia Tech shooting, just got elected to the University of Texas student government. He’s an intense gun control supporter and given his personal history, it’s really hard to get pro-gun arguments to work when he’s in the room.
April 1, 2009 at 7:33 am
dana
low enough that other more local considerations overwhelm it.
Right. Also, I said “likely”, not “more likely.”
There’s got to be a name for this line of bad reasoning. E.g., I say, “the birth control pill doubles your risk of blood clots!!” That sounds dangerous! But a) the risk of blood clots in an otherwise healthy young woman is quite small and b) pregnancy (so I have been told) quadruples one’s risk of blood clots. Background probability is important.
There’s also a good question whether mass murder shooters are mentally ill in the relevant sense, viz., diagnosed as such beforehand (and thus counted as in the population of “mentally ill” instead of “sane.” Otherwise it’s trivially true that every mass murderer is insane.)
April 1, 2009 at 7:38 am
dana
I can’t even begin to imagine Woods’ pain. (I still think I’m right, but how horrible for him.)
April 1, 2009 at 7:44 am
kid bitzer
“Right. Also, I said “likely”, not “more likely.” ”
no you didn’t. *i* said that, when i quoted you.
yes: the name for the fallacy is “ignoring the background rate”.
agreed that it seems perfectly possible that many shooters do not manifest some recognized, diagnostic-category style of mental illness prior to their break. i don’t know how the numbers work, but i imagine that for every one who has a record of diagnoses, there are some others that just had a series of life-crushing accidental situations befall them: the divorce, the job-loss, etc.
not meant as an excuse–there are better coping-mechanisms for stressful times than firing off a clip in a classroom–but i do agree that focussing on people with diagnosed preconditions may be worse than prejudicial; it may be a red herring altogether.
April 1, 2009 at 7:45 am
Urk
Chris, I hope that i was clear in that I really don’t advocate profs being armed. Just that, given what I recounted, the idea of _more_ students being armed strikes me as really stupid, stupid enough to make me briefly contemplate an unreasonable (non-)solution.
April 1, 2009 at 8:04 am
dana
kb, exactly. Some of the shootings seem to be in response to specific triggers, and it’s not clear whether there were always underlying problems that could have been caught.
April 1, 2009 at 8:09 am
kid bitzer
“Some of the shootings seem to be in response to specific triggers”
you’re sure you want to go to press with that phrasing?
April 1, 2009 at 8:12 am
dana
Oh lord.
April 1, 2009 at 8:16 am
chingona
I think we already passed this in Arizona last year.
April 1, 2009 at 8:19 am
docdave
I recall an old National Lampoon poster depicting the multiple-gunmen model of Lincoln’s last evening out; just about everyone in ford’s theater depicted with hogleg in hand, blasting away. Fast-forward to facing a hundred-student section of US Survey to 1865….
April 1, 2009 at 8:25 am
ajay
There’s got to be a name for this line of bad reasoning. E.g., I say, “the birth control pill doubles your risk of blood clots!!” That sounds dangerous! But a) the risk of blood clots in an otherwise healthy young woman is quite small and b) pregnancy (so I have been told) quadruples one’s risk of blood clots. Background probability is important.
It’s not the same, but it’s a bit like the ‘false positive test’ fallacy… if a blood test for the Dreaded Lurgi has a 99% chance of being correct (i.e. one in every hundred sufferers will test negative, one in every hundred healthy people will test positive) what are the chances, given that you’ve just tested positive, that you actually have the Dreaded Lurgi?
Instinctively you think that it must be pretty high. 99% or so, right? But that ain’t necessarily so. If only one in a million people has the Dreaded Lurgi, and you test everyone in the US (300 million), you’ll get 297 correct positives, three false negatives, 296,999,703 correct negatives and 2,999,997 false positives.
So, even though only 300 people actually have the Dreaded Lurgi, 3,000,294 people will test positive.
Given that you’re one of those three million-odd positives, the chance of your actually having Lurgi is only one in ten thousand.
Re the pregnancy example: giving birth in the US is about as likely to kill you as spending a month in Iraq with the US Army.
The Soviets used to give medals to mothers with more than a certain number of kids…
April 1, 2009 at 9:39 am
Cosma
I have never liked the Dreaded Lurgi example.
April 1, 2009 at 10:02 am
StevenAttewell
Ajay –
Doesn’t the Dread Lurgi test results depend on the prevalence of brass band instruments?
And what about the far more pressing issue of the drains at Hackney?
http://www.thegoonshow.net/scripts_show.asp?title=s05e07_lurgi_strikes_britain
April 1, 2009 at 11:13 am
chingona
I’m now told we didn’t pass this in Arizona. Carry on.
April 1, 2009 at 11:18 am
W. Scott Lewis
Neil, if you’d like to see a few “pro-gun” arguments that work pretty well when John Woods is in the room, check out the “SCCC Handbook: Texas Edition.”
Pay particular attention to pages 21-28 and pages 29-30.
Alternate Link
April 1, 2009 at 1:08 pm
Carl
Have we considered the alternatives?
How about a basket of guns for pickup and dropoff at the door of every building on campus?
A rack of loaner kevlar in the lobby?
Hungry anacondas behind ceiling trapdoors activated by a control panel at the teacher’s podium? (Regardless of how this conversation goes I want one of those anyway.)
Or we could console ourselves with the global warming advantages of the greenhouse gasses not emitted over a shortened lifespan by all the victims?
What are the odds that the gunman takes out a student who would later become even more disgruntled and shoot even more people? Cosma, can you help?
April 1, 2009 at 2:22 pm
kid bitzer
good point, carl.
if you were an art-teacher in weimar germany and you could kill a school-shooter who was about to kill a classroom full of art students including adolph hitler, would you do it?
well, would you, punk?
April 1, 2009 at 2:33 pm
Urk
Carl, I like the anaconda drop, but there’s another critter that I’m thinking might even be more effective…
April 1, 2009 at 3:55 pm
kid bitzer
you mean, the south american snake that bores you to death with a plodding, repetitive, 20-minute drum-solo?
the dreaded, “anaconda da vida”?
i don’t think that’s legal even in texas.
April 1, 2009 at 6:04 pm
grackle
I think Urk is thinking of this
April 1, 2009 at 6:07 pm
Carl
I’d consider letting him fire away just to rid the world of young Hitler’s insipid sofa backdrop art, the rest is a bonus.
And I believe yes, that is legal in some parts of Texas out Lubbock-way. They go full throttle out there.
April 1, 2009 at 6:11 pm
Carl
Hey, Casey Porn! I know her, grackle! I’ve got some of her art but it doesn’t match the sofa. We dream of our children marrying and hyphenating their last names (I’m Carl Dyke).
April 1, 2009 at 7:46 pm
Urk
That’s what I’m talking about grackle, Professor Plum in the Icebox with an armed cephalopod.
April 1, 2009 at 8:10 pm
neil s
a casual google search indicates that schools shootings at colleges occur more frequently than once a decade. i found 2 at US colleges in 2008, 2 at US colleges in 2007, and one at a US college in 2006.
http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0777958.html
i agree with you that allowing college freshmen to keep handguns in their dorms would be a disastrous and foolish policy. however, most college students over 21 do not live in dorms. those who do often face restrictions concerning alcohol that can be brought into the university housing, irregardless of the fact that they can otherwise legally posses it. allowing concealed carry permit holders who are over 21 to carry on campus, like they can elsewhere in the state, does not necessarily imply a school policy allowing those students to store their firearms in on campus housing, although it makes regulating those students firearm possession trickier.
concerning the scenarios put forth in the comments in which armed student victims only contribute to the carnage, that is indeed possible but is subject also to your arguments concerning the rarity of the school shooting event in general. they will only contribute to the carnage insofar as there is carnage to contribute to, and it may be that in those rare instances they happen to prevent instead of add to the terror.
consequential arguments aside, in such a rare situation i think many people would find intrinsic value in not being entirely powerless victims waiting for police assistance or facing death. some think that having that option is their right. while you seem to scoff at the idea of self-defense in the face of deranged armed teenagers, were you ever actually in that exceedingly rare position i doubt you would regret having a firearm in your desk.
April 1, 2009 at 8:31 pm
dana
Two per year, if we cast it quite broadly. And every day there are thousands of classes that meet.
some think that having that option is their right.
College campuses are environments that are unlike the rest of the world in lots of interesting ways; the idea that it’s a gun-free zone isn’t crazier than banning hard liquor on campus for all students (even those of age), or having single sex dorms, or various kinds of relationships.
while you seem to scoff at the idea of self-defense in the face of deranged armed teenagers, were you ever actually in that exceedingly rare position i doubt you would regret having a firearm in your desk.
Maybe. I could be the Plucky Extra. But maybe I’d be The Bride. But again, pay attention to the probability. There are plenty of things that I would regret only in exceedingly rare circumstances, but I don’t take daydreams about exceedingly rare circumstances as reason to overturn a policy that is targeted at everyday circumstances.
And you’ve hit on one of my pet peeves; assuming that being unarmed means entirely powerless, because there wasn’t a Jack Bauer moment. One student whose name I don’t recall saved a classroom at Virginia Tech simply by being smart enough to realize that they shouldn’t cower, but that they should barricade the door, and having the presence of mind to order his classmates to do so. He didn’t have guns blazing, so it’s not as sexy, but his actions and those of his classmates saved a classroom.
April 1, 2009 at 8:52 pm
neil s
i didn’t cast it broadly, to do that i would have included high schools, or colleges in other countries. i included only colleges in the us found quickly at that one website. two per year is a fair number, from my limited research.
i am not saying that it is crazy to have no guns on campus, it isnt crazy at all. i am only saying that it is also not necessarily crazy to have the same rules concerning concealed carry apply to public college campuses that apply in the rest of the state in which those campuses are located. it will not necessarily lead to a rash of accidental gun deaths on campus. because colleges are traditionally in loco parentis, i support the discretion of the university administration to regulate gun possession in university housing as they see fit. the idea of a dorm full of guns is frankly terrifying.
if the student who had had the other students barricade the door had also had a firearm, the outcome would probably have been no different. he also would have been less inclined to cower. barricading the door is most likely more rational than engaging in a shootout, given sufficient time and material to do so. the student without a gun, while i will concede not entirely powerless before his armed assailants are in the room, is comparatively much worse off.
i dont feel like looking for the statistics, but it is my impression that cities with gun bans do not have substantially less gun crime. it is also my impression that people with concealed carry permits rarely commit crimes with their guns. im not sure what the statistics on accidental gun injuries are, but i dont think they are stratospheric by any means.
this debate seems to be more an emotional one, and part of the so called culture wars. both sides feel emotional about guns, and have a desire to mock the other side. i think that is what irked me about this post, its mocking tone and the idea that any wanting to have a gun to protect themselves from random violence is a macho idiot who is only going to make things worse. i guess i am pro-choice on the matter, have a gun if you want one. and i certainly do not live in fear of violence from those carrying weapons lawfully, although i typically question their need for one.
April 1, 2009 at 9:13 pm
Tybalt
“consequential arguments aside, in such a rare situation i think many people would find intrinsic value in not being entirely powerless victims waiting for police assistance or facing death.”
Having been in exactly that situation (inside a building where a crazed gunman was walking around shooting people – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denis_Lortie) let me assure you that those are not the only two options. Dana’s response should suffice to spark thoughts of dozens of other examples.
I was eleven at the time, so my response wasn’t to do much except to try to rally and comfort other children who were frightened (pure bravado on my part). But I am glad in hindsight that teachers and staff who were with us didn’t act like powerless victims facing death. And I am forever glad that one impossibly brave man didn’t try to firefight his way to heroism, because it may have saved my life.
If a gun, or the thought of the police, is the only thing that can give you hope in contemplating something like this, I think you are mentally disturbed.
April 1, 2009 at 9:15 pm
Tybalt
it is also my impression that people with concealed carry permits rarely commit crimes with their guns.
Got any data there, sport?
April 1, 2009 at 9:17 pm
dana
any wanting to have a gun to protect themselves from random violence is a macho idiot who is only going to make things worse.
I don’t think I say any wanting, or random violence. The claim is that the risk of a mass school shooting does not justify the added risk of guns being on campus, along with a healthy dose of doubting the likely deterrent effect. I specifically spotted the concealed carry side responsible gun owners.
I will cop to mocking macho idiots, sure, but go back and re-read some of the armchair warrior talk after Virginia Tech. I think “macho idiot” is just plainly descriptive there. Lots of fantasy, and almost no thought to how this would play out in practice.
April 1, 2009 at 9:22 pm
neil s
yes, i’m “mentally disturbed” because if someone is attacking me with a gun i want a gun or a cop. or a force field, or a teleportation machine.
April 1, 2009 at 9:38 pm
neil s
it is entirely possible that the risk of a mass school shooting does not justify the added risk of guns being on campus.
it is possible that peoples right to carry guns and their heightened feeling of security is an independent value to be considered. there is also the feeling of insecurity and irritation that some will feel knowing guns are now allowed on campus.
there is also the fact that on most campuses, the number of guns on campus will be small, because the number of concealed carry holders will be small, and so the risk won’t be that great. also to be considered are other smaller crimes that guns on campus may deter/prevent. it is possible that a change in policy will have almost no effect on campus mortality, which will remain extremely low.
as i said, i really don’t think this whole gun debate is about policy outcomes. i think that is just window dressing for advocacy of intuitive attitudes towards firearms. i wonder where those intuitive attitudes come from. nominally, the law of the land is that “the right of the people to bear arms shall not be infringed”.
April 1, 2009 at 9:38 pm
ignobility
i dont feel like looking for the statistics,
Is neil s really Jonah Goldberg?
April 1, 2009 at 9:41 pm
neil s
ive put enough time in now that i suppose i should google for stats. the stats you find on this issue always seem partisan. here is something.
http://www.guncite.com/gun_control_gcdgcon.html
April 1, 2009 at 9:45 pm
neil s
* Florida adopted a right-to-carry law in 1987.
* When the law went into effect, the Dade County Police began a program to record all arrest and non arrest incidents involving concealed carry licensees. Between September of 1987 and August of 1992, Dade County recorded 4 crimes committed by licensees with firearms. None of these crimes resulted in an injury. The record keeping program was abandoned in 1992 because there were not enough incidents to justify tracking them. (13)(15)
from
http://www.justfacts.com/guncontrol.asp#Right-To-Carry%20Laws
April 1, 2009 at 9:54 pm
Vance
But did Roosevelt’s concealed-carry laws end the Depression in the illegal settlements in Palestine?
April 2, 2009 at 1:16 am
dave
Just a reflection, but to what extent can we now say that Robert Heinlein’s contention that ‘an armed socierty is a polite society’ has been disproved by history?
April 2, 2009 at 2:34 am
ajay
I have never liked the Dreaded Lurgi example.
Well, I think there’s something wrong with an example that assumes you can ask 100 totally independent yes-or-no questions about the same subject, such that someone who got questions 1 to 99 right has no higher chance of getting 100 right than someone who got questions 1 to 99 wrong…
April 2, 2009 at 5:13 am
hmprescott
Actually, Anderson, I do have a sense of humor but it’s hard to laugh at the outpouring of prejudice against persons with mental illness that has emerged in the wake of the recent campus shootings. It’s even more discouraging to see such discriminatory language on a progressive blog.
For those who actually care about these issues, there’s a campaign by disability bloggers to stamp out the use of the r-word:
http://www.r-word.org/
April 2, 2009 at 5:55 am
Mike
At my university in Virginia, some students conduct a silent protest against the campus gun-ban by wearing empty holsters to class on the anniversary of the Virginia Tech shootings. I confess that I don’t have much patience for cavalier discussions about arming my workplace, to which I normally respond, “you first.” What do you want to bet that anyone hoping to testify before the Texas State Legislature about this issue would have to pass through a metal detector? To that legislature, and to Virginia’s, I say, “you first.”
April 2, 2009 at 5:58 am
dana
as i said, i really don’t think this whole gun debate is about policy outcomes.
Well, for me it is. That’s why “heightened sense of security” doesn’t hold a lot of weight, if someone’s security blanket leads to more deaths.
April 2, 2009 at 6:20 am
Carl
I agree with dana. And I didn’t see neil s. advocating anything wacky, I saw him sensibly considering the issue from other perspectives.
April 2, 2009 at 8:13 am
Vance
I saw neil s tendentiously hinting toward a “pro-gun” position while maintaining deniability. (Citing John Lott, though, puts him clearly on one side of a very well-worn blogospheric divide.)
April 2, 2009 at 9:30 am
Carl
Could be, Vance, could be. When you’re in a gunfight it is vital to watch the other guy for the slightest twitch.
April 2, 2009 at 1:29 pm
bitchphd
Hmprescott, chill the fuck out. When I wrote that I was actually thinking of my own severe depression while professing, and how damn glad I was there wasn’t a gun around.
April 2, 2009 at 1:53 pm
Vance
Not to mention that your handle suggests a certain nonchalance in handling radioactive words.
April 2, 2009 at 2:14 pm
bitchphd
Plus everyone knows that bps are a pain in the ass.
April 2, 2009 at 2:40 pm
Carl
But bitchphd, this is just the evidence of your own internalized oppression. Free yourself, our sister, from your self-loathing, and join the armies of the righteously enlightened!
April 2, 2009 at 2:55 pm
bitchphd
No, I’m just a depressive. We’re annoying as hell, sure (see DFW’s story “The Depressed Person”–he knew what he was talking about), but at least we *know* we’re loathsome.
April 2, 2009 at 4:23 pm
hmprescott
Sorry — and yes, I’m a pain in people’s ass on a regular basis. Just ask my department mates!
April 3, 2009 at 12:55 am
Neil the Ethical Werewolf
Oh, dana, the point was that you’re right and John agrees with you.
April 3, 2009 at 6:31 am
dana
Yeah, somehow I read that backwards.
April 5, 2009 at 7:40 pm
W. Scott Lewis
I confess that I don’t have much patience for cavalier discussions about arming my workplace, to which I normally respond, “you first.” What do you want to bet that anyone hoping to testify before the Texas State Legislature about this issue would have to pass through a metal detector?
Name the bet–I know a sure thing when I see it. Last Monday (March 30, 2009), I attended the public hearing on this bill, held by the Texas House Committee on Public Safety, and nobody entering the the committee chamber was required to pass through a metal detector. I won’t say whether or not I was carrying my legally concealed handgun, but I will say that I know for a fact that numerous people were legally carrying concealed handguns in that committee chamber.
Texas legislators aren’t even allowed to restrict concealed carry in their own Capitol offices. If that’s not an adequate response to your “you first” demand of the legislature, I don’t know what is.
April 5, 2009 at 7:51 pm
ari
I won’t say whether or not I was carrying my legally concealed handgun
Why won’t you say? It was legal, right? So why so coy?
April 5, 2009 at 8:38 pm
Vance
I’m more puzzled by this:
I know for a fact that numerous people were legally carrying concealed handguns
which fries my little brain every time I try to parse it. (Doubtless the solution is in a technical meaning of “concealed”.)
April 5, 2009 at 8:55 pm
ari
Well, Vance, I think the explanation’s obvious: either those folks were packing heat, or they were very happy to see W. Scott.
April 5, 2009 at 9:03 pm
andrew
Guns in a legislature? What could possibly go wrong?
April 6, 2009 at 6:06 am
kid bitzer
the only problem was caused by the coward benton’s failure to carry a gun.
foote was clearly in the right: he was armed. and if benton had been properly armed, then a satisfactory resolution would have been produced, without all the bluster, and with no need to adjourn the senate.
separate question: suppose that we really believed that teachers should carry handguns in order to protect their students from each other.
it would be an instance of preparing for a very unlikely eventuality, but then again we do that pretty often: smoke detectors, first-aid kits, and now, the increasingly common automatic defibrillator.
here’s what i wonder: when your kid is gunned down in a classroom whose teacher *failed* to come to class armed, don’t you really have a cause of action against that teacher? i mean, they could have rendered emergency assistance, and yet didn’t, for some obscure ideological reason. it would be as though they let your kid choke to death because of a morbid fear of hugging people.
yeah, i think optional carry isn’t good enough. what we need is mandatory carry.
April 6, 2009 at 10:16 am
W. Scott Lewis
I’ve known several of the meeting attendees for a few years now, and they’ve told me in the past that they always carry at the Capitol.
To be fair, it probably would have been more accurate for me to say, “I can say with a good deal of certainty,” rather than, “I know for a fact.”
I never reveal where or when I carry a concealed handgun because that’s the beauty of concealed carry–nobody knows when or where I’m carrying unless it becomes necessary for them to know.
April 6, 2009 at 10:33 am
ari
I never reveal where or when I carry a concealed handgun because that’s the beauty of concealed carry–nobody knows when or where I’m carrying unless it becomes necessary for them to know.
That’s almost unbearably hott. That was the point, right?
April 6, 2009 at 10:55 am
Julian
These arguments seem hard to make (to me) because I don’t know where the data on fatalities / injuries from misuse of concealed-carry firearms is. And it’s doubly hard to guess at how much crime / murder rate would be reduced by more permissive concealed carry laws. Can’t we pick a state to be our Thunderdome and see how it goes?