Let's get guns on campus....in the right hands

March 9, 11:25 AMDenver Gun Rights ExaminerDan Bidstrup

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Friday I drove a van for my kid's field trip to see a play at the Arvada Center. It was a school function and I didn't carry my concealed weapon. As one might have expected, we all returned to school safe and sound at the end of the day's festivities. Were the kids safer because I was disarmed? Would the kids be safer if the teachers carried weapons? Whenever I volunteer at the school I think of the 2004 hostage crisis that occurred in Beslan, a small town in the Russian Federation. Here in the US, there was murder of 5 girls in Pennsylvania at an Amish school. Schools are exquisite sites for terror because every child has parents that love them.  
 

There is not a lot of ferment about arming teachers in K-12 or having guns in the elementary schools, but there sure is at the college level. After the shooting at Virginia Tech, a group called Students for Concealed Carry on Campus  formed and has gathered over 30,000 followers on Facebook. They argue that current policy guarantees a turkey-shoot for any madman who decides to come on a university campus for a killing spree. Even one gun shooting back would massively reduce the carnage, and people with CCW permits have already been vetted by the Colorado Bureau of Investigation. They present no additional risk to the student population if they carry their weapons. There is a lawsuit currently pending against CU, brought by two current and one graduated University of Colorado students. They argue that the state law on concealed carry stipulates that you can't carry in certain places, but college campuses are not among them. Further, the law prohibits local regulations that conflict with that state law, C.R.S. § 18-12-214. CSU is considering changing their policy, but is waiting for the outcome of the CU lawsuit.

John Lott, author of More Guns, Less Crime, sums it up on page 115:
"The results presented here are dramatic: states that adopted nondiscretionary laws (in Colorado we call this "shall carry" legislation) during the 1977-1992 period virtually eliminated mass public shootings after four or five years. These results raise serious concerns over state and federal laws banning all guns from schools and the surrounding area. At least permitting school employees access to guns would seem to make schools less vulnerable to mass shootings."

How much longer before a majority of folks understands that guns in the hands of law abiding citizens increases our safety, not reduces it?

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