State Senator Ron Gould is one persistent man.
Last year, the governor — in a brief bout of common sense — vetoed the guns on campus bill Gould maneuvered through the legislature.
But that didn’t stop Gould. In the session soon to begin, he’s bringing in a new version — a cleaned up one that he believes will pass the governor’s muster.
We’ll see.
In it, students and others will be allowed to carry guns on campus and even into buildings, unless the buildings are equipped with gun lockers. Of course, Gould’s legislation requires the junior colleges and universities to pay for the lockers, which cost upward of $300 each. With 1,800 buildings on our college campuses, that’s a chunk of change the schools don’t have anyhow (in part thanks to Gould, who’s voted with the Republican majority to cut college funding by hundreds of millions of dollars over the past three years).
Gould, of course, believes that more guns will makes us safer. And those of us who oppose him understand the idea. We’ve seen the carnage of the Virginia Tech shooter.
Gould and others believe that an armed campus could’ve prevented the massacre. And that’s possible. A student or prof with a gun might’ve gotten the shooter before he did too much damage.
But really, Gould’s legislation just creates an illusion — the illusion that having armed students and staff will stop a shooter.
We know that guns will not stop the deranged.
Gould knows that no one bent on shooting up a place is sane enough to think twice before following through on some crazy plot. So the deterrent factor some might argue is irrelevant.
The other argument — that someone armed will shoot the shooter — presupposes that people will react in a calm, rational manner when someone on a college campus brandishes a gun and starts firing.
If we’re very lucky, there might be some brave soul who’s armed and a good marksmen and has had training in dealing with a situation like that (though Arizona requires little training and no expertise to carry a weapon, let alone to carry a concealed weapon).
And maybe that person gets off a round without hitting others around him and stops the shooter.
Or maybe he panics and fires indiscriminately, adding to the carnage.
Or maybe he does what most of us would do — dive for cover rather than confront the shooter.
Or maybe the police show up and there are several folks firing away — who’s the shooter?
Ironically, even as Gould and others want more guns in our midst, the state has made the regulations and training regarding gun possession even more lenient.
No, I’m afraid Senator Gould’s legislation — as well-meaning as it is — is a wrong-headed way to deal with the frightening problem of a crazed shooter on a college campus that fortunately is still rare in our society.
Mike McClellan is a Gilbert resident and former English teacher at Dobson High School in Mesa.
Slabside posted at 3:29 pm on Wed, Jan 4, 2012.
Wow Mike, you toss around "maybe", "perhaps", "possibly" like a bunch of kids playing keep away with another's school book. Basically, this entire editorial is sheer McClellan conjecture.
Remember when concealed carry permits were first offered in Arizona? Remember the sheer conjecture said how many shootings were going to happen? Where are they Mike?
Remember when the legislature pasted the restaurant and bar concealed carry law? Sheer conjecture said there were going to be mass shootings in these establishments. When are they going to happen Mike?
Here are some facts instead of conjecture:
April 16, 2007
Monday's campus shooting at Virginia Tech was the deadliest in U.S. history. Here, a list of other fatal shootings that have occurred at U.S. colleges and universities over the past several decades:
April 16, 2007: A gunman kills more than 30 people in a dorm and a classroom at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Va.
Sept. 2, 2006: Douglas W. Pennington, 49, kills himself and his two sons, Logan P. Pennington, 26, and Benjamin M. Pennington, 24, during a visit to the campus of Shepherd University in Shepherdstown, W.Va.
Oct. 28, 2002: Failing University of Arizona Nursing College student and Gulf War veteran Robert Flores, 40, walks into an instructor's office and fatally shoots her. A few minutes later, armed with five guns, he enters one of his nursing classrooms and kills two more of his instructors before fatally shooting himself.
Jan. 16, 2002: Graduate student Peter Odighizuwa, 42, recently dismissed from Virginia's Appalachian School of Law, returns to campus and kills the dean, a professor and a student before being tackled by students. The attack also wounds three female students.
Aug. 28, 2000: James Easton Kelly, 36, a University of Arkansas graduate student recently dropped from a doctoral program after a decade of study, and John Locke, 67, the English professor overseeing his coursework, are shot to death in an apparent murder-suicide.
Aug. 15, 1996: Frederick Martin Davidson, 36, a graduate engineering student at San Diego State, is defending his thesis before a faculty committee when he pulls out a handgun and kills three professors.
Nov. 1, 1991: Gang Lu, 28, a graduate student in physics from China, reportedly upset because he was passed over for an academic honor, opens fire in two buildings on the University of Iowa campus. Five University of Iowa employees are killed, including four members of the Physics Department; two other people are wounded. The student fatally shoots himself.
Aug. 1, 1966: Charles Whitman points a rifle from the observation deck of the University of Texas at Austin's Tower and begins shooting in a homicidal rampage that goes on for 96 minutes. Sixteen people are killed, including his wife and mother, who were shot the night before; 31 others are wounded.
Mike McClellan posted at 3:57 pm on Wed, Jan 4, 2012.
Here's a fact, slabside: notice that in all cases you mention above, someone having a gun to stop the shooter would have to have known the shooter's intention in advance, since in almost all the cases you cite above, the shooter surprised his victims.
And your argument about "maybe" -- "maybe" a good guy with a gun might be able to possibly pull out his gun before the bad guy who's already started shooting gets off too many shots. "Maybe."
Talk about conjecture. . . .
Slabside posted at 4:27 pm on Wed, Jan 4, 2012.
Here's a fact Mike, in all of the cases I posted did you notice they were "firearm prohibted" campuses? Yes, surprise is what people will convey when someone pulls a gun and starts blasting in a "firearm prohibited" area. The firearm prohibition law works reall good doesn't it?
Leon Ceniceros posted at 5:42 pm on Wed, Jan 4, 2012.
Just for example, Mike...let's look at ...ASU.
58,000 students
640 acre campus
Dozens and dozens of buildings
Thousands and thousands of classrooms
ASU Campus Police Staffing = 4 Sergeants, 11 Campus Police officers, 7 Campus Police recruits and 5 Campus Police aides....that's it....19 Campus Police to insure the safety of 58,000 "UN-ARMED" students across a campus the size of approxiamately 600+ "football fields".........ARE WE GETTING THE PICTURE YET....HAS THE PHRASE...."HOUSTON, WE HAVE A PROBLEM"...CROSSED YOUR MIND ??????
Mike to give you an example of the danger faced by "un-armed group in an enclosed building".
Let me take you back to November 5, 2009, Fort Hood Army Base, Texas. At 1:34pm in the afternoon, one Muslim-American Army Major, Nidal Malik Hasan (a shrink to boot with degrees up the wahzoo which so impresses you) started shooting his guns at ..."un-armed Military and Civilian victims" ....at 1:44pm....only 10 minutes later his shooting spree stopped.
12 Army soldiers killed.
1 Civilian killed.
29 Soldiers wounded and some maimed or crippled for life.
IF ONE SOLDIER IN THAT AUDITORIUM HAD HAD A WEAPON ON HIM OR HER....42 AMERICANS WOULD NOT HAVE BEEN SHOT.....42 AMERICANS, MIKE......42 AMERICANS..............THINK ABOUT IT...IF ONLY ONE OF THOSE HUNDRED PEOPLE OR SO WOULD HAVE BEEN ARMED....JUST ONE.
Rich posted at 6:33 pm on Wed, Jan 4, 2012.
Like most 'laws' this is comme ci comme ca. Guns in and of themselves do nothing but rust. The problem is that there are too many laws, and people argue about them. 40,000 laws went into affect on New Year's day. No one person knows them all, all have been broken in the last two days, and most have some jerk's opinion about them printed somewhere. If 'law' is going to work at all, it needs to be simple, clear, and only as many as one person can remember, about ten or twelve. Is this law a plus or minus? Neither, it's just a mindless nothing that scares cute little blonde girls who work as reporters and nerdy ex-teachers with a column. Most laws are bad jokes enacted by people who are worse jokes, and when you get 40,000 new ones a year, about all you can expect is that they are as silly as they are counter-productive.
samkat posted at 9:33 pm on Wed, Jan 4, 2012.
Mike: I will pose an interesting question for you. How many colleges, universities, high schools and even elementary school provide armed security guards to protect the staff and students? It seems like anymore, students and staff risk personal harm just entering the campus. I would not even want to set foot on some of the inner city schools with the gang activity.
While guns are one means of causing harm, knives, clubs and even homemade bombs are a threat in today's environment. Any enterprising soul can research the Internet for instructions on making just about any kind of chemical agent, bomb material, etc. that might do bodily harm.
Now, I would like to say that even though I have a CCW permit, I was concerned myself about lowering the standards.
Rich posted at 1:35 am on Thu, Jan 5, 2012.
C'mon samkat, get down to basics.
A freeman:
A) caries weapons at his pleasure.
B) Is limited in his weapons.
Law only works as A) or B) when you refine it you lose large buildings an thousands of people.