Keg Parties are a Bad Idea
Long before we encourage or support students carrying weapons on college campuses, we should implement much less dangerous and much more effective security measures to help prevent school massacres. To begin with, how about requiring criminal background checks and proof of ID for all gun sales in the US?
Current Federal law only requires that background checks be performed on gun buyers if they buy guns from Federally Licensed gun dealers. According to the BATF licensed dealers only sell about 50% of guns sold each year. The other 50% are legally sold by private sellers out of their homes, backpacks, car trunks and at thousands of gun shows where no background check, record keeping or even ID is required. Consequently criminals, terrorists and mentally ill individuals can buy an unlimited number of military style weapons and easily concealed handguns without detection. How about that for a failed Federal policy? Is there any wonder why there are school massacres and a gun violence epidemic in the US?
We should also allow law enforcement to maintain gun purchase records and to share critical crime gun trace data with other Police Departments including Campus Police. Instead the FBI is required to destroy gun pruchase records (from dealers only) after 24 hours and the BATF is prohibited from sharing important crime gun trace data. Why? Because the nra and their shills in Congress have made law enforcement the enemy of gun rights and don't trust police to know who has guns including convicted felons and suspected terrorists.
On college campuses, where there's a large number of teenagers, many of whom by definition are "temporarily insane", there should be trained and paid professional security personel and counsellors, not armed and and dangerous students. I wonder, if those who advocate for arming students also support arming teachers? I can just imagine armed keg parties where a gun fight breaks out or a classroom where a a student who's given a low grade takes aim at the professor or professor shoots a student reaching for a pen thinking it's a gun, like actually happened in South Africa a few years ago. Also how many parents are going to send their pride and joys to schools that allow fellow students to carry concealed weapons in class or where there are armed teachers?
Isn't just common sense to require a criminal background check for all gun sales and allow trained public safety officials to know who is buying guns, maintain a database and share crime solving data to prevent future campus shootings before arming students and teachers on campus?
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Just as with any of your, or my possessions, firearms are personal property, and the government (any government) has no business telling me what i can do with them. Many more people die in accidents in there home, than from all types of gun deaths every year, should require background checks for home buyers. Cars have a much hire incident rates of death, and serious injury than firearms, why not background checks on them. The difference between other personal property and firearms, is that firearm ownership is Constitutionally protected.
"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."
And before you anti-gunners try to attack the word militia, as you are apt to do, a little history. The militia is every able bodied male between 16 - 65, who is expected to take up arms against anyone that seeks to harm us.(government included)
College students don't drink beer in class and won't kill each other for reaching for a pen. This is about preventing incidents like Virginia Tech and Columbine. Had a single person been allowed to defend themselves (or had the cops actually done something) the victims would still be alive.
Keeping guns off campus won't prevent these incidents because killers will not follow the rules anyway. "Gun-free Zones" only protect the killers by disarming their prey. Even if you can prevent people from taking guns to a frat party, there will still be knives, beer bottles, screwdrivers and baseball bats. The point is that if someone has an intent to harm or kill you, they will find a way to do it. I have seen someone nearly get stabbed at a party and I have seen a golf club pulled out as a weapon. Surely nobody wants to ban golf clubs. It appears your objection lies with alcohol , not guns so why don't you advocate a return to Prohibition? Guns are simply a tool, they are useless lying on the ground. There have been many women on my own campus that have been sexually assaulted; don't they also deserve the right to defend themselves? What about preventing a break-in or robbery? Mass killings are not the only things Concealed Carry can help prevent.
You are obviously informed of your "opinion" based on buzz words and statements repeatedly given credibility that have a political agenda.
Did you know that it is a criminal offense in and of itself to consume alcohol and carry? The person or student that does has not gone through concealed weapons training and therefore not legal. We are talking legal law abiding students that should be allowed to protect themselves and others should they need to.
People of your mindset do not find the common denominator in Virginia Tech, Colorado Springs, Mumbai or even the holocaust to name a few. The criminal, and in the one case a government, has found the common denominator. Why do you think the psycho's don't choose our local rod and gun clubs for their killing sprees.
CWC permit holders have a grave responsibility whether a student or citizen. Not only do they put their lives in danger they better be trained and skillful so no harm comes to innocents. The biggest responsibility? If there is reason to pull it you use it and the one to go home to his family is you. There is no such thing as a fair fight. If it is fair the tactics need to be rethought.
What isn't fair is a college campus full of innocents being defenselessly gunned down and their parents with empty beds from lack of one person on the right side of the law not being able to carry.
Your argument is so poorly presented that it is close to not making sense at all. Obviously just a passionately heated pile of rhetoric not based on sound research or truth.
I am not worried about some keg pary where someone might be carrying a gun. These parties are completely unregulated and have nothing to do with the argument. The point is protecting our youth while they are attending classes. Something that our police and security systems have largeley failed to do.
Why not arm our youth? We send them overseas to fight and die. At 18 we are considered adults but most of the people I know who carry have been inculcated since a young age about the responsibilities related to firearms.
"An armed society is a polite society."
Current Black Market law only requires that cash be paid upfront on any purchase, including guns. Criminals, terrorists, and mentally ill individuals can buy military grade, as opposed to "style," as in, military looking, weapons, in amounts limited only by the amount of cash they have. This law doesn't show much sign of changing. Laws requiring background checks and such will drive those killers, and their funds, to the black market, allowing it to expand, rather than allowing growth in the legal economy. This will increase the power and standing of illegal organizations and increase the amount and variety of goods available. It's a terrible idea. It does, however, have a convenient side effect. It gives the Federal government a list of all legal gun owners in the event that it should ever confiscate all guns.
As far as "temporarily insane," untrained teenage lunatics wandering around shooting people, we aren't saying that all students should be allowed to concealed carry at all. The permit for concealed carry is actually pretty tough to get, requiring actual classes be completed and passed, criminal background checks, etc. All of that is fine for a concealed carry permit, as opposed to actual ownership, because criminals even though criminals won't bother with the permit, idiots will, and those who would engage in drunken gunfights would be weeded out. Even tougher permits could be required for concealed carry on campus. As far as arming teachers, why shouldn't a teacher have the right to defend him/herself? I don't know the South Africa case, but I'm sure the tension in the classroom had to be pretty high for a teacher to believe a student was pulling a gun out. Someone who had taken classes to get a concealed carry on campus permit would have known to tell him to freeze and put his hands up before firing. The gun is for last chance situations, for example if the firearm is being brandished or fired. You also make the absurd assumption that parents wouldn't want to send their children to a school that gives them the ability to defend themselves, as opposed to sitting helplessly awaiting execution, in the event of an emergency. That could easily be put to the test. Give schools the choice to allow or disallow concealed carry, and see which schools attract students and which do not.
In your final agrument, you make a feeble attempt to justify a confiscation list, that would allow the government to remove the citizenry's last defense against tyranny.
"Temporarily insane"? Who, might I ask, are you to make such a generalized judgment about the college population? Individuals with concealed carry permits carry other places on a daily basis, what is it about stepping onto a college campus that makes the "temporarily insane"?