Guns on University Campuses as a Microcosm of Larger Society

@MD

You raise an interesting point about the confusion that could arise in the University environment given the fact that everyone with a gun could appear like the bad guy in the event of an incident.

It's kind of ironic that would-be attackers will be able to bring their weapons to school that day without being screened. And if someone sees their weapon it'll be considered normal.

But again, isn't ultimate responsibility the goal here? In an ideal world wouldn't everyone be ABLE to do great harm, but be unwilling to?

In other words, the problem is the willingness to harm, not the ability to do so. And in a world where it's all too easy to do that harm I think it's better to have the ability to defend than to simply WISH that there weren't people out there that wanted to hurt others.

Kennesaw is suburb full of upper-class white people, so that could account for most if not all of the lack of murder as well. But again, I can't be sure how much was due to the gun policy until we have really solid metrics to base our statements on. We just have to be careful with assuming it's because of our desired variable.

Weasel, your points about Britians approach are appreciated. I know the different perspective and I'm very much interested in learning which is better for a society. Again, my argument is that once society is x-amount violent, it becomes VALID to add concealed, legal weapons. And any time before that it remains a bad idea.

That's my initial thought, although Kennesaw may be proof that's not the case.

Thanks weasel, I've been there. My point is the UK didn't feel any safer than I do here in America. There were the clean, safe parts of town, just like there were the seedy, red light district parts of town.

And last I checked, gun violence has NOT been eliminated there. My point is, our country was founded on the principles of individual rights and liberties. This was written into our founding documents in the very beginning. Are we just going to allow that to be taken away? People live out of fear now. And the government uses that fear like the way they use 9/11 to pass things like the un-Patriot Act and Warrantless Surveillance bills.

George Washington said it best in 1790: "A free people ought not only to be armed and disciplined, but they should have sufficient arms and ammunition to maintain a status of independence from any who might attempt to abuse them, which would include their own government."

This is what a true checks and balances mean. Where the citizens AND the government keep things in check. And Weasel, are you saying you disagree with my example of Kennesaw, GA? You disagree that an prevelantly (sp?) armed society is a polite one?

Oh, and I just noticed:

"Would crime and gun violence be eradicated if everyone were armed? No. But it sure couldn’t be any worse than places like the UK where guns are supposedly banned."

... Do you really think the UK is awash with crime?. That anywhere else couldn't be worse? Is that what the papers say over there?

We're actually quite nice and safe, you know. I don't spend each day fighting off armed gangs, I have a comfortable standard of life and feel totally free to walk around.

You should take a holiday and see for yourself. It's quite unlikely you'd be killed, honest.

I'm not sure the analogy works the way you think it does. Imagine running information security for a large bank central office. If you make it secure, criminals would be tempted to go elsewhere, yes. But security is defensive, not offensive.

Also, you don't arm the entire population who work there with security tools and ask them to shut down crackers. Instead you rely on a set of trained professionals. In a city this would be your police force.

For example, if a bank was to be secured for information security, you'd do:

a) set up a policy from the top saying what is and isn't allowed
b) implement with trained professional staff
c) give education to everyone else about what to do/watch for
c) Implement network scanning/monitoring
d) set up a policy to ban hacking tools, and make everyone know the penalties
e) test responsiveness
f) technology/firewalls and so on
g) etc

What you don't do is

h) ask all your staff to bring metasploit to work and try to hack back at any attacker (or anyone they think is an attacker).

Security response is and should be the purview of trained professionals with legal guidelines. And if a criminal knew their gun would be discovered at the boundary, yes they would probably go somewhere else.

It's true in the Uk that criminals often have guns - but a lot of crime is still limited to knives, kicking and punching. Also, we have unique problems due to government neglect of the police force, red tape and social changes in behaviour, so you'd be better comparing it to somewhere like Sweden which is more egalitarian. I'd still rather live here than a "polite" society like Somalia where every kid is armed, though.

By the way, I'm still not saying there isn't a deterrent effect - just that I don't think the information security analogy holds.

Considering school shooters tend to turn the gun on themselves after they're satisfied, I doubt arming the hell out of a school is going to change much, except increase the death toll as confusion reigns in a hall with 500 students, most of them armed and fearing for their lives.

How many do you think will be able to analyse the situation carefully and not pull the trigger on another innocent student who happens to be waving his own firearm around also looking for the real shooter.

The problem in America isn't too few guns, it’s the violent and decadent culture. This becomes abundantly clear when you compare the rate of gun violence in countries with even higher gun ownership, such as Finland and Switzerland. The core of the problem is your society, fix it before arming teenagers who spend most afternoons pumped on testosterone, booze, ice, or whatever the latest craze is.

As for your small-town statistics, here’s some alternate stats: http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/news/national/g...>

Still, I wish you all the best with your 'polite society', where children carry guns so to school. I for one wouldn’t want to live anywhere near it.

Screw equations. Let's break it down into IT Security terms. The only truly secure, impenetrable computer is one that is locked away underground and never powered on and never has ANY network connectivity. That then makes it inconvenient/unusable as well as secure. So we have to balance convenience with risk.

Using that knowledge we know that no computer or network is perfectly secure. We just have to secure it as best we can and make our systems harder to penetrate than the next guy right? This way, we won't be the easy target and most malicious folks would move on to the next easier target or victim.

Translate this to guns. If you knew that a certain home/school/town were armed in most cases, you, as a would be criminal would most likely not attack said location. You would move on to an easier target. People that are armed refuse to be victims.

"Gun free zones" are advertisements for massacres and gun violence. When a bank says it is a gun free zone, does that keep the criminals from robbing it with guns? No. VA Tech was a gun free zone right? Gee, I wish Cho Seung-Hui would've gotten that memo before he murdered 32 people.

I believe people should be able to Conceal Carry a Weapon (CCW) on campus or almost anywhere else. To back up my belief, take a look at Kennesaw, GA, (AKA Guntown, USA) where as of 2007 they were murder free for 25 years! http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?A...>

An armed society is a polite society. Would crime and gun violence be eradicated if everyone were armed? No. But it sure couldn't be any worse than places like the UK where guns are supposedly banned. That only means honest people aren't allowed to have guns, criminals never have a problem having them even in the UK.

Anyone ever wonder why unlawful shootings ever occur at gun ranges?

Isn't point (1) changed by letting people have guns? It doesn't seem like an independent variable compared to the other two. Or, to put it another way, shouldn't it be a result of the math, rather than an input?

Also, I'm speaking from a British perspective here - and I understand there's a huge disconnect between the way our two countries treat guns - but I wonder if you could elaborate on point (2)?

The reason I'm confused is that you have the assumption there will be a positive deterrent from letting people carry guns. Yet in the UK, we set up our gun laws on the principle that criminals are encouraged rather than deterred by an armed population. This is for two reasons:
i) If everyone has a gun, the criminal is more likely to have one
ii) If everyone has a gun, the criminal has to make their initial hit much harder.

I'm not saying we're right, just that I've never seen anyone over here suggest there might be a positive effect from giving people guns. Even in the US, I always thought the main argument was protection from the government, not criminals (though it may be that I don't understand the constitution).

What about a different equation? Something like:

If gc + ga + ng < nn
... then people should carry guns

where
gc = gun crime
ga = gun accidents
ng = non-gun crime if there are guns in society
nn = non-gun crime if there are no guns in society