Guns are the great equalizer.
They erase size, speed and strength advantages.
They are ideal self-defense devices.
Just carrying a gun can make a person feel more prepared, safer.
As is often stated by various groups and people, it's our right as American citizens, under the Second Amendment, to own and bear arms.
But how far does that right extend?
Should we be allowed to carry weapons on campus?
How about in municipal buildings and churches?
Bars?
Day cares and schools?
Where is the line?
The University does not allow weapons on campus property, including concealed handguns.
Alabama state law does allow concealed carry, but gives university presidents the option to ban weapons on campus property.
Which leads to a gray area: Where does campus end and the city begin?
If you're standing at Toomer's by the tree and you cross the street and stand before the entrance of the Bank Vault, are you now off campus?
Or, if a person is carrying a concealed weapon and they just happen to wander into the campus area for a couple steps, are they subject to the anti-weapon on-campus law?
The point is most likely moot, as no one should know you're carrying a concealed weapon, because, as the name implies, it is concealed.
More than likely, a person carrying on campus will not be searched, and no one will ever know he or she brought a weapon onto University grounds.
For all we know, classes could be full of students packing heat.
The sorority girl sitting two rows up in Biology 101 class could have a handgun in her purse, and you'd never know.
Nor would anyone else, if she kept it properly hidden.
Unless, of course, an incident occurred.
If, God forbid, a student brought a gun into the classroom and started shooting, she'd theoretically be ready.
Students for Concealed Carry on Campus and its president, Victoria Gulley, believe students should be allowed to carry on campus for that very reason.
"A firearm is 60 times more likely to be used to save a life than to take one, and they are very effective means of self-protection, so not being able to carry one on campus just makes us very vulnerable," Gully said. (from "Concealed carry laws create controversy," A1)
Gully also said the Virginia Tech shooting might have been stopped if students were allowed to concealed carry.
Although, if students were legally allowed to carry concealed weapons on campus, other issues would arise.
If a shooting did occur and students had and were using weapons to combat the shooter, it would be difficult for police officers and trained professionals to decipher who was shooting whom.
Increased weapons would only add to the confusion and perhaps lead to the wrong person being injured or even killed.
And even though a person must be properly trained and licensed to concealed carry, that person is still not a professional.
Placed in the wrong situation, such as a shooting or any other kind of high stress, violent situation, mistakes would be made.
Consider trying to take steady aim while under fire, your classmates shrieking and fleeing madly.
Not an easy situation.
Would students be and feel safer if guns were allowed on campus, and they knew chances were, their classmates were carrying?
Perhaps it's naive and unrealistic to say a shooting on the level of Virginia Tech or Columbine wouldn't or couldn't happen at Auburn, but allowing guns on campus to try to combat outlier situations, situations which are difficult to predict and hard to prevent, seems like poor logic.
Concealed carry on campus wouldn't necessarily make for a safer student body, just a more paranoid one.
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