There are a number of states that have some kind of campus carry measure on the books. There are others that do not.
Arizona falls in the latter camp.
Despite having long been held up as one of the most pro-gun states in the nation, they still prohibited people from carrying firearms on college campuses even if they had a concealed carry permit.
Luckily, a new bill seeks to address this problem and, unsurprisingly, there’s opposition.
At the Arizona Republic, one op-ed touches on the measure and has a sub-headline reading: “Opinion: Of all the bad ideas swirling around the Arizona Legislature, surely the bill to allow guns on college campuses is among the worst. College students should be packing books, not pistols.”
Well…at least we know where she stands on the issue, don’t we?
The rest isn’t much better.
“If you have a concealed carry permit you should be able to carry on campus to defend yourself,” Rogers told the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday.
NAU shooting proves what can go wrong
I mean, what could go wrong?
I’d ask Steven Jones but he is unavoidably detained in a prison cell in Safford.
Jones was a student at Northern Arizona University in the fall of 2015, when an early morning fight broke out at a fraternity party and spilled onto campus. Accounts differ, as they always do, but Jones would later tell police he was being chased by a group of drunken, angry students from a rival fraternity. Fearing for his life, he ran to his car, which was parked just outside his dorm, and grabbed his gun.
Jones’ first burst of shots hit Colin Brough and another student. He then fired again, wounding two others, after a group of students tackled him.
The students told police they were trying to stop Jones from shooting anyone else. Jones said he believed they were trying to get his gun so they could shoot him.
When it was over, Brough was dead, three other students were wounded and Jones was a convicted felon, wishing he could trade his life for the one he took.
It marked the first time a shooting had ever happened on the Flagstaff campus.
So, because a 20-year-old kid supposedly had a gun on campus that he used in a way the court found to be illegal, no one else should ever be permitted to have a gun on campus? Moreover, she doesn’t mention that at least one of the injured was shot in the back, thus suggesting this wasn’t the clear case of self-defense presented by the shooter’s claims.
In fact, prosecutors argue that Jones got the gun and then came back toward the confrontation, all of which seemingly took place not on a college campus but in a nearby apartment complex.
Plus, I find it interesting that the author had to invoke a case from nine years ago that actually has nothing to do with concealed carry. It’s almost like there isn’t any other evidence she could draw on, now is there?
Of course, there are others who oppose students carrying guns, claiming that they lack the training to use them in the event of something like a mass shooting, but I’ve always despised those arguments.
The truth is that there’s no evidence to suggest that concealed carry permit holders represent any danger to the people and plenty to tell us that they’re among the most law-abiding folks you’ll encounter.
Are they super-shooters who can drop a mass shooter at 100 meters with a handgun? Probably not.
But if you have a situation right there, having a concealed carry permit holder with a firearm there as well is going to be far better than waiting on the police to get there, even campus police.
One situation from 2015 that really has no bearing on what we’re talking about isn’t going to change that.
Find the original article in its entirety on Bearing Arms.
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