The Right to Bear Arms ... on Campus

For reasons cited earlier, I feel that guns and young, often drunken, people still learning how to deal with emotional crisis in a mature fashion are a bad mix. You want safer campuses? Get more well-trained security staff. Put more lighting up. Introduce more emergency call points. Heck, I can even understand the worry about campus shooters, so, sure, give the security guards firearms or emergency access to firearms. Letting the kids bring guns to the school to prevent campus shootings is only likely going to result in more campus shootings.

(For those unfamiliar with an emergency call point, at the University of Victoria, these consist of tall, well lit concrete pillars outfitted with a speaker, microphone, and two large buttons. Pressing the green one lets you talk to an information agent ("Where can I find the Phoenix Building from here?"), whilst pressing the red one (much like a fire alarm) gets you a direct connection to the security office.)

Really. Letting college kids bring guns on campus to prevent school shootings is like f*cking for chastity.

If I wanted to have a gun on campus *illegally*, it would be quite easy. It's not like anyone searches your luggage when you move in, after all. Gun laws only stop responsible, law-abiding people from carrying guns... in other words, the sort of peopel who wouldn't run around shooting people for fun anyway.

So, essentially, turn campuses into places where students are "inmates", and only guards are allowed guns.

Why should a college campus be different than a grocery store? Either they are old enough to own a gun, or they aren't.

I'll refrain from addressing this point using the melodramatic rhetoric.

I'm fine with most folk above the age of 18 owning a firearm for hunting and/or recreational purposes, provided they prove they can safely, responsibly and legally store, use and transport it.

However, I am more than a little concerned with ANYONE, saved trained and certified police or security personel, carrying a loaded weapon in public, most especially if it is concealed.

I live in a country where there is likely more firearms per capita than yours: we've that many hunting enthusiasts. Yet the vast majority of us perceive little need to carry a concealed firearm and those that do, for the most part, are criminals. Furthermore, our gun crime per capita is also lower. What exactly separates Canada from the US, sociologically speaking, that so many of you perceive rational cause to carry concealed firearms?