I knew it would happen.
That guy goes shooting a rifle on the University of Texas campus, and it revives the whole “concealed carry on college campus” debate.
Dallas Morning News has an article.
John Woods, a UT graduate student who organized an anti-gun rally last year, disagreed. He said that having more guns on campus wouldn’t improve security.
“If there were multiple students running around with guns, it would’ve made the police’s job a lot harder this morning,” Woods said Tuesday. He was a student at Virginia Tech University in 2007 when a gunman killed 32 people, including Woods’ girlfriend.
And your proof for this is where? Yes, you’ve got a lot of emotional investment in the matter, but when we’re making policy we cannot make it based upon emotion, it must be made on fact and reason.
He said gun backers don’t understand that training to get a concealed carry license is “just eight hours in a classroom and a couple of shots at a target that’s not moving in a range – a very, very controlled situation.”
Actually, it sounds more like you don’t understand what is involved in getting a concealed carry license. I’m licensed by the State of Texas to teach CHL courses, so I know exactly what it takes to get a CHL. But I know what you’re doing — you’re minimizing, you’re trying to paint a particular picture that skews favor towards your stance. What would work better? Presenting facts and irrefutable proof.
Nevertheless, you are correct that the CHL testing doesn’t involve a moving target. But have you seen the testing and qualification courses that go on in some police departments? I think you’d be surprised to find out how many police officers aren’t that great a shot, and how many civilians are.
Katy Bacon, a [Bill] White spokeswoman, said “[Gov. Rick] Perry wants to mandate allowing guns on campus” but White believes “students, parents, administrators, and security personnel should decide.”
We mandate allowing guns everywhere else? What makes a college campus different? As evidenced by this past incident, college campus’ are not surrounded by an impenetrable force-field that keeps evil out and away. Evil can and does happen anywhere. Why should people be denied the ability to defend their lives? These cowards choose “soft targets” because they know they will not meet with (equal or greater, or just any form of) resistance. Why do people want to legislated being at the mercy of these evil cowards? What sense is there in that?
“I can’t think of any way that the situation yesterday would have been improved by additional guns,” said John Woods, a graduate student at UT-Austin who attended Virginia Tech in 2007, when a student gunman killed 32 people, including some of Woods’ friends.
Woods urged state lawmakers in 2009 to block a bill that would have allowed guns on campuses. It failed.
If a gunman is on the loose, and people try to shoot back, missed shots can pose their own danger to bystanders. And the number of guns can make it difficult for police to determine “who are the good guys and who are the bad guys,” Woods said.
He advocates preventive measures, like making mental health services available and putting locks on the insides of classroom doors.
There are mental health services available, and already laws on the books regarding mental health status and gun ownership. They help, but they can only do so much. I mean, this Tooley guy… no records of that. There’s always a first time, and no paper-trail is going to help that sort of crazy.
Locks inside classroom doors? To what end? Rifle rounds aren’t stopped by locks nor flimsy classroom doors. Besides, that implies a strategy of sitting still and becoming a victim. Why are you engaging in that mentality? If someone suggested putting locks on doors as a rape-prevention strategy, they’d be laughed out of the room.
Well… elections are in a month, and the 2011 Texas legislative session is coming. It’s going to be interesting.
Stuff From Hsoi 
Woods was as much there as I was. To my knowledge he was not even on campus when this occurred, but that aside;
Here are a few numbers to consider. This data was compiled as accurately as possible and a little extrapolation and estimation was applied.
As I gain more factual numbers I will update this, but I don’t suspect it will change much.
In 2009, UT Austin had just over 50,000 students and 16,500 faculty and staff.
of the 50,000 students, approximately 25,000 were over the age of 21. We will assume that all the faculty and staff are over 21.
This will leave a total of 41,500 students and staff that are 21 years of age and eligible to obtain a Texas CHL.
The rate of CHL holders in Texas vs the residency population in 2009 was approximately 1.6%
If we apply 1.6% to the 41,500 eligible applicants on UT Austin campus, we are left with a grand total of 664 possible CHL holders that work or attend UT Austin.
Te following numbers are educated estimates only and may be inaccurate. They are presented simply as a point of reference and calculation.
At any given time lets assume that 30% of the students over 21 are on campus during the highest traffic times.
(remember, this includes graduate and law students who attend classes off campus or correspond via internet)
This would mean only 120 CHL students would be on campus at any given time along with 264 staff for a grand total of 384 possible CHL holders carrying at any given time.
Being that the UT campus covers approximately 1,438.5 acres, this would mean only 1 CHL holder would be present for every 3.75 acres.
Taking into account that many CHL holders do not carry 100% of the time, we could reduce the number of carriers to approximately 300 and then recalculating that there would be on average 1 armed CHL holder for every 4.8 acres.
Taking into account the incident that occurred last week on campus possibly encompassed approximately 10 acres, this would mean that only 1 to 2 students would have been armed and present at that time and probably not anywhere in the vicinity of each other.
Of those 2 CHL holders, one would have to be within a reasonable range for them to even consider drawing a weapon and engaging the shooter. This means the probability would be very high that neither of them would have even drawn their weapon at all.
These numbers are not exact and are simply a ballpark calculation to demonstrate that the argument of many guns present and presented by CHL holders would cause confusion to law enforcement as to whom the “good guys” were and the “bad guys” were is exaggerated to the extreme. We have now determined that 1 or 2 at most would even be armed in the general vicinity and may or may not have presented a weapon in self defense.
This is the same argument that was used in years past when CHL was first adopted to Texas and this situation has NEVER been experienced off of campus.
Just as in the regular goings on of every day life, most self defense shootings occur and are over within a matter of seconds. Law enforcements response time is not measured in seconds, but in minutes. By the time they arrive, it’s already over.
That’s the thing… the facts and data are what they are. Emotional appeals rarely stand up in the face of them.
And don’t forget the argument for allowing Campus Carry isn’t just about Active Shooter scenarios either.
How many women are raped on campus or going to and from campus?
How many carjackings, robberies, muggings, purse snatchings could be avoided?
If a gunman is on the loose, and people try to shoot back, missed shots can pose their own danger to bystanders.
Maybe the person making this argument can point to cases of that happening? Surely with 48 states allowing some form of Open/Concealed Carry we should have plenty of instances of wild shots hitting bystanders, right?
{{{{{crickets chirping}}}}
And one of the most offensive arguments to me is the CHL holder ‘can’t be trusted’.
I started college after 4 years in the Air Force where I was trusted with millions of dollars with of equipment and the lives of 70 air crews.
I was trusted (and trained) to carry an M-16 Rifle and a .38 caliber revolver. I lived on my own in an apartment I paid for, worked full times (often 50+ hours a week), paid all my own bills – including my car and insurance meaning I was trusted to drive by the state.
Yet, the state wouldn’t have trusted me to carry a firearm on campus — what a crock!
Remember… logic, consistency, integrity need not apply.
It’s an older post, but I’ll bite anyway…I find it particularly interesting the argument of putting locks on the inside of classrooms. How much damage could an active shooter do once gaining access to a room of 40-80 students and the responding officers being unable to gain access to the room due to someone’s forethought of putting a lock on the inside of the door? Sad.
Yeah. I just don’t get that suggestion.