One year ago, the Virginia Tech massacre made it clear that if people want to bring guns onto a college campus they will, and until the world's largest metal detector is created and installed over the United States, no one is immune to that possibility. But just because it is plausible for someone to bring a gun onto a campus, and it is a constitutional right to carry one nearly everywhere else, doesn't mean it should be easy.
Gun control is the one issue in which our democracy should turn fascist. Buying a gun should be more difficult than running for office, climbing Mt. Everest or merging onto a highway with your eyes closed. The less people are able to buy guns, the less people will be able to use them. It should be made nearly impossible for people to obtain guns, and stringent control of sales and CIA-caliber buyer background checks should be enforced. That is the only way to ensure a modicum of security across the country and that places such as college campuses can remain havens for the weaponless.
But groups like Students for Concealed Carry on Campus are challenging campuses as gun-free zones. Calling themselves a "grassroots" effort, the group aims to change campus policy so students can carry weapons to class, just as they would to "movie theaters, office buildings, shopping malls, banks, etc.," the group's Web site states.
The up-and-coming chapter of SCCC at UT is filing paperwork this week to become an official student organization, said UT's SCCC campus representative, Joseph Boudreau. The group plans to solidify its existence by participating in a National Empty Holster Protest next week, in which members "will wear empty holsters to portray how defenseless students are while on campus," Boudreau said.
Boudreau said he came across SCCC after the student-shooting rampage at Northern Illinois University in February. Since then, he has discovered many like-minded students who crave a sense of physical security at UT. Boudreau's long-term goals for the group are still being sketched out, he said, but their motive can be boiled down to convincing the state government to allow students to bear arms on campus.
Evidently, some UT students see no reason to organize on campus and go to the legislature to challenge the University's gun-free policy. On Tuesday, sophomore Jason Liao was arrested on campus for having a gun in his possession. His mention to several people of a "mission" he wanted to complete and pictures on his MySpace page of him posing with weapons were enough to prompt his peers to phone UT's Behavior Concerns Advice Line. Such flagrant advertising of his assets, combined with the smart response of those who called the advice line to report him, led to his capture. Liao's case shows that we're becoming conditioned to look for certain warning signs to prevent potential tragedies that we may have previously ignored, and our University offers channels of support, such as the advice line, to cope with the difficult decisions that come with suspicious behavior.
Safety is about preventative action, not preventative reaction. We'll never be secure - but really, we never were. Instead of working to let students have guns in an effort to protect them, we should focus on keeping our individual judgment sharp and our eyes open so our holsters can remain empty.
- LF
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