I walk into Cascadilla Hall every day, and I don’t run into anyone who’ll care what’s in my bag. I dart past no metal detector up to my room, which I know is locked and hasn’t been searched by my RA. I feel secure in knowing that I can bring in whatever I want and nobody will know. I might have brought in something as innocuous as a book, or perhaps something a little less allowed by my housing contract, like a coffee maker.
It might even be a gun.
If we look around our “gun-free” learning environment, it becomes painfully obvious that the physical impediments for someone who wants to conceal a firearm are nonexistent. So long as I can procure the weapon, I’m allowed to roam as I please with a Desert Eagle .50 in my backpack and not worry about being searched or discovered, much less arrested.
Thankfully, I’m a law-abiding student and citizen whose practice of “civil disobedience” goes no further than occasionally speeding. But the possibilities are there and, frankly, they’re a bit terrifying. It may seem as though this is sheer paranoia, but in light of the recent events in Virginia and Illinois, anything is possible, and the (regulated) right for students to carry concealed firearms could help to diminish the effects of such horrible acts.
The first-glance response to this is that with everyone armed, the body count only goes up and violence and crime spread at alarming rates, because a bunch of lunatics with pretensions of being John Wayne start gunfights at Johnny O’s, as a Sun editor put it (as a side note, Johnny O’s isn’t the Cornell campus; technically, that could already happen). However, the facts behind concealed carry actually show that this is patently false.
Concealed carry’s opponents usually typify the practice as something that allows anyone who wishes to tote their firearm to do it without any sort of restriction. However, according to the laws of a certain state, before a concealed carry permit can be granted, an applicant (who must be over 21) has to pass a two-day intensive course. The first day is an eight-hour seminar on the statutory limits of concealed carry, so that weapons owners are knowledgeable and responsible; the second day is dedicated to a shooting examination, so that any bad shots are disqualified. In addition, background checks immediately bar anyone with a criminal record and seriously hurt the chances of someone with a history of mental illness, and if an instructor thinks that someone’s applying simply to fulfill a Bruce Willis fantasy, then he has full allowance to flat-out reject them. And this state, by the way, isn’t notoriously gun-tight like New York or Massachusetts — it’s actually Texas.
Others level the claim that it escalates otherwise harmless situations, like frat parties, into potentially lethal ones. There is some element of truth to this—after all, some people simply get violent while drunk, and putting them in possession of a firearm is just not smart. However, the application of common sense by gun users (who, as established, have to be proven rational and responsible) virtually erases this risk. People who understand the legal implications aren’t likely to put themselves in a situation where firearms and alcohol are likely to mix.
Plus, if history teaches us anything, it’s that guns aren’t necessary for people — particularly intoxicated people — to do real damage to one another. There are plenty of stories about bare-knuckle bar fights that lead to serious injury. In an instance that hits closer to home, think of the Poffenbarger stabbing. It wasn’t a revolver that sent the Union College student to the ER — it was a knife, which is far easier to obtain and conceal than a firearm. And before you say it, note that under a system in any way similar to Texas’, Poffenbarger’s age and history of mental instability would have barred him from ever having acquired a firearm.
One final point which has been used to rebut the value of concealed carry is that should, God forbid, a shooting break out, a situation where one student has a gun turns into one where multiple students have them, leading to crossfire casualties and confusion for the police when they arrive. This is, most certainly, a danger, and not by any means a negligible one. Ensuring that all firearm users are trained to be good shots is essential to mitigate this possibility—the natural tendency for most people to duck down during a shooting will also decrease this somewhat.
However, one has to consider the alternative possibility — with nobody there to attempt to check the rampage, the carnage is prolonged and the danger increases for all the bystanders. As for the roles of campus security and police in such a conflict, one has only to look at the events in both Virginia and Illinois to understand that the police, for all their hard work, can’t always react with necessary speed to end the violence.
Is concealed carry the ideal solution? Hardly. It would be infinitely preferable to prevent weapons from working their way onto campus, and to know that nobody’s going to try to kill anybody. But this isn’t an ideal world, and nothing can prove indubitably that someone won’t do something. Does this mean that every sorority sister should purchase a Glock and stuff it into her purse? Not by any means. I don’t think we all need to be, to quote the same Sun editorial, “armed to the teeth.” Shootouts don’t rank high on my list of worries. However, if somebody thinks they would feel just that much more secure if they were able to defend themselves, then it’s not Cornell’s place to interfere beyond the most basic regulations.
William P. Lane is a sophomore in the College of Arts and Sciences and an editor of The Cornell Review. He can be contacted at wpl5@cornell.edu [1]. Guest Room appears periodically.
Links:
[1] mailto:wpl5@cornell.edu