The average person who wants to conceal carry on a college campus is not doing so to be a hero in case a mass murder takes place, he/she just wants to be able to protect themselves from robbery, rape, and kidnapping all which have occurred on college campuses.
Sgt. Allan Baron of the Texas A&M University Police Department said it's hard to measure the impact concealed carry will have on the A&M campus.
No it's not, just look at other states that allow it. So far no negative impacts there.
it's more likely for somebody to get hurt; if there's an altercation then somebody may have a weapon that they utilize. Or somebody loses it, or it gets stolen from their backpack or something of that nature if they're concealing it in there.
The law is that the gun can only be brandished if it can legally be fired in defense. A CHL is taught this in the mandatory 10+ hour course. A gun isn't more likely to be lost on one piece of land than another, in fact a gun is less likely to be lost than other items because of its inherent value. As for being stolen, everyone I know who has a CHL never leaves their guns out of the perception.
"Situations that I've responded to in the dorm include domestic violence, fights or conflicts, students dealing with suicide and alcohol or drugs in the dorm," Espinoza said. "These events can and have always quickly escalated into something that can get out of hand, and I don't think possibly adding a deadly weapon into the scenario would be a good thing."
Then it's a good thing that CHLs are much less likely to commit offenses than the general public.
"Although I get the idea of protecting oneself, I just don't see the need for residents to have them in their dorm rooms," he said. "Residence Life has a system in place to lock down residence halls in the event of an emergency and did so during the false alarm incident this past year. All security doors lock down by staff members and don't allow anyone entrance into the residence halls. We have a pager for any residents needing to be let in that they can reach RAs at."
At night when most of incidents occur in residence halls, it takes a lot longer to find someone that can initiate a proper response.
"I'm going to be aware that there may be plenty of people here [carrying handguns] and I'm just going to be terrified," she said. "Not really openly terrified, but I'm just going to be more wary, and why should I be? I should be really free to be thinking, and thinking of ways to help the students or whatever, rather than thinking in the back of my mind, ‘Something can happen here, I have to be very, very careful because something can happen.'"
Welcome to America, where you have the freedom to think what you want, which includes being afraid if you would rather do that instead of thinking on what you claim what you want to think.
Baron said there are a lot of questions about concealed carry that pertain specifically to the college environment, such as sporting events on campus, where adrenaline and emotions can flare up.
I've had my adrenaline pump more and I've been more emotional to happy things than I've ever been to negative things. I've resisted the urge to shoot my gun into the air in celebration.
Baron said the rate of violent crimes such as assault, robbery and homicide on the A&M campus are low compared to nonviolent crimes, which is common on college campuses across the country.
I'm disappointed that you think only some assault, robbery and homicide is okay as long as it's lower than others.
Baron said in an active shooter situation, there is the potential that law enforcement officials could confuse a CHL holder with a weapon drawn to be a perpetrator and shoot at them.
"It definitely can be an issue for safety purposes for anybody that tries to step in and do what law enforcement is responding to do," Baron said. "And we train our guys in the active shooter training; we go to gunfire and we go to the problem or the threat and we eliminate that threat.
Do y'all train police to open fire at whoever has a gun and ask questions later, or do you shout, "drop the gun" first, which obviously a CHL would do and a bad guy would probably not do.