A&M article

[RPB]

Bill aims for guns on campus
By Jill Beathard
Published: Monday, May 2, 2011
Updated: Monday, May 2, 2011 23:05

http://www.thebatt.com/news/bill-aims-f ... 2_20115305" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

not too biased-2 pages long

Sgt. Allan Baron of the Texas A&M University Police Department...
.....

Baron said UPD might provide education in the form of brochures, handouts and informationals to help departments on campus adjust to the change in the law.

[Thomas]

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.

[aggiedev]

I agree that the article isn't too horrible--which is a stark change from what The Batt usually puts out.

My main issue is the graphic. Really? Could they have drawn a more biased graphic?



On that note, I encourage you to voice your opinion on the ridiculousness of having a graphic depicting a giant gun, and then a collection of guns pointing int he direction of what appears to be a professor. If they want a more accurate graphic, it should just be a normal-looking classroom as all the guns will be concealed.

The Graphics Chief can be reached at graphics@thebatt.com. If you want to copy the editor and managing editor, their emails are editor@thebatt.com and battcopy@thebatt.com, respectively.

Thanks and Gig 'Em.

[Thomas]

At first I thought the sketch in the left of the image was someone being watched by a lot of cameras. I didn't get it until you said it is "a collection of guns pointing int he direction of what appears to be a professor."

[Czechnology]

This is the letter I sent to the Battalion about the graphic today. Hopefully they'll publish it tomorrow, we'll see.

Dear Battalion,

First off, I want to say that I thought that your article on the new campus concealed carry amendment to SB 5 that ran on 5/3/11 was really an excellent article. It presented a great deal of information in a non-biased manner with great thoughts from both sides of the issue. Bravo. However, the quality of the article made much less of an impression on me than the offensiveness of the graphic that accompanied it. The graphic showed, from left to right, a large number of guns pointed at what appears to be a professor or public speaker, a massive pistol pointed at the reader, and on the right, what appears to be two people about to engage in a shootout in a dark alley. It looks to me like you took all of the worst-case scenarios that opponents of campus carry speak about, and crystallized them into the most frightening image you could come up with. Never mind that none, that's right, NONE of these scenarios have actually turned out to be an issue in the 71 campuses in the United States that do allow legal concealed carry. Once again, thank you for a great article, my only wish is that it hadn't been tainted by a so obviously biased image.