Should Guns Be Allowed on a College Campus?
Imagine you are sitting in your Intro to Political Science classroom. It’s a lecture hall and there are almost 250 people enrolled in your class. The professor is kind of boring, so you glance over to your left and see another student’s open backpack. Inside the backpack is a gun, and he’s reaching into his bag right now. Scary right?
It’s scenarios like this one that make most universities hesitant to allow students with concealed-carry permits to bring their handguns onto the campus. The student from my example might just be reaching for a pencil, but he could also be reaching for the gun, which he would be legally allowed to have on campus. Not good, right?
Evidently Richard Hudson, vice chancellor for government and community relations at the University of Arkansas agrees with me. Hudson is fighting against state Representative Charlie Collins’ proposal to allow students who have a concealed-carry permit to bring their guns to school.
Collins argues that students should be allowed to have their guns on campus for safety reasons. He cites the Virginia Tech massacre in April 2007 as evidence that if students had been armed, they might have been able to protect themselves from the shooter.
Where do you fall on this controversial issue? Is it better to make a university campus completely gun-free, or should those who have received training and are licensed to carry their guns be allowed to do so? Sound off in our comments section below!
Via MSNBC.com