CU's prohibition of concealed weapons violates everyone's basic right to self-defense

By Brian T. Schwartz
June 29, 2003

Last week Colorado Attorney General Ken Salazar declared that, despite Senate Bill 24, which allows armed concealed weapon permit holders on college campuses, the University of Colorado Board of Regents can enforce its own gun-prohibition policy on its campuses.

Representatives of undergraduate and graduate students, faculty, the regents, and campus police all support the prohibition in the name of campus safety. Yet no one has demonstrated that disarming permit-holders makes the campus safer. Instead, the prohibitionists resort to prejudice and intolerance. We should expect more from an institution of higher learning.

Lt. Tim McGraw of the CU-Boulder Police Department asserts that "based on statistical data, we believe that the regent law has provided for a safer environment at CU." Yet this data concerns not crimes, such as murder, rape and assault, but a vice: the "victimless crime" of merely possessing of a prohibited tool of self-defense, which endangers no one. Demonstrating that the weapons prohibition has made CU safer would require at least an analysis of violent crime rates both on and off campus before and after the 1994 prohibition. Curiously, none of the prohibitionists have looked at such data, nor do they seem to care.

Instead of empirical evidence, the prohibitionist arguments rest on an unjustifiable negative stereotype that concealed-carry permit holders are short-tempered and violent. The student government Tri-Executives ask us to "imagine a classroom where students are afraid to speak their minds and professors are afraid to give out poor grades when deserved." The graduate-student government passed a resolution alleging that many "students believe that concealed weapons ... represent a perceived danger." Boulder Faculty Assembly Chair Uriel Nauenberg wants us to "imagine what a disaster it would be" to allow guns on campus. In defense of the prohibition, CU Regent Jim Martin says: "[w]e hold forums with speakers who are sometimes very contentious and have controversial points of view."

What if, instead of concealed-weapon permit holders, the issue concerned allowing homosexuals to practice their lifestyle choice on campus? The above statements by governing officials would appear prejudiced, closed-minded and intolerant. The homophobes would allow homosexuals to at most think about sex, but prohibit their public or "concealed" displays of affection. Similarly, some believe that exposure to certain pornography, racist literature, and video games can induce violent acts. To allay these people's fears, should the university compile a list of banned media?

For the sake of argument, let's accept the injustice that gun-owners are guilty until proven innocent, and look at relevant empirical data. According to John Lott, author of "More Guns, Less Crime," approximately 0.1 percent of concealed-carry permits are ever revoked. Police officers in New York City and Washington D.C. get arrested more often than permit holders. In Texas, permit holders are about one-third as likely to be arrested as the general population and much less likely to commit serious crimes.

The principles of economics apply to criminals: they prey on victims who can't defend themselves. Both interviews with convicted felons and Lott's study of liberalized concealed-carry laws confirm this hypothesis: Criminals fear armed victims more than they do the police, and rates of murder, rape and aggravated assaults decline in areas where concealed-carry is allowed. Further, criminologist Gary Kleck found that guns are used defensively 2.5 million times every year, at least three times the rate of crimes committed with guns.

Yet facts do not matter to a few people I've encountered, including Physics Professor Nauenberg. At the March 17 dinner sponsored by the graduate-student government, he declared to me that "those gun people are nuts." When asked what would change his mind about the issue, he replied "Nothing, I just don't like guns." His negative view of gun owners and dogmatic position on prohibition are analogous to those of a McCarthy-era anti-Semite who opposed letting Jews attend elite American universities.

Still, statistics are not the core issue. If people own their own bodies, self-defense is a basic human right. Artists and writers need not apply for "self-expression permits" and prove to government censors that their activities will never harm innocents in any imaginable way. Self-defense is a right, not a privilege.

People commit inexplicable atrocities, and contemplating what motivates such action is frightening. Our culture fabricates and battles evil demons that allegedly possess us to do evil: sex, drugs, rock and roll, books, video games, movies, and guns. This voodoo social policy might bring the illusion that the evil has been exorcised, but this ritual sacrifice of freedom and personal responsibility brings no security.

Violent criminals are responsible for their actions; the cause of their evil comes from within. In the climactic scene of the Steven Spielberg movie, "Minority Report," where the main character faces his apparent fate to kill a man, a "precognitive" exhorts, "you can still choose." Peaceful citizens should take responsibility for their own personal security, just as they do their financial security. For some, this means carrying a concealed firearm, which is the only effective defense against some aggressors. Anyone who has prevented a victim from exercising this means of self-defense is morally culpable for his or her death.

Brian T. Schwartz is a doctoral candidate in Electrical Engineering at the University of Colorado, where he is also active with the campus Libertarians.

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