Giving up personal safety for a gun-free campus

By Brian Schwartz

The UCSU Tri-Executives claim (Opinion, Feb. 27) that "statistics bear out the facts that risks of concealed weapons far outweigh any potential benefit." They write this twice, while never citing their source.

Surely the students the Tri-Execs represent demand and expect higher standards of scholarship of themselves and their representatives. As a graduate student, I have investigated similar unsubstantiated claims by members of the graduate student government.

The principles of economics apply to criminals: they prey on victims who can't defend themselves. Both interviews with convicted felons and John Lott's study of liberalized conceal-carry laws confirm this hypothesis: criminals fear that their victims are armed more so than they do the police, and that rates of murder, rape, and aggravated assaults declined in areas where conceal-carry is allowed.

Criminologist Gary Kleck found that guns are used defensively 2.5 million times every year, about three times the rate of crimes committed with guns. Further, conceal-carry permits get revoked less often than police officers get arrested. For details on these studies and original sources, see my article at freecolorado.com.

The Tri-Executives claim that if students are allowed to carry concealed firearms, students will be afraid to speak their minds and professors will be afraid to give out poor grades when deserved. Again, they cite no evidence for this claim, but even if it were true, it is no grounds for prohibiting a lifestyle choice.

If a "perceived" threat is a valid criterion for forbidding lifestyle choices, what other regulations should the college impose? To my knowledge, mace and pepper spray are allowed on campus. Many students take martial arts classes for self-defense, and some consider their own hands and feet to be weapons. If enough people felt unsafe because someone near them "may" have mace or be skilled in a martial art, should the University enact prohibitions to allay these feelings?

These days, might people rationally fear those who look as they are from the Middle East? If such people make others uncomfortable, should the university expel them? What about those prejudiced against other ethnic groups? What about "their" feelings? Or is the University to encourage some forms of prejudice and stereotyping while condemning others?

Many people believe reading pornography or hate literature makes people more likely to commit violent crimes. If enough people are uncomfortable with these goods on campus, should they also be banned, or should people take responsibility for their own emotions?

People commit inexplicable atrocities, and it is frightening to contemplate what motivates such action. Every culture has fabricated evil demons that possess us to do evil, and have tried to eliminate them: sex, drugs, rock and roll, books, video games, movies, and guns. This voodoo social policy might bring peace of mind 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 dramatic scene of "Minority Report," where the Tom Cruise character faced his apparent fate to kill a man, the "precog" exhorted "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. If our own bodies belong to us as private property, self-defense is a basic human right.

We are also ultimately responsible for our emotions and hence should not blame them on external circumstances or people. They belong to us, and holding people hostage to fear by prohibiting an effective means of self-defense is not only irresponsible, it endangers people's lives.

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