The unfortunate event of a 19-year-old student opening fire on the University of Texas at Austin yesterday is sure to reload the discussion of gun laws across the nation, particularly related to college campuses.
A college sophomore caused a lockdown and the cancellation of classes at the fifth-largest campus in the country as he shot his assault rifle randomly and later killed himself. The good news is nobody else was hurt.
This comes at a time when the Texas Legislature is preparing to discuss concealed weapons in its next session. And, according to various news outlets, the Austin campus has been a center of concealed carry debate.
If this sounds familiar, it’s because these same issues have come up repeatedly in Arizona in recent years.
Last October, the state allowed weapons to be kept in locked cars on public and private properties, including our University. In January, a bill was proposed in the state Senate that would have let professors pack heat on campus under the guise of eliminating “defense-free zones.”
We’ve also seen laws passed to allow people to carry concealed weapons without permits and even to carry them into bars (though the law says anyone in a bar with a concealed weapon can’t drink).
Depending on which side of the argument you find yourself, Tuesday’s shooting either reinforces your want for concealed weapons, or was a perfect example of why weapons have no place on the grounds of an institution of higher education.
But despite views of Second Amendment rights, guns on campus only lead to widespread fear.
We saw this last fall in a scare when police received a false report of a gunman in a parking garage just two days after the law allowed guns in cars on campus. It happened again in October when a graphic design graduate student shot and killed himself in front of a professor.
Perhaps allowing guns in bars, or in locked vehicles, or even on campus is all part of a Constitutional right. But with the high-stress environment in some classrooms or the worry that anyone may be able to whip out their handgun, the result is an atmosphere powered by fear instead of tolerance.
ASU Police and other crime experts on campus have said even if people pull out guns to defend themselves against a shooter on campus, authorities would have no time to decipher who is acting belligerently and who is acting in self-defense.
ASU President Michael Crow told the Arizona Board of Regents last year that allowing concealed weapons in locked vehicles on campus goes against the environment he wants for the University.
“Our job as university presidents is to create an environment for openness, tolerance, communication, understanding,” Crow said. “The public projection of weapons is a counter to the creation of that environment.”
Instead of eliminating the so-called “defense-free zones,” we should work on developing hate-free zones where brute force isn’t considered a solution.
So as the gun discussion picks up again nationwide — and undoubtedly in our own state — we ask that those involved take a serious look at how to best support an educational environment instead of assuming campuses are like the Wild West, where two guns end a fight.
