Four Days of Reasearch about Marcel Duchamp + Handgun = x

In response to Lauren’s Blog Article entitled “Carrying Handguns onto a College Campus?”

Lauren,

I’ll preface this with that I hate guns. I disagree with you on the idea of allowing concealed guns on college campus would be a great thing. I’m not about to say that allowing weapons on the campus will turn all universities into reproductions of the O.K. Corral. I won’t vocalize that the sudden increase in the hobbies of carjacking and murder will indeed take the stead of study groups and library research. These types of reduction ad absurdum arguments against your position is exactly like the ones the pro and anti gun groups are using.

The use of Virginia Tech as evidence for the pro-gun movement seems odd, since in our own backyard we’ve had the horrible instance of the UT Tower. Maybe the detachment from our home makes it easier for people to relate or it could be bringing the Austin incident would be in bad taste. Either way, I don’t believe that if a CHL bill had been passed in Virginia it would have altered the events at Virginia Tech. Neither does John Woods, a student who went to Virginia Tech and lost his girlfriend and friends in the massacre. These what-if type disaster scenarios can be dangerous. These beliefs dwell in a hypothetical fantasy world where everyone plays the hero and not the victim.

You bring up the shining example of low crime rates in the Georgian city of Kennasaw. The city has never enforced its mandatory gun laws. This allows people to still live in the town without sharing the adamant belief of owning firearms. The statistics regarding the crime rates in Kennasaw can be adjusted to give favorable light to both movements. Either way, that city is not a university. The idealism and thinking that universities provide students clashes with others a lot more frequently than normal suburban life. We are taught to commonly critique individuals which can be perceived as a confrontational action. Adding weapons to misinterpretation seems like a bad recipe.

I don’t think it’s a good idea at all. I believe that equipping overstressed students and faculty member with loaded firearms to use only in the event of a school massacre is the metaphorical equivalent of living in a bomb shelter just in case someone drops the big ones on us.

John

I’m apologizing for putting this in but I found it as a funny side note. In this Associated Press story, one of the pro-gun supporters is Luke Farmer. This unlikely mascot carriers a neon green sign which says “Don’t Listen to Liberal Fear Mongers” and proudly states, “Just sitting around waiting for the police… doesn’t sound much like a plan.” I find it funny that the poster boy that the AP arrived at is a trigger-happy, dem-hating guy that talks like a bad action-movie star.