Friday, May 27, 2011

Why I need weapons on campus

As a health professional, I frequently attend classes at a local community college, to keep up my continuing education requirements. The college sent out the following email this morning:


This is to let you know that an incident involving a weapon occurred on West Campus today which was quickly contained resulting in no injury and no threat to students or staff.

Shortly after 1 p.m. today, there was a scuffle in the rotunda of Building 3 during which a male student was seen being attacked by several others. During the scuffle, a gun was knocked to the ground. The gun was never discharged but was immediately recovered by a staff member.

The alleged assailants then fled campus in a vehicle. Orlando police responded to the scene and the student victim, who knew the alleged assailants, cooperated with police to identify them off campus. Two arrests were made within an hour of the incident.

We have learned that in addition to the victim, three of the alleged assailants were current or former students. The college has petitioned the Orlando Police Department to issue trespass warnings to each of those involved. This means that none of them are allowed on any Valencia campus for any reason.

Because the gun was immediately confiscated and the suspects fled the campus, there was never a danger to students or staff. As such our emergency communications procedures did not need to be implemented.

I did however, want to inform you of the incident. 

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact campus security
What we have here is proof that people with criminal intent will carry firearms on college campus, even when it is illegal to do so, meaning that the only thing that laws against weapons on campus accomplish is to ensure that the armed criminals have defenseless victims to prey upon. Of course, anti gun forces frequently like to claim that a shoot out between criminal and armed victim will kill others in the crossfire, all the time ignoring two facts:

- If only the criminal is armed, I will admit that there is no chance of "crossfire," only a massacre.

- A mass shooting only ends one way- a person with a gun resists the shooter. Whether that is a licensed, armed student now, or an armed police officer an hour from now will decide how many people the shooter kills.

2 comments:

TOTWTYTR said...

There is far more violence on college campuses, especially schools in urban areas, than the schools want to admit.

I know of one case where "non students" who were invited to a party on campus stabbed several people during a fight that started when they were asked to leave. I'm sure that there are others of which I'm not aware.

Bob S. said...

And don't forget that you --like the majority of students- simply don't spend all your time on campus.

So, we are either forced to leave a firearm at home (risking theft from the home) or leave it in the car (greater risk of theft).

I find it especially ironic that some people can be trusted with the lives of others but not to protect themselves on campus.