More Guns on Campus?

There are reports that the police arrived within two minutes yesterday.
A skilled shooter with a bolt-action hunting rifle or a pump-action shotgun can still fire about one shot a second. So you're talking about firing off a lot of shots in two minutes before police arrive. So basically it boils down to the simple fact that police and security officers can't be everywhere at once. It sounds to me like the police had an amazing response time … But they just simply were not in that classroom when the shooting started, and the only person who really could have mitigated this situation is somebody who was in the classroom when the shooting started.

One of the Virginia Tech victims has come out and said he opposes this idea because of college students being young, drinking heavily … it could open the door to even more violence.
This is not a debate about keeping guns out of the hands of college students. What we're proposing would not change who is able to obtain a concealed-handgun license. It would not change who is able to buy a firearm. College students over the age of 18 can already buy firearms in most states. College students over the age of 21 can already obtain concealed handgun licenses in some states. Basically, under our proposal the same trained, licensed individuals who are not getting drunk and shooting people off of college campuses are the same trained and licensed individuals who are not going to be getting drunk and shooting people on college campuses.

How are you bringing this [effort] to the attention of legislators?
We're getting our campus leaders and our regional directors and our general members—we have members in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. We also have members in Canada, the U.K. and Israel (they've got a long fight ahead of them). As for U.S. members, we're basically just having these students and faculty members and parents and concerned citizens lobby their state legislators and write letters. We're trying to get out op-ed pieces and information packets and fliers and everything we can to educate people on the facts of this issue. That's really our biggest hurdle right now: ignorance of the issue. There's a lot of statistics out there that show that concealed handgun license holders are five times less likely than nonlicensed holders to commit violent crimes. You can look at the 40 right-to-carry states with liberal concealed-carry laws, where they have not seen any escalation in gun violence, gun accidents, etc. as a result of allowing concealed carry. There are currently 11 U.S. universities that have for a combined total of 60 semesters allowed concealed carry on campus without an incident. You haven't seen an incident of gun violence, an incident of gun theft, no gun accidents … Although you can't say in any particular situation whether or not concealed carry might have prevented or mitigated a school shooting or a sexual assault or anything of that nature, you can say that allowing concealed carry would even the odds. And that's what this is really about: evening the odds and taking the advantage away from these dangerous criminals.

There's a famous example in Luby's Cafeteria in Texas. A woman with a concealed-carry permit was unable to stop a gunman from killing her parents and 21 others in 1991 because she had left her gun in her car to avoid breaking the state's law at the time, which banned gun owners from carrying their weapons into public places.
She went before the state legislature and she said, "Look, if I'd been allowed to have my gun on me I could have stopped this guy. He had his back to me. He was only a few feet away. I didn't need lightning-fast reflexes. I didn't need dead-eye accuracy. I just needed my gun" … She had been carrying the gun for several years for personal protection, and because she was a chiropractor she had become worried that because there was no legal provision for concealed carry in Texas at the time that if she got caught carrying that gun she might lose her chiropractic license, so she started leaving it in the car. When this shooting started she reached into her purse for a gun that wasn't there and basically watched both of her parents be gunned down by this madman because she was unable to defend herself.

There was the example at the church in Colorado Springs back in December where they actually allowed members, encouraged certain members who had a concealed-handgun license to carry their guns at church. These people were not licensed security guards. They had not been through the state-mandated security guard training or any of that. These were simply people who had concealed-handgun licenses, and the church said, "You know, we'd appreciate it if you would carry your guns at church for the protection of this church." And this woman actually managed to shoot a guy as he was walking through the door armed to the teeth, like Rambo. So concealed carry has mitigated dangerous situations like this in the past.

On how many campuses do you now have chapters?
We have organized chapters on about 100 campuses. The way we define an organized chapter is any campus that has a defined campus leader … We have members on well over 500 campuses. It changes from day to day.