State Rep. Charlie Collins has introduced legislation requiring universities and colleges to allow guns on campus. I think Rep. Collins is sincere in his belief that private guns on campus will make them safer and that safety is his primary concern. Recently, columnist Greg Harton has written in favor of the legislation, and I believe he is equally sincere in his belief more guns will equal fewer shootings.
I sincerely believe they’re both wrong.
They both assume a professor with a concealed weapon will be a deterrent to a deranged armed person. In their scenario, an armed professor will either be a psychological impediment or a physical savior.
Mr. Harton calculated the odds of the latter scenario and found adoption of the conceal-carry requirement to be the safer course. Rep. Collins was persuaded to pursue this legislation, he said, because of previous national incidents in which shootings occurred at places in which people were unarmed.
Different odds and scenarios weigh on my mind.
As I grew up in Fayetteville, I had a crush on a pretty girl who sat a couple of desks away from me in junior high. Once, on the walk home after school, the pretty girl asked my friends and me if we wanted to stop at her house for a glass of water. Of course we did.
Her mother wasn’t home yet. One of my friends, too curious for his own good, climbed a half flight of steps from the living room to a hallway. My friend looked down the hallway then motioned emphatically for me to join him. I did. We saw an open door at the end of the hallway. Beyond it we could see guns hanging upon a far wall. Almost mesmerized by the hardware, my friend and I floated toward the room and found ourselves standing inside a small den before we knew it. Two walls were covered with firearms — rifles, shotguns, a Tommy Gun, pistols of all make and caliber. I thought there must be hundreds, but a later count put it at 67.
The gaping mouths my friend and I must have had were snapped shut when someone to our left said, “Pretty impressive, huh?” We jumped. Neither of us had noticed the adult sitting in the room. The pretty girl’s stepfather seemed pleased we were awestruck by the collection. She arrived moments later to escort us back downstairs.
About a month later, her stepfather got drunk, shot her mother in the stomach, her sister in the arm and then killed himself. The girl I had a crush on was left to call the police.
The stepfather was a professor at the University of Arkansas. Yes, that’s exactly the person whom Rep. Collins and Mr. Harton want us all to trust now. The good guy with the 67 guns, lying dead in his den. Despite their sincerity, Collins and Harton seem to be the naive ones in their hypothetical scenarios. Good guys and bad guys. Gun vs. gun. What if?
I work on the University of Arkansas campus, so the issue is not hypothetical for me. In its 146-year history, only two shooting incidents on campus have resulted in fatalities. Neither would have been affected by the Collins/Harton pistol-packing professor-savior scenario.
In 2000, a doctoral student killed his adviser, professor John Locke. Then the graduate student killed himself.
Mr. Harton had the temerity to speculate what might have happened if Locke had a weapon that day and whether he would have even shown up for class had he known he were going to be killed. Would Locke have drawn faster and survived? Would he have acted differently if he had known his fate?
Locke was a Buddhist and believed in nonviolence. He would no more have carried a gun than he would have swatted a butterfly, and as a person who owned the courage of his convictions, Locke would have laughed at the insinuation he wouldn’t show up for the first day of fall classes. Pish to Mr. Harton. Don’t question the bravery of a person just because the bravery is that of a pacifist.
Mr. Harton didn’t even mention the other case. In 1980, a young man, upset by a failed romance, entered a sorority house. He toted a shotgun and appeared intent on harming women inside. An officer of the University of Arkansas Police Department shot and killed him.
Turns out the University of Arkansas does have deterrence. There are guns on campus. They belong to the trained police officers.
Turns out the odds of being killed by gunfire on the University of Arkansas campus are extremely low. Turns out the murder rate beyond campus — where conceal carry is already permitted and guns are plentiful — is much higher. Heck, 58 people were accidentally killed or shot nationwide by toddlers during 2015. Turns out the people from beyond campus want you to ignore the correlation and be afraid, be very afraid of the hypothetical.
The Arkansas Legislature should do the moral and brave thing, and allow each campus to decide for itself whether to allow conceal carry on campus. At a minimum, for the safety that Rep. Collins and Mr. Harton advocate, the Legislature should require professors and staff members who want to carry a gun to be trained by the Arkansas State Police in active-shooter scenarios.
And for real advances in gun safety, we should follow the car industry model and look for ways to make the passenger safer. Legislate that all handguns have trigger ID so stolen guns have lousy resale value and toddlers quit shooting their siblings. Lift the ban on the Centers for Disease Control so its researchers can study the problem and make safety recommendations. Require training and mental evaluations for all gun purchases — new and used — so we reduce suicides by handgun and mass homicides by assault weapon.
I could live with that.
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Charlie Alison has lived in Fayetteville for 51 years. He said he does not speak for the University of Arkansas, but as a private citizen.