Another social media campaign is pushing to ban guns from college classrooms, but it’s not too persuasive, aside from declarative statements.
“There is no reason to arm our college students,” DoSomething.org CEO Aria Finger writes for The Huffington Post.
The organization, a grab bag of campaigns for liberal social causes to “make the world suck less,” has launched one called “guns out” to get students to “take a flexing photo and demand your school keep guns off campus.”
Take a selfie and prevent campus shootings. Easy enough.
Only guns I want on any campus in America #GunsOut @WCU @NCState @UNC pic.twitter.com/AXqA2ASAlR
— bugge (@BuggeTheAverage) March 7, 2016
The goal is to get college presidents to sign an open letter from The Campaign to Keep Guns Off Campus to ban concealed carry at colleges and subvert recent gains in Texas and other states that allow conceal-and-carry permit holders to carry on public campuses.
“This campaign isn’t radical. Or political. It’s what students want. It’s what administrators want. Guns simply don’t belong at schools,” Finger writes, ignoring that lobbying legislators to pass a law to enforce a specific policy is the definition of political.
Public opinion isn’t so united on the question, either. Support for gun rights has increased for decades as support for gun control has declined. Gun control has 50 percent support and gun rights has 47 percent support, according to the Pew Research Center. In Texas, where the campus carry debate has been heated, “most Texas voters support the right to carry guns in public,” according to a University of Texas/Texas Tribune poll.
When asked specifically about concealed handguns on college campuses, 47 percent supported it and 45 percent opposed it.
Students are split on the issue as well. Some think it improves their safety, others see it as unnecessary or a policy that makes students uncomfortable.
These are the only guns I want on campus. @TAMU sign this letter to keep #GunsOUT https://t.co/1ld1j5g6D6 pic.twitter.com/FvRxdKr3dD
— B (@bfsolt) March 8, 2016
Based on the data, an armed civilian isn’t likely to prevent a mass shooting. It’s happened, but it’s a rare occurrence. Those who do carry, however, are extraordinarily law-abiding. Campus carry policies aren’t likely to make a campus safer in fact, but they’re not likely to make them more dangerous either.
It’s important to remember that violence and crime committed with guns has sharply declined since the 1990s. When debating guns on campus, memories of campus shootings have a strong emotional appeal, to advocates and opponents of campus carry alike, but those instances are exceedingly rare. Guns on campus is another arena for a cultural debate over guns and their place in American society.
