Lone Star shooting highlights growing problem of guns on campus

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jan/23/lone-star-shooting-guns-campus

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Texas Governor Rick Perry's immediate response to the Lone Star campus shooting Tuesday in Houston – the result of a dispute between two men at the community college which left three hospitalised – was that he was "praying for those that have been impacted". But there are no prizes for guessing what, other than prayers, Perry really believes is the answer to college shootings like this one: more guns.

Back in December, in response to the shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, Perry stood before a group of Tea Party conservatives wearing a black suit and black shirt, looking slightly grey, with his hair not as primped as usual, and told them that he supported allowing teachers to carry concealed handguns. According to the Dallas Morning News, when Perry mentioned a school district in Texas that already allowed teachers to carry weapons, he was interrupted by loud applause from the crowd.

This week, we were subjected to the now-familiar grainy scenes, shot from a TV helicopter, of paramedics tending to the injured, neon yellow stretchers laid out ready on the grass: the inevitable theatre that comes with yet another school shooting tragedy. The campus was on lockdown, we were told, but the specifics – was anyone dead? how many injured? – were sketchy.

Now we know that just after midday, three people, including the gunman and a maintenance worker, were wounded in a shooting in a library on the North Harris campus of the community college. Thankfully, nobody died this time. A campus spokesperson told CNN people were caught in the crossfire after an argument resulted in guns being drawn.

Rightwing blogs homed in on the fact that Lone Star campus was a "gun-free zone" – in other words, that prohibiting concealed handguns there only prevented people from protecting themselves. But from the wording on the school's own website, it isn't even clear that Lone Star College <em>is</em> a gun-free zone. In fact, it seem to suggest that it wouldn't prohibit state-sanctioned concealed handgun licence (CHL) holders carrying a weapon with them on campus.

Ever since Virginia Tech massacre, the National Rifle Association, the controversial gun rights lobbying group, has been backing bills across the nation that would allow concealed handguns on college campuses. And in its press conference after the Sandy Hook school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, the NRA's executive director, Wayne LaPierre, used the opportunity to propose that not just colleges, but every school in the country should get armed security.

But I just can't see how a CHL holder in the library at the time of yesterday's shoot-out could have made the situation any better. As it was, people got caught in the crossfire: another person emptying their magazine into the fray would only have increased the casualty count. I put this to David Burnett of the pressure group Students for Concealed Carry. "That would have been a judgment call on the part of the CHL holder as to whether their life was in danger," he told me.

But Burnett believes that if, as was first feared, Tuesday's shooting had been a spree killing like the one Adam Lanza carried out in Newtown, a CHL holder could have altered the course of history:

"These people [spree killers] want the body count as high as they can before killing themselves. It's difficult for me to imagine things getting much worse."

Burnett said his organisation estimated that more than 200 colleges in six states already allowed students to carry concealed handguns on campus. The state of Utah has sanctioned it since 2006, he said, and Colorado for a decade.

Colorado: where two people were injured last month after a concealed carry permit-holder accidentally shot her co-worker with her revolver on the University of Colorado's Anschutz Medical Campus, injuring herself in the process. Colorado: where, in 2010, a man shot someone in the arm on the campus of Colorado State University – four months after the college repealed its gun ban following a ruling from the state's supreme court.

There is little evidence, in fact, to suggest that allowing teachers or students to carry guns on campus does anything other than increase the likelihood of somebody getting hurt. According to the Harvard Injury Control Research Center, more guns equals more homicide.

Besides which, colleges themselves don't want guns on their campuses anyway. On 19 December, just five days after Sandy Hook, an organisation called College Presidents for Gun Safety wrote an open letter to "our nation's policy leaders":

"We are college and university presidents. We are parents. We are Republicans, Democrats and Independents. As a group, we do not oppose gun ownership. But, in many of our states, legislation has been introduced or passed that would allow gun possession on college campuses. We oppose such laws."

In 2011, I wrote a piece for the Atlantic about the move to allow guns on campus in Texas. Back then, Francisco Cigarroa, the chancellor of the University of Texas System, signed a public letter to legislators saying the gun bill was a bad idea. If it ever became law, some professors even said they would add a clause to the syllabus forbidding students from carrying guns into classrooms.

Last Friday, without much fanfare, a small east Texas school district announced it would allow teachers there to carry concealed handguns, making it the second school system in the state to do so. And apparently, following Sandy Hook, more may follow.

So, even if students aren't allowed to carry guns with them to class, it looks as though some of their professors will. Welcome to the new Wild West – where the saloon bar has been replaced by the classroom, the six-shooter with a Glock 9mm, and the cast of weathered cowboys with America's next generation of schoolchildren.