Armed Professors and Mass Killings:
Eugene suggests that we should allow professors to carry guns on campus to reduce the carnage in the event of an armed "mad killer" who comes to campus and tries to kill as many people as he can. If professors are armed, Eugene reasons, perhaps the professor can shoot the "mad killer" after he has killed only a few people. That way, fewer people will die.
This strikes me as a really really bad idea for a lot of different reasons. Eugene suggests one obvious objection to this proposal: Such killings are so extraordinarily rare that it's unwise to craft wideranging social policy in response to them. But let me offer another reason why it's a bad idea. On most college campuses, campus police officers already perform the role Eugene would want professors to perform.
In my experience, at least, most college campuses are crawling with officers from campus police departments. Campus police officers already carry guns, and they are trained in how to use them. On most campuses they respond to campus incidents anywhere on campus in minutes or even seconds. And unlike professors, they're around on nights and weekends. Given that, it seems that the perceived benefit of having armed professors is something we already have, more professionally and completely, with the current system of armed police officers.
UPDATE: Thanks for the helpful comments. If my experience is different from others, that is good to know; we always face the problem of trying to generalize from our experience, so I'm certainly open to hearing other views on this. At the same time, it seems that a lot of commenters have an unrealistic sense of how many professors would actually chose to arm, and how much a difference it would make. I suspect that very very few professors would actually decide to carry guns on their person if they were allowed to do so. Further, the specific facts of Virginia Tech or Columbine aren't the issue; the issue, as framed by Eugene, is what might reduce the carnage in a future attack -- not what might have done so in the past.
This strikes me as a really really bad idea for a lot of different reasons. Eugene suggests one obvious objection to this proposal: Such killings are so extraordinarily rare that it's unwise to craft wideranging social policy in response to them. But let me offer another reason why it's a bad idea. On most college campuses, campus police officers already perform the role Eugene would want professors to perform.
In my experience, at least, most college campuses are crawling with officers from campus police departments. Campus police officers already carry guns, and they are trained in how to use them. On most campuses they respond to campus incidents anywhere on campus in minutes or even seconds. And unlike professors, they're around on nights and weekends. Given that, it seems that the perceived benefit of having armed professors is something we already have, more professionally and completely, with the current system of armed police officers.
UPDATE: Thanks for the helpful comments. If my experience is different from others, that is good to know; we always face the problem of trying to generalize from our experience, so I'm certainly open to hearing other views on this. At the same time, it seems that a lot of commenters have an unrealistic sense of how many professors would actually chose to arm, and how much a difference it would make. I suspect that very very few professors would actually decide to carry guns on their person if they were allowed to do so. Further, the specific facts of Virginia Tech or Columbine aren't the issue; the issue, as framed by Eugene, is what might reduce the carnage in a future attack -- not what might have done so in the past.
Related Posts (on one page):
- My Favorite Comment, from the Armed Professors Thread:
- Armed Police Officers at Universities:
- Armed Professors and Mass Killings:
I think armed professors would serve a role that campus security cannot - immediate force
Prof. Kerr, I respectfully disagree. This isn't about all professors or staff being armed, or about shootouts. This is about cornered people having options.
If you don't wish to provide for your own defense that's fine. I would never suggest you be forced to do so.
But for you to argue that others should be defenseless to suit your whim is monstrous.
Plus, a shooter will typically know what the police/campus security look like and can thus avoid them or time the shooting and its location to avoid them. A shooter would not know which professors/teachers are necessarily armed.
Second, on a more philosophical level, I do not believe it conducive to liberty to entrust our personal safety and security entirely to the government. As a free people, we have the right and responsibility to protect ourselves in the first instance (a responsibility that is reflected in tort law as well), and the essential nature of police forces is that they "respond" to reported "incidents" - implying, therefore, that the "incident" has already occurred before they can "respond." Instead of retrospective security, wherein the police can arrest my murderer, why do I not have the right and responsibility to keep the would-be killer from murdering me in the first place? Moreover, is it conducive to freedom at all to require citizens to lay prostrate before criminals in the meagre hope that a government agent may save us? My obligation as a free man is to protect my loved ones, those around me, and myself (in that order), while it is the nature of slaves and serfs to wait diligently for their masters to come to their aid. Elitists and socialists of all stripes prefer a prostrate populace entirely dependent on governmental good will for their lives and livelihood, and so I perhaps can understand an academic's preference for an unarmed (campus) populace, but I cannot understand how one can morally justify disarming all citizens (except, ipso facto, criminals).
At class, they are under the same obligation of responsibility as anywhere else in our society, why limit availability on campus?
When it comes to freak situations like this, waiting for the police to arrive is almost never an option. An effective defense has to occur within seconds, and if a defense was to be successful from a student, professor, or other faculty member, that's about how long it would take.
As a firearm owner, I am sympathetic to the argument to most concealed weapon carriers are well trained and responsible. But it doesn't square with the reality, which is that accidents happen. I fear the gun carried by the professor who can't figure out the classroom projector much more than the legal or illegal weapon of a campus maniac.
Moreover, all accounts from Blacksburg have underscored the terrible panic surrounding the attack. Consider a more common life or death situation where similar panic ensues - perhaps an occasion when someone needs CPR or a car accident. When I have been on the scene of these occasions, my heart pounds, hands shake, I 'lose time' amid the chaos and confusion - and I am a trained EMT with five years of experience. It betrays a certain ignorance of human reactions to believe most college profesors are capable of assessing the such a threat and engaging in a shoot out with a gunman. Lastly, such a scenario also poses serious problems for police and rescue personnel, (especially, say, if turns out not to be a execution, but a hostage situation).
In the end, EV's intentions are admirable, but this is not a carefully constructed argument.
I likewise disagree. Cho could unload a clip of 15 rounds into a full classroom in under 20-seconds. That is not enough time for most police officers to drop their doughnuts, let alone to neutralize the threat to others. Allowing concealed weapons on campus provides a deterrent because people know that some portion of the campus population may well be armed. Prof. Lott's research suggests this threat has proved effective outside the ivory tower. Moreover, nobody would see a concealed weapon, and it would, therefore, not become a distraction from the academic mission of the school. This may not be as true of having armed guards in every classroom (or whatever police presence would be necessary to achieve the same effect.)
Separately, it seems wrong to suggest that all a person can do when their life is being threatened is to call 911. Assuming we recognize a natural or fundamental right to defend yourself, then it does not seem like a strech to allow citizens to have the means to defend themselves.
Finally, I would not that concealed weapons are allowed at the University of Utah, where is does not seem to be an issue. Indeed, all of the projections that more relaxed carry laws would lead to a new dawning of the Wild West have proved false. The absence of accidental shootings at the Univ. of Utah suggests that college communities are not any different.
The people in Norris Hall would perhaps have been better served by bulletproof doors, doors without glass (or at least with bulletproof glass), doors that could be locked from the interior, and rooms with multiple exits. (Maybe the fire escape will make a comeback.)
Admittedly, I've never been in Norris Hall, but I recall reading accounts of the occupants of the rooms holding the doors shut. And many college classrooms (in my experience) are unlocked from the outside and not securable from the inside. Granted, making classrooms that are not cul-de-sacs would be more expensive, as would bulletproof doors.
I'm not automatically opposed to concealed carry permit holders being armed on campus. But I'm not sure I'm highly thrilled with the idea, either. IMO it's worth considering a wide variety of preventative measures.
Orrin. Your experience isn't universal. It isn't even widespread. Most colleges have no police department or a very small one.
None of the private colleges in my state have a police depatrtment. Only the largest of the public universities do. My small university, for example, has 4 unarmed student "security guards" during the day and 2 at night plus a "dispatcher." In thirty years, they've never caught anyone. But they do write nice reports.
On the other hand, the University of Minnesota Twin Cities campus has 50,000 students, faculty and staff. There are 2 armed sergeants and 8 officers on patrol at any time and a dispatcher in the office.
Many faculty, including me, were soldiers at one time in our lives and those skills haven't disappeared. My doctorate didn't turn me into a defenseless klutz. University regulations did that.
Quality and quantity of training varies between departments. But it is almost universally true that little time is spent in live combat drills and electronic simulators. Most firearms training is done against stationary paper targets.
Any able-bodied adult can be trained to the minimal licensing standard for police in days and kept there with a few hours of practice per month.
You can shoot a lot of people in four minutes.
While your argument suggests that it is unnecessary to arm professors, I don't agree that the existence of a police department, without more, makes it a bad idea to arm professors. There may be a lot of OTHER reasons it's a bad idea, but this isn't one.
The baseline for campus safety must be a well-trained, well-staffed police department. However in the context of this argument, I think the issue is whether armed professors would provide an additional benefit over an existing police department. The answer, I think, is "yes; the police can't be everywhere at once. Granted, campus police often have quite good response times to true emergencies, but they can't be everywhere at once.
Generally I believe that a competent, well-trained, armed person - not just a professor - has a better chance of lasting until the police arrive, than an unarmed person.
I would hasten to add that I don't think civilians should engage in the kind of "seek and detain" activity that is the role of the police; I'd much prefer that they seek cover and/or exit from the situation.
You ignore the fact that at your own school (GW), the vast majority of the campus police force carries only light batons, not sidearms. This seems to be the case at numerous universities.
There have been many comparisions between professors and civilians versus "trained" professionals. It is quite relevant to this discussion what that training includes, and how rigorous it is.
Does anyone out there have good information about secuirty and police training? Any law enforcement officers reading this blog?
But it didn't go down that way. He shot people in a number of classrooms, walking from one to another, all the while reloading. People in those other classrooms heard the shots, some professors did take action (albeit ineffective). They knew what was coming but they had no tools for effective response.
Imagine the killer walking into the second classroom to meet gunfire from an off-duty police officer student (SOUND OF GREAT CHEERING). Now imagine the killer walking into the second classroom to meet gunfire from an armed professor, or student (WHY NO CHEERING?).
Any counterfire, even if no hits, distracts the killer and forces him to go into self-protection mode. It WILL stop his activity. CIVILIAN return fire stopped Charles Whitman in Texas, it could have stopped Cho in Virginia.
The bad guy must react the same -- stop his attack and seek cover -- whether the counterfire comes from a police officers .38 or from mine. The result, lives saved, is identical. Skill and judgement are not possessed exclusively by those holding a badge. Ask the female Israeli grocery shopper who shot the terrorist ahead of her in line (saving many).
Campus cops at Portland State U. in downtown Portland, OR aren't armed either.
Assistant Professors get muzzle-loaders
Associate Professors get semi-automatics
Full Professors get automatics
Adjuncts get a sharp letter-opener
Chaired Professors are irrelevant, since they never come to campus
For real, my view on concealed carry on campus can be solidified with some empirical evidence the policy works off campus (point me the way). But practically, I think allowing professors to arm themselves would have a negligible effect, since it depends on the above duo of unlikely circumstances.
I remember my campus security - on three very different campuses (large public vs small private vs large private) - as being total clowns, and I was very glad those idiots did not have guns.
And pillars of the anti-gun crowd to boot.
In short, good luck with the "arm the effete intellectual anti-gun zealots" idea.
It's a possibility, but automatic weapons aren't terribly effective in untrained hands. They are difficult to control, and waste ammunition very quickly. I'd be much more afraid of an active shooter taking careful, aimed shots with an lever action winchester than I would be of someone spraying lead all over the place with an automatic weapon.
That character was patterned on a campus cop who worked at a small college in Tennesse during the '50s and '60s--and, yes, the real cop carried only a single round for his .38 and kept it in his shirt pocket. The school made him do that after he had a negligent discharge with his holstered revolver.
That is an absurd line of reasoning. First Cho would have had to get his hands on an automatic rifle, which is not that easy to do. Second, Cho may not have even tried if he thought he would be stopped right away.
Finally, we need to remember that these killers already try to maximize the killings with the tools they can access no matter what we do to prevent them. In this case Cho probably distracted the cops through the first murder and then chained people inside the building to maximize the killing. The Columbine killers had tried to do most of their killing through propane bombs that would have killed hundred of students if they had gone off as planned. The bombs were supposed to go off and they would then shoot the fleeing students.
But it didn't go down that way. He shot people in a number of classrooms, walking from one to another, all the while reloading. People in those other classrooms heard the shots, some professors did take action (albeit ineffective). They knew what was coming but they had no tools for effective response.
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To me, this sounds like Cho was exposing himself to a shot from ambush at every doorway, but the only people with guns were outside the building, waiting for the SWAT team to arrive and get organized. I suspect that the Romanian-Israeli-American professor who died blocking the door while his students jumped out the window would have known what to do with a gun if he'd had one, and likewise most GI Bill students. I wouldn't make carrying mandatory for anyone (except cops and security, to whatever extent their bosses want them armed), but I would make it legal for those with concealed carry licenses to carry on campus and nearly everywhere else.
"Ask me for anything but TIME." Napoleon Bonaparte.
There was a police officer at Columbine High School when the two students brought their rifles out into the open, and the officer immediately fired on them, hitting one of their rifles. They returned fire with their two rifles against his one handgun, and drove the officer to cover behind a vehicle. Then they entered the school building and the officer did not pursue.
He instead immediately notified his superiors of the incident by radio and asked for backup. His superiors told him to remain in place outside and to protect the students who were running out of the building in large numbers. This was the proper thing to do by the standards of the time.
My recollection is that the Virginia Tech campus police numbered all of 50 officers, of whom only ten were on duty at the time, and almost all of those were involved in the search for the first dead girl's boyfriend who was the primary initial suspect. They learned otherwise when their dispatcher told them of the first reports from Norris Hall.
The first officers arrived at Norris Hall five minutes after that report (VT has a 2600 acre campus). They broke through the chained doors five minutes after that. Cho killed himself when he heard them blasting the door locks away with their firearms. The Norris incident was over within ten minutes of the first dispatch report, and five minutes after the first officer arrived at Norris.
Only the possession of firearms by persons inside Columbine High School, or inside Norris Hall, when the gunmen entered could possibly have stopped the gunmen before they finished their murders and killed themselves.
Professor Kerr's willingness to speculate without knowledge of the time elements and intial police actions involved here absolutely reeks of denial.
As there are no background checks required at gun shows, nor any restrictions on the type of guns sold, I don't find the question absurd. Since this attack was apparently well planned out, why exactly is it absurd to take that planning towards an assault rifle or uzi with a rapid-fire ammunition magazine?
Professor Kevin Granata was the most likely person to have taken Cho down had faculty with concealed weapons permits been allowed to have weapons on campus. And you are correct that Professor Librescu knew how to use a handgun.
In what country? Certainly not in the US.
We can argue about whether the restrictions on types of guns are useful, but they do exist.
WRT "assault weapons", most folks understand that NASCAR cars may look their neighbors' cars but are very different under the body. Folks who blather about "assault weapons" in the US gun control context either don't know or seem uninterested in the analogous details.
Any effect that doesn't INCREASE on-campus mass shootings, however negligible, is a net positive. At least one person feels safer and a few people certainly are safer.
I think the positive effect would be greater because all the public mass shootings that I can remember over the past 20 years have occurred in so-called "gun-free" zones. They happen in McDonalds, schools, churches, post offices, private offices, Malls etc. One happened in my state which lead to a striking photo of a victim lying in a pool of blood outside a door emblazoned by a sign stating "Acme Manufacturing Bans Guns in These Premises." Very protective, that sign.
The psychotic wants to fill body bags not to get into a gunfight. So they choose "safe" areas in which to work their evil. Making public areas less safe for the shooters will impact their conduct.
Are you seriously suggesting that there are no restrictions on the types of guns sold at gun shows? Have you ever even been to a gun show before? It is illegal to sell fully automatic guns at gun shows. It is illegal to sell fully automatic "assault rifles" or Uzis at gun shows. It is illegal to sell or possess fully automatic weapons in the US (except for some extremely rare exceptions).
"uzi with a rapid-fire ammunition magazine" I assume by this phrase you mean an automatic Uzi. Those are illegal in the US. You are mixing terms here and I do not know what you mean by rapid fire magazine so I assume you mean an automatic weapon since that is what you first mentioned. Considering that the only legal Uzi in the US is the semiautomatic version and that it is chambered for 9mm rounds I am doubtful that the result would be different the 9mm Glock Cho used, except that an Uzi is harder to conceal and probably harder to use (I have never used an Uzi so this is a guess on my part, I have used a 9mm semi-auto Taurus before and it was fairly easy to use).
Had Cho tried to use a semi-automatic "assault rifle" (the automatic ones being illegal) it might even been harder for him to pull this off, since it is harder to hide an assault rifle in your dorm or on your person than it is to hide a pistol.
" we're floating the idea of arming people who are perpetually derided as being irredeemably liberal"
You raise an interesting question: Are CCW holders overwhelmingly conservative? If a CCW list is available, crosscheck it against voter registration. I suspect there will be a significant, but not overwhelming, relationship.
My guess though is that Andy Freeman had it right - that the poster failed to distinguish between legal semi-automatic "assault" looking weapons and mostly illegal true fully automatic assault weapons.
The Littleton PD officer on duty at Columbine when the gunmen pulled their rifles out scored a first round hit from fifty feet through a crowd of screaming, running students. Had his pistol round penetrated the stock of the gunman's rifle and entered the gunman's body, there might have been no innocent fatalities that day.
I repeat that what this officer did was amazing. He heard students screaming when the gunmen pulled their rifles and handguns out from under their trenchcoats, turned and saw students running away from the gunmen, pulled his service weapon and opened fire immediately, hitting what he shot at from fifty feet in a crowd. This rivalled the one shot of the startled, dying Les Coffelt that saved President Truman from assassins.
But it wasn't good enough at Columbine that day. Which proves that Orin Kerr is wrong.
The banning of otherwise legally concealed weapons has nothing to do with any special status or situation on a college campus. Rather, it is done there because that is where the overall very liberal faculty can get away with doing it. They don't want to have guns around them, and so make sure that there aren't any legal guns around.
But any attempt to prevent professors with valid CCW permits from being armed on campus just points to the weakness of their arguments. I just don't think that you can credibly distinguish between college campuses and everywhere else - any difference is merely a figment of liberal faculty wishful thinking.
What, though, is the argument against allowing professors and other university staff to possess weapons, if they choose? (Assume the professors lack criminal records, and assume they go through whatever testing and modest training is required to get a concealed carry permit, or perhaps even some extra training.)
This addresses the situation at VT (and other colleges) where even a person with a CCW permit is not permitted to have a firearm.
Brady Campaign
By the way, in all of this back and forth, I am in no way advocating or in favor or some call for more gun control laws. I just think that the idea that more guns would have necessarily stemmed this rampage, because of the current claim of a well planned out attack, should not be the assumed result.
Except in Texas:
But it did stop them from using the rifle!
If he had be allowed to follow up and go after those idiots he may have been able to stop them or at least slow them down, hold them up until backup got there.
The Question is "WHY was he told not to?".
Pure BS. The students outside were not in danger! The students INSIDE were. The police were covering their asses. If they did nothing, they couldn't be wrong!!!
I am NOT blaming the guy for NOT going inside. I am blaming the ($(&&(*%$#^)( idiots that told him NOT to. They should have left it up to the officer. Yes the officer might have died but by keeping those shooters busy and firing and thinking of him they would not have been able to walk arround deciding who lived and who died.
You missed their real objective here:
Their gun-free zones aren't about safety or security. The only objective is to help their proponents feel morally superior.
You are using 20/20 hindsight. The Littleton police thought a hostage-taking event was in progress. They had no reason to suspect a massacre was in progress in the first chaotic minutes after the officer on duty radioed in his report and, per their prepared procedure, ordered him to keep the gunmen from briefly exiting the Columbine High School building to grab more hostages from the students milling around outside.
My recollection is that the gunmen arrived with several long guns, and several handguns, each under their trenchcoats. I have no idea whether the officer's first round hitting the stock of one of their long guns rendered it inoperable. You assume that with no evidence.
In an honest world that would be simple enough, but the term "assault rifle" has lots of different meanings to people. Many people think it includes semi-automatic rifles with certain features (like those covered under the "assault weapon ban") and many gun control proponents toss around terms like "assault rifle" that they can not even define themselves.
One of the gun ranges near where I live lets you rent automatic weapons for use on the range. They have an automatic world war II era "grease gun" and I think another automatic weapon. But they charge around $15 for what amounts to just a couple minutes rental since the ammo is so expensive and I have never thought it worth the money to try.
I agree more guns would not have necesarily stemmed the rampage. Nobody has said it would have necessarily stemmed it. The argument is that it would have increased the probability of stemming it.
Seems to me that the differential between a 9mm Glock and no opposing weapons, is much greater than the difference between any other handgun in Cho's hands and (say) a Glock in opposition. (Maybe an Uzi or fully-auto AK-47, but even in the US most people can't readily score one of those.) Thus, even if Cho knew he might be facing armed resistance, he probably could not have "armed up" sufficiently to restore the disparity of force in his favor.
And those lib faculty members? You might be surprised at the number of them who are clearly worried about you having a gun, but aren't the least bit concerned about any problems occuring if they carry them.
In terms of simply saving lives I suspect it would be far more effective to arm prostitutes.
There is a reason why there have been no mass murder incidents at gun shows.
In this particular instance, I might well concede your point. Cho seems like the kind of person determined to do mayhem, and would have adapted his technique to whatever opposition he expected. I would contend that while concealed carry might well have prevented, or altered, the outcome of this particular incident, the fact that it might not have (your point, essentially) doesn't negate the argument for concealed carry. The real argument for concealed carry is in something akin to "the law of large numbers," i.e. that the probability of altering or preventing violent behavior is more likely with lots of armed citizens around than with few or none; in the realm of probability, we can say nothing about specific events, only about tendencies. As a matter of logic (deduction), it seems pretty obvious that not having lots of armed citizens around makes it easier for nutcases like Cho to do mayhem. As a matter of inference (not deduction) it seems pretty obvious to me that having lots of armed citizens around is likely to have some effect on the behavior of those who would do violence. Maybe not in this specific case, but how can you deny the general case?
While I think we're on the same side here, I'm not sure that was a particularly good point. Every gun show I've been to forbids concealed carry! And private sellers have their firearms checked and the actions locked open before they are allowed inside. So there aren't as many loaded guns around as you might think.
Of course, there are plenty of vendors who could probably mount a quick defense, and any number of us will have left weapons in our vehicles that we could quickly retrieve, so it isn't entirely a "gun free" zone, say like a college campus these days.
No, I said it's not easy to get your hands on an "automatic rifle" because that is the term you originally used.
Assault rifle is a vague term with many meanings depending on who is using the term, while automatic rifle has a much more specific meaning: a rifle that fires multiple bullets with one trigger pull. And I still think it is absurd to argue that Cho could easily get his hands on an automatic rifle as they are not common in the US and are very hard to obtain legally. Even if you are willing to get one illegally, for the vast majority of people that is difficult to accomplish as well.
"The schooll's total populationn falls between 1,500 and a,600 on more than 500 acres of land. He has 11 security officers; however, not all work at the same time, nor do they carry weapons because of the campus' "no weapons" policy".
I don't know about you, but it frightens me that the people who determined that security officers can't carry guns because they have declared the campus to be a weapons free zone are the same ones teaching not only our youth but the next generation of commercial airline pilots!
Don't discount our ability to save your lives too!
I agree with a number of others that Prof Kerr has seemed to miss Prof Volokh's point. He is not suggesting that faculty be forced to be armed and provide security, but only that they be allowed to choose for themselves. (It causes me to grind teeth that a public university even has a say in the matter, but that's another discussion).
More importantly, I vehemently disagree that this would be "bad idea." Trusting in the police to be your savior is a loser's strategy from a number of aspects.
- From a legal standpoint, the police have no duty to protect YOU or any other individual. They have a job to maintain public order, but no obligation to Professor Orin Kerr or any one of his students. The only one truly responsible for Orin Kerr's safety is Orin Kerr, and for that reason alone he should be able to carry a handgun (and for that matter, have a rifle in his office) with out fear of legal intererence. Ask Carolyn Warren in Warren vs. DC in 1975, or more recently Jessica Gonzalez of Castle Rock (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle_Rock_v._Gonzales)
- The possibility (probability, I guess, given the overwhelming left tilt of American university faculty) that most professors would not choose to carry a concealed handgun may be true, but it is also irrelevent. Most citizens of "shall issue" states do not carry, but it is pretty clear that violent crime generally is less where the possibility of legal concealed carry exists. Whether this is true because would-be criminals explicitly take this into account, or because the decrease in violent crime and support for "shall issue" laws both spring from a more general attitude of those states not putting up with violent offenders, violent crimes are deterred to a significant degree.
- JMB's claim that the chaos or what-have-you will prevent anyone from responding to an attack successfully is refuted on a daily basis by average citizens with guns. I don't have the reference to the 2M+ annual-uses-of-guns-to-deter-crimes study, but for dozens of individual examples, here's one source for newspaper accounts: http://www.claytoncramer.com/gundefenseblog/blogger.html. You will find some that fail under pressure, but you will find many many more Joe and Jane Citizens that get it right.
- As far as the argument for "more professionally and completely" trained police officers... Prof Kerr, get out and talk with some cops, with a number of them, and really dig into it. You will find a small percentage of them that make it a priority to be competent with their firearms, and a lot more that barely make it through periodic qualifications, and for whom firearms training is just a minor issue in a boatload of training that they have to wade through. I, as Joe CCW License holder, go regularly to professional training, mostly by cops, always with some police as fellow students, and they bemoan the fact that most of their compadres don't keep up. It seems the bigger the department, the more they have trouble getting everyone thru their scheduled training, and if fact are sometimes a year or more behind. And like any other big organization, when budgets get tight (and they are always tight), training gets cut first.
- Back in the 70s and 80s, the police community started developing officer survival training to bring down the number of officers killed by criminals each year. One area of focus was moving from a single officer confronting a situation to a more teamwork oriented approach. Overall the effort has been successful -- while too many officers still die in the line of duty, the rate has dropped significantly. However, note that the focus is on 'officer' survival. Though I have not found a formal study, I have noted a number of reports and newspaper accounts that run along the lines of: citizen calls for help; first cop on scene calls for backup; citizen is killed by badguy while cops form up; cops launch organized intervention and capture/kill bad guy - but it is too late for Joe Citizen. Frankly, the role of cops is to pick up the pieces at the scene and go find who dunnit. Prevention is much much harder.
One example of this that got major public attention was the Columbine attack. Since then some police departments have developed "active shooter" responses, that train and allow the first few street cops on the scene to intervene more rapidly than waiting for the SWAT guys and the full blown department response. If I recall correctly, this was used in the Utah mall shooting - the first four on-duty cops on the scene got in a formation that allowed them to respond in any direction and charged thru the mall to hunt down the killer. Of course, even with that, an off duty cop, who functionally was no different than a citizen with a concealed weapon, bagged the killer first.
Many, many cops are brave, intelligent, and because of their own moral imperative, will defend you and anyone else to the best of their abilities. But they cannot be everywhere at once, they cannot respond immediately except by chance, and often the procedures that keep them and the general public safe will leave you in danger.
In short, Prof Kerr, when the stuff hits the fan, you are on your own, whether you like it or not. More to the point, whether you are armed or not. Which do you want to be? Shouldn't that be your choice, not the university president's?
Eric
My own view, which used to be in favor of gun control, is that our society is very violent, and guns are a reflection but not a cause, of that violence. So, I am not sure that eliminating them completely, even if possible, will cure the violence. I agree with Clayton that we have to do everything possible to keep guns and other destructive weapons out of the hands of the mentally unbalanced, but don't know how that can be accomplished.
BTW, I have heard legislation suggested that in areas where it is posted as a gun free zone, and something like this happens, the fallout of responsibility would be on those who posted such in the first place. Let the campus and university take the fall for not allowing its 'liberated' student union to enjoy the liberties of personal protection.
This is what I like to refer to as 'Star Trek mentality' in that I can only equate it to coming of age at some point just prior to non-invasive surgery, transaporter technology, and an entire society willing to work for no other reason than the betterment of themselves and mankind. Lets focus on some more realistic goals in the interim.
No. This is flat out wrong. Any change must result in a greater decrease in the expected deaths/injuries from mass shooting than in the increase of accidental deaths/injuries. Besides, if the change doesn't decrease mass shootings, why should we do it? (Note that this is a stricter criteria than you "doesn't increase")
This is a good point. Many posters on these boards assume the shooter specifically targets gun-free zones because they offer the least amount of resistance. Yet they assume that if the zone is not gun free that he would not change tactics. I don't think this is a valid assumption. There are many tactical changes he can do. He can get a shotgun or automatic weapon (for this I'll make the assumption that someone sufficiently determined to get one can get one. if this isn't true...i'm only using it as an example). He can then take this weapon and indiscriminately spray into a large classroom. Many of my lower division core science classes had somewhere between 200-400 students in them, even if you're not even aiming you can probably kill a good number of people. If the killer is really planning on places that offer the least resistance, he can just go to a day care or some other place that is likely to have a very small proportion of guns. Tactics can and do change...anyone whose been in the military can tell you that.
QFT. In my experience, possibly skewed by attending undergraduate, graduate, and law school in the Deep South, a surprising number of faculty (even liberal Philosophy profs) are veterans.
Also, lets get rid of the idea that campus security are people who could not even meet the low mental and physical standards to be policemen. While it may be true in some places, it's unfair to many, maybe even most.
In my experience, the security on the public university campuses are, in fact, part of the state police force, a.k.a state troopers. Many that I have met on private campuses were former police or recently discharged veterans who took the job because it paid better than the local police, they wanted the free tuition that came with it, or they tired of the grind of community policing, especially all the domestic calls. I never met a single one who was a mental or physical defective. Again, my own observation. YMMV.
All true. However, this guy wouldn't have been able to wander around for a couple of hours as he did, all over campus and even off campus, while brandishing a long gun. People would have noticed and reacted to a guy walking around with an assault rifle, Terminator-style. If he was not able to conceal his handguns until he was ready to get started, as he did in this case, perhaps he wouldn't have been able to kill as many as he did.
I'll not pile on to the posters regarding your error above. I'd point out only that getting such misinformation, or outright lies, is typical of what comes from the Brady Campaign. They seem to operate under the end justifies the means theory - "our cause is just" so any lie to reach it is justified.
FYI - in the future take ANYTHING they spout with a very large grain of salt.
Despite his planning and training, Whitman's score was only half the number that Cho killed. And that was at a time when EMS and emergency medical care was not as advanced as it is today.
Gun-Policy Advocates On Both Sides of Issue Push Dubious Figures