This week the pro-gun rights organization Students for Concealed Carry on Campus announced that it will create a chapter on the UW-Madison campus to lobby for expanded gun rights and concealed carry on the UW-Madison campus. Although we welcome the debate on this issue, we are strongly opposed to placing more guns in the hands of students and faculty members.
Since the Virginia Tech massacre last April, students and administrators at universities across the nation have searched for effective means to increase campus safety and to combat seemingly random acts of campus violence. At the extreme end, groups such as Students for Concealed Carry on Campus have advocated for concealed carry on campus for students and professors. They argue that allowing concealed handguns on campus has the potential to mitigate violent crime. We, on the other hand, believe that a safer campus and an environment more conducive to learning can be reached with fewer guns on campus, not more.
First, concealed carry on campus makes a police officers' job exponentially more difficult. If concealed carry on campus were permitted, officers would have to realize they may be confronting an armed person in everyday dealings with Madison residents. In the aftermath of a crisis, if a number of students have guns drawn, a police officer must find a way to distinguish good student from bad student.
Further, this heavy-handed approach ignores other sensible measures that schools can take to deal with underlying causes of campus violence or to manage a campus shooting once it has occurred.
Campuses should make mental-health or treatment programs readily available to students so the potential for random acts of violence is decreased.
Background checks for gun ownership should be strengthened so students with past mental health problems are not given deadly weapons. Many universities have set up campus-wide committees to find sensible solutions. Because of these committees, many schools have established improved emergency notification systems linked to students' e-mail or Facebook accounts. Other schools have decided to arm their campus police officers.
The motivation driving Students for Concealed Carry on Campus, to increase safety on campus, seems to be pure. Paradoxically, their visceral reaction to the Virginia Tech and Northern Illinois massacres has resulted in nonsensical policy recommendations that could further endanger students and police officers on this campus.
