Concealed Weapons Permits holders should not be allowed to use their guns on campus
The Issue: With increases in violent crime, columnists debate allowing CWP holders to have guns on campus
Guns have exploded as a hot-button issue this year. At first the incidents involving them were shocking. Then the incidents slowly started to bleed into one. While Washington, D.C., is scrambling to enforce some law that could stop this, more and more gunmen seem to come out of the woodwork to accomplish whatever they can before some imminent legal change occurs.
America has been caught up in a firestorm, so what’s the solution? Should we allow every man and woman to carry a gun just so they can feel safe from any hypothetical crazed stranger?
It’s been suggested we allow students on our campus to carry concealed weapons. It’s also been suggested a gun be present in classrooms for teachers to protect themselves and students. These are drastic safeguards, yet they’re suggested as casually as crawling under desks in the event of a bomb. As the saying goes, you can’t fight fire with fire, and this is just as relevant.
To bring guns into classrooms where they never were before is a risk. It’s a bigger risk than one of an armed gunman shooting through halls. If this occurred, guns would be accessible to any student who could overpower a teacher if he or she became so inclined.
Allowing people to carry concealed weapons seems a little safer due to the process one must go through to get that license in the first place. But what happens the first time someone brings the weapon with them at night for safety, has a few drinks and makes a mistake when they think they were being threatened on the walk home?
A better solution would be proliferation of safety training that goes further than “walk home on a well-lit path with other people at night.” USC already offers women’s self-defense classes that teach women how to protect themselves with either their bodies or simple weapons that don’t pose a threat unless used in a certain way — and they can even be used as a physical education credit or taken as a five-hour session on the weekend.
Rather than allowing guns on campus to be as common as cellphones, we should expand self-defense classes for both genders and continue to provide necessary resources to protect USC. Training such as this would do much more for overall safety than just equipping students and faculty with weapons.