Thought Experiment: Armed Students & Cirsis situations

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Here's a question I'd like those who support very permissive gun control laws to answer. It's based on some ramblings from gun deregulation activists who think school shootings would have better outcomes if numerous students had guns available and were able to fight back.

Suppose there's some University in which every third student is armed with a handgun, assault rifle, or whatever the hell you think is acceptable to bring into schools. Suppose only a few of the students are trained in the proper use of weapons and suppose the student population is 1000.

Some resentful, bitter, isolated and psychologically distrubed student or pair of students come in and start shooting in some large caffateria. Everyone gets scared and youth, being famous for things other than wisdom, panic. These are the high strung, paranoid suburbs type and a good 80% of those with guns start firing off randomly in response to the crisis.

Would this make the situation better? And what is the chance of the situation occuring if students were allowed unrestricted abilities to bring guns in schools.

You're contrived situation has more in common with your spelling than with reality, I'l do my best to correct some of the more egregious errors and assumptions.

I'll get into this more below, but all that has been proposed is allowing students that already hold concealed pistol licenses to carry on them while attending classes, It's not Oprah style "everybody gets a gun!". There is some precedent for the idea, at least two school shootings were cut short when legally armed civilians confronted the shooter, unfortunately one case was a high school principal who had to run to his car parked off school grounds to retrieve his handgun, otherwise he may have saved more lives than he did.



In the US, around 6,000,000 people hold handgun carry permits, out of a population of around 300,000,000, so around 2% of the US population are licensed to carry handguns. No one carries rifles of any kind, they're bulky, heavy, difficult if not impossible to conceal, and are unsuited to most self defense situations likely outside the home. Most states that issue concealed carry permits require training, and as obtaining a permit requires a commitment of time, money, and enduring a number of background checks including fingerprinting, most people that go to the trouble are experienced shooters. I've never seen a single reference to a licensed civilian injuring a bystander with a stray round, while the police do it with regularity.

So, to modify your conditions to reflect reality, out of 1,000 student, maybe 20 are carrying handguns (assuming that the 2% of the population scales exactly with college demographics), and maybe a few of them are inexperienced shooters.



Let's assume that the large cafeteria holds 500 people, just to make it easy, so of that number 10 are armed with handguns. Now assuming that the mere presence of the handguns hasn't discouraged the shooter(s) from choosing this target, what is most likely to occur is that the armed students will immediately dash for cover, as someone familiar with firearms is less liable to simply panic in the presence of gunshots. From behind cover, guns will likely be drawn and "drop you weapon!" shouted at the shooter(s), in every incident in which a school shooter has been confronted by an armed civilian, they have surrendered right there. If shooting becomes necessary, every permit holder has one thing drilled into their heads "if it comes out of your gun, you own it", meaning that no matter what the circumstances, if they fire a bullet that harms someone they are civilly and criminally liable.

So to correct your "experiment" again, less students would be armed, more would be trained, firing randomly is not a likely response, and the chances of it occurring are not supported by the available evidence.



No one is calling for unrestricted access, and your hypothetical situation is so detached from reality that no useful conclusions can be drawn from it. If one draws on the available evidence however, a credible argument can be constructed for allowing college students who are legally licensed to do so to carry handguns on campus.

Well, you are floating up a few red herrings here.

First, most gun owners know how to use their weapons. Certainly, I am a BIG advocate of taking fundamental gun safety courses, and if we had a more "gun conscious" society, you'd not have to worry about someone being armed but not knowing what to do with a gun in a crisis. Arguments to the contrary must presumed an uneducated and irresponsible gun owning populace, which is really not the case on the whole.

Second, if a school balanced being armed on campus by saying that only those who had valid concealed carry permits could do so (staff and students) you would ensure that only those with clean criminal backgrounds and proper training were packing heat.

Third, there is no way to say a person who is "safe" today won't become unstable tomorrow, but if lots of "safe" people are packing heat, if that one unstable person decides to act out with a firearm, odds are they won't get far. Since we cannot effectively keep people from getting firearms illegally anyhow, the issue is moot. Prohibition only disarms the very people we'd want to permit to be armed and does little to combat those who should be denied firearms.

Keep in mind that years ago a sniper in Texas was stopped by civilians with firearms. The recent law school shooting in Grundy, Virginia was stopped by students who went to their cars, got their guns, and put the gunman down....law enforcement failed to protect lives in both of those cases, but an armed populace did accomplish that goal.

so lemmee get this right? you've got tons of students, hormones set to rampage level and carrying guns?

so one one student doesn't like another student because:

1) they're white and the others black = BANG
2) they're religious and the others another religion/opposite sex/lesbian/gay/etc = BANG
etc


yeh nice idea. not.

Millions of people carry guns every day, among licensed carriers the scenario you're describing is statistically non-existent. I've carried a gun since I was 21, if anything the heavy presence on my hip is a constant reminder that I'm not allowed to *ever* lose control, the consequences are different for me than for other people, and helped keep me cool in trying circumstances. Please stick to what you know, not wild fantasies having no basis in reality. Thank you.

People that are prone to do such a thing tend to forego getting a license to carry and frequently aren't eligible for one anyway. As for hormone levels being set to "rampage level" you can't get a handgun much less a license to carry it before the age of 21, when hormones are subsiding and the brain has finally fully developed.

I don't think I need to say this since most of us know the drill, but to all of the firearms enthusiasts that post here: This whole thread is clearly an attempt to bait one of us into saying something damaging that the OP can use to paint us in an unflattering light. Please don't give him the satisfaction.

Uh .... NO. The main purpose of this thread was to discuss gun registration policies. As for trying to bait rightwingers into saying damaging things, your only basis for the assertion I do that is because I``ve referenced your linking to an extreme militia right idea for killing off civil servants as a way of maintaining efficient government twice. I think it`s time you drop this persecution complex and accept that you pretty much tarred yourself with extremist associations by being rather unclear as to whether you supported the idea or not in the actual post.

As for fine commenters like John Browning who might be ``baited`` into saying something damaging, I need not make a thread to do that. Every second post he writes contains some extremist claptrap.

Registration and carrying a gun in a crowded environment are 2 separate issues. Registration does not work because the only people that register their guns are the ones least likely to commit a crime with them, and registration has no bearing on carrying a gun, but having enough training to be willing to accept the liability does.

Gee, that was so clear, seeing as how registration wasn't even mentioned in your OP, just a ridiculous hypothetical situation with no grounding in reality aimed at people who want to allow carry on campus.



Actually my basis is that you've never really seemed to care about firearms issues before, other than to oppose the things on general principle since people you disagree with like them. The OP also seemed deliberately written to be inflammatory, and contained more errors than I was willing to chalk up to simple ignorance; I was giving you the benefit of the doubt between maleficence and plain stupidity.



Maybe if someone didn't keep trying to smear me by making insinuations regarding ancient threads that have been deleted so that I can't even clarify my alleged comments, I might be a little less suspicious. So what if I did float an extreme idea for discussion a while back, and didn't sufficiently distance myself from it for some people's comfort? It's not like there's even anything left to point to, just vague insinuations from an ideologue with an axe to grind and an adversary to attempt to discredit.



I'm sure he feels the same way about you.