One criticism of campus carry is that it will somehow allow drunken frat boys to have access to firearms. We all know that guns and alcohol don’t mix, so for a lot of people, that’s a very valid concern.
Granted, it’s not the totality of the anti-gun complaints, mind you, but it’s part of it.
And it’s one I do understand. The problem with such an argument is that people who are that inclined to be that irresponsible aren’t likely to follow the rules anyway.
In fact, Alabama isn’t a campus carry state, and yet, this happened at Tuskegee University.
The Alabama State Bureau of Investigation is conducting a probe into what led to a weekend shooting at Tuskegee University.
According to the Macon County Emergency Management Agency, the incident happened at about 12:48 a.m. Sunday.
The Macon County Sheriff’s Office and Tuskegee police were dispatched to assist Tuskegee University police on a shots fired call.
They found two people wounded, one with life-threatening injuries and one subject who was treated and released from an area hospital, EMA said.
WSFA is reporting that the shots came at an “unauthorized party” at the West Commons student housing complex. A university spokesperson told the station that two students were also injured trying to leave the area.
So this was a party on campus in a state that, while pretty pro-gun, still doesn’t have any statewide campus carry. Individual schools can decide for themselves, and Tuskegee University has decided to be a “weapons-free campus.”
In other words, whoever started shooting probably wasn’t authorized to have that firearm on campus in the first place.
See, when people start to take a shot at things like campus carry, they focus on the bad behavior. This is actually understandable when you consider where they’re coming from. What these folks rarely think about is that the issue is never the gun, it’s the person with the gun.
A rule against carrying a gun on campus isn’t exactly going to stop someone who doesn’t respect the rules. Someone inclined to shoot people in something other than self-defense is going to be someone with no respect for the rules.
I mean, if that weren’t the case, the laws against murder or attempted murder would be more than sufficient to quell any acts of violence.
They’re not, though, and that’s because people are complex and some will follow the law and others won’t.
Now, understand that I hope all of those injured in this shooting recover fully. I hope the shooter is found, arrested, and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, resulting in a good, long time in prison to rethink his life choices.
But we can’t ignore how the gun control laws many support so as to prevent this sort of thing from happening simply don’t work.
We also can’t ignore that if one law-abiding citizen had been legally carrying a firearm at that time and in that place, this story might have been very different and resulted in a lot fewer innocent people having been shot.
It’s an unfortunate truth, though, that too many people cannot comprehend that yes, there are good guys with guns out there and there are other good guys who would like to stop things like these but are unable to because someone else is laboring under the misguided impression that rules stop bad people.
Rules or laws or whatever you want to call them never have. If they did we wouldn’t need a prison system in the first place, now would we?
The rules didn’t stop a gun from showing up at a campus party. What it may have done, though, is just made sure the wrong kind of person was the one with the gun.
