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The United States contains over 4,300 colleges, only about 70 of which currently allow for concealed handguns to be brought on campus. In 2009 alone, 2,590 forcible sexual offenses, 1,866 robberies and 2,675 aggravated assaults were committed on college campuses. All of those crimes involved a culprit and a victim and could have been prevented had the victims been able to defend themselves.

Like they say, “When seconds count, the police are only minutes away.” In a school shooting, every second counts. A licensee with a handgun can take down a gunman in those seconds or at least stall the shooter, preventing numerous deaths.

The Virginia Tech Massacre, likely the most well-known college campus shooting in America and one of the deadliest shootings in the U.S. by a single gunman, will have its anniversary on April 16. During a ten minute period, Sueng-Hui Cho, the gunman, had killed 30 innocent people. With the average police response time at roughly eight minutes and the first 911 call being placed around one to two minutes after the initial gunshots, about nine out of the twelve minutes consisted of guaranteed massacre, with the majority of Cho’s victims coming early on or in the middle of that time period. Police alone simply cannot guarantee the safety of the people at college campuses. People should have the right to defend themselves, lest they rest that right solely in the hands of someone else too far away to do anything.

Some people, those against campus-carry, would claim schools need not allow students or faculty to carry handguns as they think their alternative methods to keep the students and faculty safe will suffice. Their methods include private security, less-dangerous weapons, and even survival classes. None of those options can be put into effect as easily as allowing students to defend themselves can, and none of them work as well.

Private security could cost colleges hundreds of thousands of dollars and would be too expensive for many colleges. Only the wealthiest of colleges would have the option to hire a private security company, meaning non-profit and community colleges would be left unprotected. Also, private security companies have neither the manpower nor the firepower to protect students and faculty from a gunman in the few minutes they would have. It only makes sense to allow students to have the option to adequately protect themselves in addition to what police departments offer rather than restrict their rights.

As for alternative weapons, no other weapon matches the ability of the handgun to protect the innocent person holding it. Even if schools began offering survival classes to help make use of these alternative weapons, such as tazers, students and faculty would find the information to be common sense. San Antonio College, the first major college to propose the idea of survival classes, has stated the goal of their survival classes would be to get students and faculty in the “survival mindset” if something ever happened. They teach students how to get out, hide out, and, if necessary, take out the gunman. Perhaps they expect students to throw chairs or desks at the shooter while the shooter breaks through the classroom door. If only plastic or one-inch-thick pieces of wood could stop bullets. Unfortunately they can’t. A shooter would kill undeterred if their victims only had objects found in the classroom to use in their defense.

Handguns on college campuses have proven effective before, and not just once, but multiple times. In 2002 at the Appalachian School of Law in Virginia, a student began shooting and killed two administrators and a student aide. Two students, armed with handguns they had retrieved from their cars, confronted the gunman, bringing the chaos to a quick end. Similar events occurred in 1997 at Pearl High School in Mississippi and in 2007 at the New Life Center in Colorado Springs. Not only do handguns help to stop shootings, they help prevent such incidents. After the Virginia Tech Massacre, the state of Utah promptly allowed its students to carry concealed handguns. Since then there has not been a single incident like that of Virginia Tech.

Even overseas guns have shown their usefulness at schools. In 1975 Muslim extremists in Israel began to slaughter students at a school. From there on all Israeli schools have allowed staff and even parents to arm themselves and no more shootings occurred until March 2008. During that shooting, another Muslim extremist open fired on a school, killing eight. Similar to Columbine, police responded by surrounding the school but not entering it. Two part-time students ended the situation by killing the shooter themselves. Guns have only ever proved their usefulness in the hands of the innocent, just as they always will.

Furthermore, not just anyone would be permitted to hold a concealed handgun, much less bring one on campus. Any student or faculty member would need to be at least 21 years old, pass a state and federal criminal records check and go through a certified training course to obtain a concealed handguns license. If colleges worry about people sneaking in guns without a license, they can require all licensed carriers to wear a special sticker or badge clearly showing they have the certification to use their weapon, much like how many high schools require students to wear ID’s to show they go to that school. It only makes sense that states allow at least schools’ faculty members to arm themselves. They can, if they feel the need, require faculty to use strongboxes to protect their weapons and keep them from getting stolen, but either way the faculty have the right to defend themselves.

In Texas, the struggle to allow campus-carry on college campuses has begun with Texas Senate Bill 354, a bill that would prevent colleges from banning their students to bring licensed guns on campus. As expected, the bill has received a great deal of support on one side with equally as much criticism on the other. The bill just recently passed the Senate Committee on Criminal Justice with a 4-2 vote, but will face much more opposition as it makes its way through legislation in the coming weeks. If you understand the need for campus-carry, contact your local senator and let them know. A single senatorial vote could be the difference between the bill passing or not. People deserve the right to protect themselves, help them get it back.