PRO

By Myles Schulman

Contributor

In April 1999, students Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris stormed their high school in Littleton, Colorado killing twelve students, one teacher and themselves.  Armed with guns, knives and explosives, they reportedly hoped to wreak even more havoc than they did by killing hundreds of students on their rampage.
Eight years later, 23-year-old Seung-Hui Cho killed 33 people and himself at Virginia Tech, in what the university’s president Charles Steger called, “A tragedy that we consider of monumental proportions.”
The fact is tragedies, such as these, would have never occurred if the students and faculty alike had the capability of defending themselves. Allowing the students at university and college campuses to carry weapons would decrease violence in schools.
A non-profit organization called Students for Concealed Carry on Campus has taken the initiative to push for legislation allowing concealed weapons on campuses.
“States with the most relaxed concealed-carry laws also happen to be among the safest,” said W. Scott Lewis, a board member and spokesperson for Students for Concealed Carry on Campus.
He points to Colorado State University, which has allowed concealed weapons on campus for 10 semesters now without incident.  He said the same is true for nine state universities in Utah where weapons have been allowed in university classroom buildings since 2006.  Crimes occurring on school property have decreased significantly since the state legislature has been more lenient on gun control in schools.
If more schools and universities were to adopt this policy of students being able to protect themselves, it would make people think twice before trying to harm others in any way.
One may argue, campus police are more than qualified to protect the student body if any fight or shooting were to occur, I agree with that except for the fact that a bullet moves faster than any human being.
By the time an officer is informed of the situation and arrives on the scene where the horrible act is taking place, it will be too late. Unless schools are willing to hire campus police to stand in every classroom and patrol every building on the campus their purpose is pointless.
The Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution affords us the right to carry guns for our own protection stating they are “necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”
If the general public upheld this valuable right in schools, the Columbine and Virginia Tech massacres, as well as many others like it would not have happened. Dozens of students would not have died if they were given the opportunity to defend themselves against these violent acts.
Instead, they were slaughtered like sheep among wolves.

Myles Schulman, 19, is a sophomore majoring in music and is a studnet is the COMS 225 class

CON

By Ajima Cole

Contributor
The Second Amendment of the United States Constitution, the right to bear arms, has been interpreted by many as a fundamental right of all Americans to own guns. Consequently, society has seen a constant increase in gun-related violence across the country over the past few years.
Advocates of guns on university campuses argue that a gunman would be less likely to use a gun, as happened at Virginia Tech and Columbine High School, if the gunman knew that students were also armed.
But it is our right to own guns that is the problem and allowing students to carry guns on campus is not the logical answer to the massacres that occurred at Columbine High School and Virginia Tech.
The right to bear arms is something that can be traced back to the American Revolution. The people in colonial society took up arms to overthrow what they believed were excesses of the British monarchy, and ultimately included the Second Amendment to the Constitution as an assurance against tyranny. However, the commonness of guns in our society has made living in America more dangerous.
It is generally known that students often go to parties, consume alcohol, take drugs, and so forth on weekends, and sometimes during the week. These activities affect the mental and emotional stability of students, a situation that can potentially be made worse by the possession of guns. If a student under the influence of alcohol or drugs perceives the action of another as threatening and in response uses a gun, innocent lives may be lost.
The Columbine or Virginia Tech examples cannot be overemphasized. Columbine shooters Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris were angry at the world and they let that anger control their actions.  With guns in more students’ hands, this is likely to occur again.
We have to realize that by making guns available, we are more prone to accidental deaths.  The tense, frightening lockdown at Gardena High School this past January started because of a gun that went off in a student’s backpack. The accidental discharge of that gun left two students critically wounded.
If we don’t give students the right to bear arms on campus, we keep the possibility of more deaths at schools to a minimum Ensuring the safety of students without the use of guns is what we need to think about.

Ajima Cole  a student in the COMS 225 class.