Conceal carry shouldn’t be permitted

Clara Brodeur

Feature Editorconceal carry con

As of early Dec., Missouri lawmakers have decided to try to make college campuses across the state allow people to conceal and carry firearms, regardless of their policies. There are people who feel that this would make campus safer, but really, it could make it just that much more dangerous.

With this new bill that has been passed, they are also trying to get the age for a conceal permit and carry permit to be lowered to anyone aged 19 and up. That about the age of your average college freshman or sophomore, if they came straight from high school. At that age, they could responsibly carry a gun, but not drink any alcoholic substance.  They would be in control of something that has the possibility of harming many people in less time than it would take for them to drink a single beer that might hurt their liver.

Although the bill would allow faculty and staff members to carry a firearm, that does not mean that they will. A large part of the actual argument for it is that it would allow college employees to have firearm training and carry a weapon on their person so that students supposedly would feel safer to attend the college.

There are two holes that I can see in that argument. One, not every professor and staff member would even want to go through the training and carry a gun with them around campus. Two, anyone could have a mental breakdown, and if they’re in possession of a fire arm, who knows what might happen?

“The presence of concealed weapons will make a campus a less safe environment,” said William McRaven, retired United States Navy admiral, special operations commander who directed the raid that killed Osama bin Laden and current Chancellor of The University of Texas System.

Amy Bishop Anderson, of Huntsville, Ala. is a former professor at the University of Alabama. In 2010, she shot six of her colleagues, killing three and wounding three more. The shooting took place in an hour long faculty meeting, and she attempted more shots, but the gun was jammed.

While being able to have a conceal and carry permit on campus would allow the staff of each college to possibly intervene in any situation that proves to be a risk to any persons’ life, it could also create potential crisis. I believe that college campuses are generally safer if guns were prohibited, that way there is no chance of a firearm falling into the wrong hands and causing another tragedy.