Quite a fuss lately about whether college students should be allowed to carry firearms on campus. The ferocity of the opposition to affording students their Second Amendment rights is eclipsed only by the hypocrisy of those who are doing the whining. Attempts to apply logic to come up with any answers or explanations are a fool’s errand. It all boils down to the fact that the antis don’t want anyone carrying guns anywhere, anytime for any reason, which makes it easy for them to “assume” that there should be no way that college students should be allowed to pack heat, so to speak.

1. College Campuses ‘n Guns
Quite a fuss lately about whether college students should be allowed to carry firearms
on campus. The ferocity of the opposition to affording students their Second
Amendment rights is eclipsed only by the hypocrisy of those who are doing the whining.
Attempts to apply logic to come up with any answers or explanations are a fool’s errand.
It all boils down to the fact that the antis don’t want anyone carrying guns anywhere,
anytime for any reason, which makes it easy for them to “assume” that there should be
no way that college students should be allowed to pack heat, so to speak.
The potency of the vitriol whenever the terms “campus,” “school,” or “student” are
included in the gun discourse causes the antis to go off the charts. To suggest that they
predictably will go “ballistic” is an understatement. Only someone like Doc Oehler could
measure the velocity, and only someone like John Taylor could suggest the level of
impact.
As much as the antis equate a college campus with a grade school, relative to guns,
they fail to recognize the differentiation between classes full of minor children and
hallowed halls populated by adults.
Face it, with the GI Bill, there are many combat veterans in colleges across the land. Or,
the antis are the same whiners who engage college students in voting activities that
support Constitutionally subversive candidates and causes. We’re not talking child’s
play here on any front.
The hypocrisy goes into overdrive when, out of the other sides of their mouths, the antis
suggest that college campuses also are places of unbridled debauchery where students
drink and/or use drugs to excess and have no control over their actions – furthering their
specious argument that college students should not be permitted to carry guns on
campus.
College campuses traditionally have been viewed as social anomalies where professors
in ivory towers pontificate amid students who wrestle over the timeless questions about
who they are, where they fit, and the cosmic meaning of things.

2. Hence, it is easy for the antis to imagine that college campuses are “different” and that
they need to be treated differently. Last time I checked, they were still part of society,
located in society, and intended to turn out graduates who perpetuate and improve
society.
These same antis are the ones who, on the other hand, argue that college students
should be afforded extra-normal latitude to protest, even attack people and things that
do not fit into the liberal/anarchistic dogma.
Actually guns on campuses are nothing new. I was in college a half-century ago, and
we had guns on campus. Some were used for local small game and bird hunts on
weekends and others were used for organized target shooting.
Generally the presence of those guns went unnoticed among the student body, faculty
and college administrators. I do recall one time, however, when a fellow student from
New York City was puzzled as I sat in the student union building, gobbling down a quick
breakfast before heading out to try to get some pheasants – my shotgun leaned against
the wall behind the table.
Even that event was more a matter of curiosity than anything else. I invited the New
Yorker to tag along on the hunt. He did, had fun, and later became a hunter himself.
Somehow I doubt that such a scenario is likely to happen on many college campuses
these days, although there really is no logical reason why not.
And college campuses are not all the same by a long shot. Idyllically sleepy clusters of
buildings with ivy-covered walls where only the folks associated with the college are in
the area may still exist, but are by far the exception rather than the rule. College
campuses now tend to be large and are spread throughout urban areas.
Some of the large college campuses happen to be located in parts of cities where the
violent crime rate of the surrounding areas and neighborhoods is high. Such was the
case when I went to graduate school.
By being so integrated into the general population, these college campuses no longer
are what the antis would have folks assume they are – antiseptically academic islands
insulated from reality.

3. To the contrary, these urban campuses represent target soft spots for local criminals
who know that many/most of the collegians are much less street smart than their urban-
dwelling counterparts in the surrounding neighborhoods. In other words, those
campuses are packed with easy targets who are more likely than most to be
preoccupied with something other than what is happening around them in their
immediate surroundings.
What is absent in the arguments regurgitated by the antis is the fact that there are a
whole bunch of responsible adults populating the nation’s campuses. Among these folks
are the nation’s future leaders, the rock-solid citizens needed for a strong and vibrant
society.
Or, they are already military veterans who have literally put their lives on the line so that
others in society can enjoy the freedoms this great land offers to all.
Antis in large part are at least cowards. Because of their fears, they have no
compunction about offering up others to be victims. Antis would have society believe
that it is better to force collegians to be targets than to be able to defend themselves. It
is a form of cowardice by extension.