More guns, more problems
In the wake of another campus shooting — this time at Northern Illinois University — I’ve heard the argument again that this is an argument for more guns. I wish someone could explain this to me slowly, because I still don’t get it. So far all I’ve heard is “if someone else was armed, he could have shot that guy before the shooter killed more people.” Yes, maybe. And maybe not.
In this country you can own a gun and still not know how to use it. And even if you know how to fire it, you don’t necessarily know how to fire it under pressure. The people who are supposed to respond to situations involving firearms go through a lot of training which prepares them to deal with these situations. It’s the rare armed civilian who’s going to be anything more than a hindrance in a firefight.
The scenarios put forth by the more-guns crowd all assume that a single well-armed, well-trained shooter is going to keep his or her cool under pressure and end an incident before it really gets started. But that strikes me as the best possible situation. This was probably the case with Jeanne Assam, but it’s worth pointing out that she was former law enforcement and apparently trained in the use of firearms around civilians.
It seems to me more likely that if we allow or even encourage students to bring firearms to campus what we’ll end up with is several armed, erratic, panicked people shooting wildly. What would have been one shooter becomes several. Potentially dozens in a crowded lecture hall. And instead of the responding police knowing everyone with a gun is a possible threat, they have to work around armed, untrained, and possibly uncooperative civilian vigilantes.
And that’s just the situational concerns; the idea of more guns wielded by a young population that’s shown itself unable to behave responsibly around alcohol makes me really nervous. Guns are a poor mixer, but the more of them there are the more opportunities there will be for someone to do something we are all going to regret.
