Friday, April 8, 2011

Arizona Gun Power

Guns on Arizona campuses have been OK'd by their legislature. I say BRAVO.
What I don't understand is this argument:
State Rep. Bob Robson said guns on campuses are a bad idea because students and others experience such emotional highs and lows due to grades, exams and other circumstances.

"To make it that you could walk up to the door of an education institution (with a gun) makes no sense to me," he said.
This isn't advocating that kids take guns to school. It's merely saying, if you've got one, you're not going to be penalized.

Arizona does not have a mandatory waiting period before obtaining a firearm,I understand that. It also doesn't have an owner license requirement. You DO have to be 21 though. So you can't stop a kid from getting a gun - from an older sibling, a family member, or buying a gun online. What are we to do - live in fear that the cheerleader next to you in Biology 101 might be packing?

For some who have seen school shootings up close- be it the great tragedies at Columbine or Virginia Tech, or the smaller incidents that fade away from yesterday's news - I believe this kind of law provides some relief.
But supporters said the bill would help people defend themselves from gun violence by someone who won't heed a campus's firearms ban.

"I find it hard to believe that on universities it just becomes a bubble — that somehow you're drastically protected when you enter the campus," Democratic Rep. David Gowan said.
Bingo. To imagine that a student would have been carrying a firearm and been able to stop his peer from murdering classmates, and that is prevented by the idea that classrooms are bubbles of safety, is alarming.

We cannot be bullied by students who are emotionally unstable over grades and tests to the point of drastic violence. We cannot allow innocent students to die, when there is clearly something that can be done to help prevent it.

Way to go AZ!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wise men learn more from fools than fools from wise men.

sophomorecritic said...

Why does your mind go the direction that arming everyone on campus with a gun prevents Columbine or Virginia Tech? Isn't it just as logical to assume that giving everyone a gun would lead to more Columbines and Virginia Techs?

Considering my conservative brother-in-law thinks the exact same way you do, I'm wholly unconvinced that you'd both have reached this conclusion independently if it wasn't already common knowledge that being a good republican means supporting guns.