No handguns on college campus

A Bill written by Rep. Joe Driver that would allow concealed handguns on college campuses just passed out of the House Committee on Public Safety with a vote of five to three on April 15. This is a dangerous plan that will lead to a disrupted and unsafe learning environment. The entire Bill is based on false assumptions, and a complete disregard for the past.

The idea behind this Bill is that, if some kind of armed attack on the school, those brave few who bring their handgun to class can protect themselves and others until the police arrive.

For every heroic scenario in which a student or professor wards off a deranged gunman and saves the day, there is a terrifying counter scenario in which someone who shouldn't have a gun is allowed to walk freely around campus. In the event that someone attacks a campus, panic stricken, adrenaline filled students and professors are not the people who should be running around with guns. Campus security and the Austin Police Department are.

Students should not be forced to sit in a classroom with armed peers and teachers. It would be unnerving and incredibly distracting. The lawmakers supporting this bill argue that because only citizens over 21 years old can get a license, very few students would have guns.

This is based on the archaic notion that most college students are 18-20 years old. In fall of 2008 just over 54 percent of the students at ACC were older than 22.

This Bill completely ignores past tragedies. There is no reason to believe that people who have a handgun license are all actually the kind of people one would want carrying a gun around campus.

In 1966, right here in Austin, Charles Whitman a University of Texas graduate shot and killed 14 people using an arsenal of weapons, all of which were legally acquired. He was an ex-Marine, and has been described as an 'all American guy' by one of the campus psychiatrists he saw.

A decade ago this week, most of us remember waking up to see that 12 people were brutally slaughtered at Columbine High School, some of the guns purchased and given to the two shooters were bought at a gun show, without a background check. It's called the gun show loophole.

Two years and one week ago, in the deadliest peacetime shooting on or off of a school campus in United States history, 32 people were gun downed by a senior English major at Virginia Tech who bought both his weapons legally and was described by the owner of the gun shop as a 'clean cut looking college student.'

Incidents like these are actually being used by lawmakers as examples of why guns should be allowed on campus, but the families of those involved in these massacres are often anti-gun.

As recently as April 6, Tom Mauser, the father of a boy killed at Columbine High School, spoke to legislators in Maine about the importance of eliminating loopholes that allow some buyers to forgo background checks and waiting periods before being given a gun.

Families of Virginia Tech victims worked with NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg on a TV ad released on the two year anniversary of the Virginia Tech massacre last week. The ad also came out against laws that make obtaining guns too easy.

Theses people have survived first-hand the unimaginable tragedy of a school shooting. No one should use what happened to these families as an excuse to pass shamefully unsafe laws.