Hand-wringing over guns on campus

I try to understand the perspective of others, specifically those with whom I disagree. If you can’t explain both sides of an issue, you don’t fully understand the issue. You’re just enjoying the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought, as John F. Kennedy would say.

That being said, I’ve never been able to understand the emotional opposition of most liberals to a bill by Rep. Charlie Collins, R-Fayetteville, which permanently allows a faculty member who holds a concealed carry permit to carry his or her means of protection onto a college campus.

The bill failed last week by a vote of 10 to 10 in the House Committee on Public Education, needing eleven to pass. Republicans comprised the ten supporters, and Democrats the ten opponents.

Rep. Collins will likely run the bill again. He says he’ll do so after making changes based upon the hours of wonderfully helpful committee testimony. I say he’ll do so because he’s one of about three legislators I know who can run uphill head first into a brick wall and then have the energy to get back up and run again. But that’s his business.

When he does run the bill again, we’ll hear all the same testimony from most of the same people. The outcome is unlikely to change. So why is this issue so hard to wrap our heads around and agree upon?

It might be because on something like guns, we’re all so quick to run into the perceived corner we think we’re supposed to be in. For Republicans, the answer must always be “yes,” even on something as far as unrestricted open-carry. For Democrats, the mere thought of weapons on the sacred ground of supposed higher thinking is almost too much to bear. They think of college campuses as if it’s a scene from “Good Will Hunting”, or maybe similar to the Baird School in “Scent of a Woman.”

In this case, opponents often refer to the change as a “guns on campus” bill, which is an oversimplification that ignores current reality. The bill simply changes a law that disenfranchises the honest person but never the criminal.

If colleges could prohibit any firearm from entering their campuses then requiring a law-abiding citizen to temporarily surrender 2nd Amendment rights might be reasonable. But college campuses are not the White House or the TSA, in terms of security. That’s why shootings and mass murders occur there semi-regularly. College campuses, like most gun-free zones, are targets for those who do not care about laws or life. We cannot merely wish it were not the case, nor change it by ignoring it.

So why do so many well-intentioned people feel like our current law actually protects those sitting in a supposed gun-free zone? I don’t know, but it does not.

There’s lots of hand wringing over issues unrelated to the bill. The question is very simple: should the state restrict an employee’s right to self-protection on a college campus, while simultaneously not providing the adequate security that should be required to restrict a right? I think no.

I hope the bill passes. Regardless, the emotionally charged politics inspired is somewhat amusing. A while back I bumped into a friend, who happens to be a Democrat. He was close to gloating about how Democrats had managed to “stack” the House Education Committee with enough votes to kill Rep. Collins’ bill. I patted him on the back, but later chuckled to myself about how much things have changed. I remember what it was like being in an extreme minority where moral victories over non-major issues counted for something.

I do give them credit for building the brick wall of ten for Rep. Collins to run his head into. It’s the most they could do.

In the meantime, let’s hope Republicans find openings for things like more tax reform, election reform, tort reform, and others. It’s the least we should do.