AAS Editorial Op-Ed hit piece about CHLs on campus

[Armybrat]

http://www.statesman.com/opinion/conten ... _edit.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Goddard: Why the Legislature should keep concealed weapons off Texas campuses
Colin Goddard, Elilta Habtu, Omar Samaha & John O. Woods, SPECIAL CONTRIBUTORS
Friday, May 08, 2009

In a May 1 column, five college professors expressed their desire to force Texas colleges to allow loaded, concealed handguns in classrooms. We join Texas students, faculty and school-based law enforcement in opposing this irrational, dangerous policy.


The fact is, keeping guns off campus can work. Colleges are some of the safest places in the nation. The Department of Justice found that 93 percent of the violence committed against college students actually occurs off-campus. Department of Justice studies also reveal that college students ages 18 to 24 experience violence at rates almost 20 percent lower than non-students of the same age.


Nevertheless, the professors based their column on research that has been thoroughly contradicted by follow-up studies. Professor John J. Donohue of Yale Law School found that, if anything, concealed carry laws like Texas' "are associated with uniform increases in crime."


The column's authors claim that "all multiple victim public shootings in the United States...have occurred where handguns are prohibited." This is clearly false. Three police officers in Pittsburgh were killed last month on the front porch of a man armed with an AK-47. His porch was hardly a "gun-free zone." A shooting spree across Alabama in March took 10 lives. The state of Alabama certainly isn't a "gun-free zone," either. What's more, both mass murderers reportedly had concealed handgun licenses that were also valid in Texas, which recognizes licenses from other states.


Additionally, the authors failed to note a 2000 news article reporting roughly 3,400 Texas concealed handgun license-holders arrested or convicted of crimes including double murder, armed robbery and kidnaping.


The five academics further fail to explain how their proposal would be enforced. Nor do they account for the additional complications created by forcing guns onto college campuses. The University of Texas has a preschool and an elementary school on its campus, not to mention a hospital and a bar, none of which are addressed in the National Rifle Association's bill.


License-holders are not required to have police training, and 10 hours of target practice is not sufficient for carrying a weapon into an environment as complex as a college campus. On the other hand, campus police are continually trained to take out active shooters on sight, equipping them to end a situation quickly without waiting for SWAT to arrive. By putting additional handguns into the campus environment, Texas risks slowing police response to a shooting, and thus increasing the death toll.


Rather than pushing more guns onto college campuses and trying to react to violence, we should work harder to prevent shootings. Simply reacting to such situations will not stop them from happening again. A policy of reaction is like putting a Band-Aid on a wound that needs stitches.


Mental health is a major factor in school shootings. In almost every case, there have been friends, sometimes teachers, who knew the shooter was troubled and likely dangerous. In many cases — as in the Whitman shooting at UT and the Virginia Tech shooting — the gunman asked for help, then fell through the cracks. Among other things, Texas public universities have set up behavioral concerns hotlines to report troubled students to the proper authorities.


Texas could also do more to keep guns away from dangerous people in the first place. Felons and the dangerously mentally ill can buy semi-automatic handguns and AK-47s from private sellers at Texas gun shows with no background check required and no questions asked.


Worse still, the most recent available data show Texas supplies just 55 percent of its felony records to the Brady criminal background check system. And while Virginia has supplied over 100,000 records of its dangerously mentally ill to this system, Texas has submitted just 7, according to the most recent data available. How many thousands of dangerous individuals have also slipped through the cracks because the state hasn't done its duty to protect public safety?


The way to prevent bullets from flying in college classrooms is not to send more bullets flying. Strengthening the mental health system, supporting campus police departments and requiring criminal background checks for all gun sales will be more effective at preventing the next shooting — in Texas and nationwide.


Goddard, a survivor of the Virginia Tech shooting, works with the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. Habtu is a survivor of the Virginia Tech shooting. Samaha is the brother of Virginia Tech victim Reema Samaha. Woods is a UT graduate student whose girlfriend was killed at Virginia Tech.

[AggieC05]

WOW! :

[casingpoint]

This is a perfect example or writing to a point. Take the following statement, for example:

By putting additional handguns into the campus environment, Texas risks slowing police response to a shooting, and thus increasing the death toll.

The point the author makes is that it's better if the police are the only armed responders to a mass shooting. Just look at the outstanding job the cops did at Virginia Tech in responding to that horrific event. Why, if that old Jewish professor, a holocaust survivor, had been packin', the outcome could have been much more favorable than 31 dead.

The reality is that armed citizens in public and private settings consistently mitigate the death tolls at mass shootings. The latest shining example occurred in Atlanta the other day where a student with a handgun shot one of two home invaders and in doing so saved about a dozen party goers from almost certain execution. Not quite an on-campus event, but close 'enuff.

I won't time with tearing apart the rest of the article, which is pure drivel.

[stevie_d_64]

The fact is, keeping guns off campus can work. Colleges are some of the safest places in the nation.

Satire???

Keeping guns off-campus (which is not true, the law says premesis does not include common public areas that are basically not structures, and school athletic events, we know this already and that has been clear for years) has certainly worked well for VT, Columbine H.S., UT, etc etc...

[Locke]

The University of Texas Clock Tower Shooting is a great example of why armed civilians are needed on campus.

The author mentions Whitman but doesn't address the fact that when (1966) Charles Whitman opened fire we didn't have all these gun laws and schools weren't "Gun Free Zones". It is well documented that students and other civilians returned fire forcing him to keep down. Additionally armed civilians climbed the tower with the police. One of the three men who reached the top floor and finally stopped the shooting was a civilian.

There is no credible way that it can be claimed the armed civilian response made things worse in this example. Of course the main stream media doesn't really want us to hear these details. It doesn't fit their agenda.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Whitman

[Armybrat]

The University of Texas Clock Tower Shooting is a great example of why armed civilians are needed on campus.

The author mentions Whitman but doesn't address the fact that when (1966) Charles Whitman opened fire we didn't have all these gun laws and schools weren't "Gun Free Zones". It is well documented that students and other civilians returned fire forcing him to keep down. Additionally armed civilians climbed the tower with the police. One of the three men who reached the top floor and finally stopped the shooting was a civilian.

There is no credible way that it can be claimed the armed civilian response made things worse in this example. Of course the main stream media doesn't really want us to hear these details. It doesn't fit their agenda.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Whitman

That is true - I was present there on campus to witness first hand most of the Whitman episode. Maybe I'll post my story here later.

[Skiprr]

One of our members here, Smokewagon, a former reporter for the Austin-American Statesman at the time, was on campus at UT for the whole event in 1966.

[Aggie_engr]

The way to prevent bullets from flying in college classrooms is not to send more bullets flying. Strengthening the mental health system, supporting campus police departments and requiring criminal background checks for all gun sales will be more effective at preventing the next shooting — in Texas and nationwide.

Why not do it all? Strengthen the mental health system, support the campus police, AND allow chl's to carry on campus! What's so hard about that? Why does it have to only be one or the other?

[Skiprr]

I was so taken aback at the skewed logic presented by Goddard, Habtu, Samaha, and Woods (the latter of whom I've come to recognize by his skewing of facts and logic) that I didn't reply to the original post. But I was looking through my email this morning and read today's edition of "Force Science News." Interesting item in it:

Update on active-killer stats shows predictable consistency

With active-killer incidents seeming to dominate news cycles with increasing frequency these days, we revisited Ohio trainer Ron Borsch, who keeps statistics on these events, to see if the behavior pattern of these offenders is changing.

In the year since we first wrote about Borsch, who manages the South East Area Law Enforcement (S.E.A.L.E.) Regional Training Academy in Bedford (OH) (Click here to read it now), he's added steadily to his database. But he reports that the m.o. of the typical active killer is staying consistent, reinforcing his belief in the value of immediate single-officer entry in response to these murderous calls.

Borsch tracks primarily instances of "rapid mass murder," where 4 or more victims are intentionally killed in the same episode and location in no more than 20 minutes. "But in lower-body-count events," he says, "this research may be valid, as well."

From reviewing close to 100 active-killer outbursts, Borsch has found (in rounded figures) that:

• 98% of the offenders act alone
• 90% commit suicide, usually on-site (with most exceptions seeming to occur in cases with domestic-violence overtones)
• 80% use a long gun (rifle, shotgun, or carbine of pistol caliber)
• 75% bring multiple weapons to the scene, sometimes with hundreds of rounds of ammunition
• the offenders typically are "preoccupied with a high-body-count plan, racing to complete it and avoid police"
• increasingly, they are wearing body armor
• they almost never take hostages and do not negotiate
• they are "dynamic and quick," finishing their slaughter in a post-Columbine average of 8 minutes.

Borsch has found only 6 mass-murder incidents that were successfully stopped in progress by LEOs. "The majority of these were initiated by 1 officer," he says. Single, unarmed civilians have proven most effective at intervening, most likely because they were already on the scene when the attacks started and had the courage to take action. About half the successful interventions were by solo unarmed citizens, according to Borsch's figures.

"Police are handicapped by both time and distance" on active-killer calls, he says. "These murderers are typically cowardly amateurs, not highly trained Rambos. The average officer should be in a superior response position. But the first responder needs luck to arrive in time to prevent further killing."

The offender behavior pattern he has identified, Borsch told Force Science News, demands an immediate entry into the location, even if only one officer is present initially. "The incident may well be over by the time police arrive. But with some of these suspects attempting as many as 8 murders a minute, we don't have the luxury of waiting before entering. These are extraordinary events that warrant an extraordinary response."

He cites the case of a lone officer, Justin Garner, who earlier this spring acted alone in confronting an active killer who had slain 7 elderly patients and a nurse at a North Carolina nursing home. Garner's chief had told his 6-officer force not to wait for backup "when there are many lives on the line."

As the only officer on duty, Garner entered the home and encountered the suspect reloading his shotgun. When the killer refused to put his weapon down, Garner shot him once in the upper chest with his .40-cal. handgun, stopping the bloody rampage.

Borsch's data takes into account all active-killer incidents, not just those murders committed at educational institutions. But his information runs starkly opposite of that claimed by Woods and his ilk who oppose campus carry, doesn't it?

Only 6% of all incidents were successfully stopped in progress by law enforcement...6%. Individual civilians "have proven most effective at intervening, most likely because they were already on the scene when the attacks started and had the courage to take action."

And if you remember conversations about recent active-killer incidents, from Virginia Tech to Binghampton, New York, you'll recall that LE agency SOP was typically to wait prior to entry. In the case of the Binghampton incident, officers waited 90 minutes before entering the building; they heard no shots once they arrived, so the "active" nature of the situation seemed over and SOP was to evaluate and plan before entry...understandably with the intent to protect responders. This is in contrast to Borsch's recommendations which--based on the rapidity of all studied events and the fact that active shooting is over an average of 8 minutes after it's begun--he says "demands an immediate entry into the location."

I think Woods and company may need to fly to Ohio, spend a little time with Ron Borsch at SEALE, and be introduced to some real-world law enforcement data.

[Douva]

The May 8, 2009, op-ed “Why the Legislature should keep concealed weapons off Texas campuses,” published in the Austin American-Statesman, dismisses a recent pro-HB 1893/SB 1164 editorial by five college professors, stating, “the authors failed to note a 2000 news article reporting roughly 3,400 Texas concealed handgun license-holders arrested or convicted of crimes including double murder, armed robbery and kidnaping [sic].”

The “news article” in question was actually a press release by the Violence Policy Center, one of America’s most radical anti-gun organizations. The press release garnered this op-ed rebuttal in the September 27, 2000, edition of the San Antonio Express-News.

San Antonio Express-News: Commentary
9/27/00

Comment: Licensed gun owners are model Texans

The malicious "License to Kill" press releases issued recently by the Violence Policy Center in Washington, D.C., misrepresent the truth about concealed handgun license holders in Texas.

Analysts at the Violence Policy Center cite arrest statistics to argue falsely that the handgun program in Texas is a failure.

However, an unbiased comparison of arrest rates of concealed handgun license holders with arrest rates of all adults in Texas proves that the 214,000 Texans with the licenses, as a group, remain the exemplary citizens they were when they received their licenses.

(The basic data for this comparison comes from the Texas Department of Public Safety and the U.S. Census Bureau. The arrest rates were calculated using average annual population figures and average number of annual active concealed-handgun licenses).

First, the center's implication that there should never be an arrest among the 214,000 concealed handgun license holders in Texas is ludicrous. The arrest rate of clergy is not zero.

Second, the center does not differentiate between felony arrests and misdemeanor arrests.

Of the 3,679 total arrests among concealed handgun license holders in Texas for a four year period from 1996 to 2000, 889 are felony arrests. The remaining 2,790 arrests involve less serious misdemeanor charges.

Third, arrest does not mean guilt. Of the 474 felony arrests that have been resolved, fewer than half resulted in convictions.

Fourth, the data show that average annual arrests for all crimes among all adult males in Texas (9,508 per 100,000) is 14 times greater than the rate for concealed handgun license holders (671 per 100,000).

The violent crime arrest rate of all adult men in Texas (306 per 100,000) is five times greater than the violent crime arrest rate of concealed handgun license holders (62).

Furthermore, since Jan. 1, 1996, a total of three concealed handgun license holders have been convicted of murder, attempted murder or manslaughter. Only at the Violence Policy Center do three convictions in four years add up to a "License to Kill."

Since 80.5 percent of concealed handgun license holders in Texas are men, these comparisons are valid, and it is clear that the center's insinuations of a crime wave among this population are false and absurd.

To the disappointment of the Violence Policy Center and other gun control advocates, the Texas concealed handgun license program is a success and a model for other states, such as Colorado, that are considering licensing concealed handguns.

It proves that citizens who are screened by state and federal law enforcement and properly trained can be trusted to carry concealed handguns for their own protection and the protection of others.

Why does the Violence Policy Center continue its attack on Texas?

The answer probably lies in an unwillingness to present the whole truth, not to mention a callous and dangerous disregard for the lives and safety of the people of Texas by extremists for whom gun control has become a religion.

Carl M. Hubbard, Ph.D. is a professor of business administration at Trinity University.

The attached PDF file is a rebuttal to one of the other points in the Statesman op-ed.

[Douva]

The University of Texas Clock Tower Shooting is a great example of why armed civilians are needed on campus.

The author mentions Whitman but doesn't address the fact that when (1966) Charles Whitman opened fire we didn't have all these gun laws and schools weren't "Gun Free Zones". It is well documented that students and other civilians returned fire forcing him to keep down. Additionally armed civilians climbed the tower with the police. One of the three men who reached the top floor and finally stopped the shooting was a civilian.

There is no credible way that it can be claimed the armed civilian response made things worse in this example. Of course the main stream media doesn't really want us to hear these details. It doesn't fit their agenda.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Whitman

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/200 ... on-campus/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

The Washington Times

Wednesday, October 24, 2007

Empty holsters on campus

Should you ever find yourself perusing the newspaper archives at your local library, take a few minutes to track down and compare the August 2, 1966, and April 17, 2007, editions of any American newspaper. You'll undoubtedly find that, for two papers written more than four decades apart, they tell strikingly similar stories.

In both editions you'll likely see that coverage of American soldiers fighting a publicly unpopular war overseas is pushed to the back pages by news of a mass shooting on the campus of a major university. But although the headlines suggest a classic case of "history repeats itself," the facts lurking beyond the newsprint actually tell a very different story.

On the morning of Aug. 1, 1966, few people had ever considered the possibility that they might die in an indiscriminate shooting spree. But shortly before noon on that fateful day, a 25-year-old former Marine climbed to the top of the University of Texas bell tower and created a worldwide reference point for such fears.

As police rushed to the scene, officers already on the UT campus struggled to formulate a plan. At that time, the Austin Police Department had no SWAT team. Officers were armed only with service revolvers and shotguns, both useless against a sniper firing from a fortified position high above the ground.

Seeing that something had to be done, students quickly retrieved hunting rifles from dorm rooms and fraternity houses, took up defensive positions throughout the campus and returned fire. In the August 2006 edition of Texas Monthly magazine, Bill Helmer, a graduate student at UT during the shooting, recalled the experience to journalist Pamela Colloff: He said he remembered thinking, "All we need is a bunch of idiots running around with rifles." But what they did turned out to be brilliant. Once the shooter could no longer lean over the edge and fire, he was much more limited in what he could do. That's why he did most of his damage in the first 20 minutes.

Flash forward 40 years, eight months and 15 days to the campus of Virginia Tech. Once again students and faculty on a college campus find themselves under fire from a madman. But this time there are no armed citizens to fend off the attack. Students and faculty are left with little recourse but to hide under their desks, as surviving victim Emily Haas told CNN, "waiting and hoping [the shooter] wouldn't come in." Sadly, the shooter did come into Emily's room. She survived with only superficial wounds, but her professor and 10 of her classmates lost their lives to a killer whose only advantage over his victims was a complete disregard for Virginia Tech's "gun-free" policy.

Though the notion of an indiscriminate shooting spree was a foreign concept in 1966, it's now very much a part of the national consciousness. Terms like "going postal" now populate the American vernacular. Students at elementary schools now practice what to do in the event of such an attack, much the same way their grandparents practiced "duck and cover." And yet, despite this awareness of and apparent desire to prepare for such threats, any suggestion that future shooting sprees might be mitigated by armed citizens — as was the UT sniper attack — is met with scorn and ridicule.

In the decades between these two college massacres, a pervasive idea took hold in America. Many individuals, particularly those in academic circles, began to view firearms as barbaric tools of violence symbols of machismo and false bravado only carried by men with small egos and smaller anatomies. Today, anyone who advocates carrying a handgun for self-defense is called a "cowboy" and accused of having a "John Wayne complex."

Whenever anyone suggests that concealed handgun license holders be allowed to carry concealed handguns on college campuses, the same way they're allowed to at movie theaters, office buildings, shopping malls and most other places, laughter, not intelligent rebuttal, is the response. Whenever proponents of "concealed carry" point to the success of concealed-carry laws throughout the nation, as well as studies showing that concealed handgun license holders are significantly less likely than non-license holders to commit violent crimes, they are answered with mockery, rather than intelligent discourse. In the world of academia and intellectual free expression, some issues are apparently not open for discussion.

This week students on more than 100 college campuses throughout the United States are wearing empty holsters as they go about their daily routines, as a reminder to everyone who sees them that they are defenseless against anyone not concerned with following the rules. These students understand something that students at the University of Texas were able to take for granted in the summer of 1966. All people have an innate right to defend themselves.

W. Scott Lewis, a commercial real estate agent and freelance writer from Austin, Texas, serves as the media coordinator for the nonpartisan Students for Concealed Carry on Campus.

[Douva]

The way to prevent bullets from flying in college classrooms is not to send more bullets flying. Strengthening the mental health system, supporting campus police departments and requiring criminal background checks for all gun sales will be more effective at preventing the next shooting — in Texas and nationwide.

Why not do it all? Strengthen the mental health system, support the campus police, AND allow chl's to carry on campus! What's so hard about that? Why does it have to only be one or the other?

Excerpts from the Students for Concealed Carry on Campus "Answers to the Most Common Arguments Against Concealed Carry on College Campuses" (http://www.concealedcampus.org/common_arguments.php" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;):

Argument: "The answer to bullets flying is not more bullets flying."

Answer: "Actually, the answer to bullets flying is almost always more bullets flying. That’s why the police bring so many guns with them when they respond to a report of ‘shots fired.’"

Argument: "The answer to school violence is prevention, not guns on campus."

Answer: "Prevention and preparedness are not mutually exclusive. In a perfect system, the two approaches to safety compliment each other. Preventive measures, such as teaching students and faculty to watch for the warning signs of mental illness and providing counseling to disturbed students, can work hand in hand with preparative measures, such as developing campus alert systems, providing additional training to campus police, and allowing the same trained, licensed adults who legally carry concealed handguns when not on college campuses to do so on college campuses."

Find more at http://www.StudentsForConcealedCarryOnCampus.com" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;.