Letter: Professor left Utah over concealed carry...

[JJVP]

...and moves to TX. Guess there will be a house for sale soon.

http://baylorlariat.com/2013/03/05/lett ... led-carry/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[The Annoyed Man]

He moved here to get away from concealed carry?

[C-dub]

Isn't Baylor a private university? Wouldn't they still be able to prohibit a CHL from carrying in their buildings? Although, it might get a bit expensive buying all those 30.06 signs.

[AEA]

A prime example of "What's Coming".

[RHenriksen]

To me, the richest thing about this story is that the professor's subject is mathematics.

Well, I guess mathematics does not equal statistics. Perhaps that's why his inability to digest the DPS data on law-abiding behavior of CHL holders is lacking.

[baldeagle]

Here's his logic. He believes that more guns does not make America a safer nation. Well, then neither does more cars, more swimming pools, more hamburgers, more fast food restaurants, more people.

And he teaches math.

[DocV]

I always wonder about several things when I see comments such as the professor's :

I happen to believe, based on an average of more than 11K gun murders a year in this country, that more guns do not make us a safer nation.

One of the things I ponder is where does this 11K gun murder average come from. Certainly not from the FBI's crime statistics pages where some minor and rather simple research into the FBI's "Table 20" reveals the following:

Code: Select all

Year    Murder By:   Murder By:
           Firearms     Handguns
2011         8583        6220
2010         8775        6009
2009         9146        6452
2008         9484        6755
2007        10086        7361
2006        10177        7795
2005        10100        7543
Average      9479        6876

(My apologies for any odd formatting)

From this data, my conclusion is the professor's quoted average is inflated by 16 percent over the FBI's statistics. Further, the FBI statistics suggest (but do not prove) the overall death rates by firearms and handguns is decreasing.

Combining this apparent decrease with an apparent increase in the number of guns in the hands of The People of the United States, suggests† that more guns may indeed make us a safer nation.

ETA:
grammar
and
† be wary of causation arguments

[Beiruty]

Demonizing a useful tool such as firearms is crazy when the same liberals would ignore more dangerous tools such as cars, knives, doctors and medications, drugs, alcohol and tobacco.

[rocketsteve]

Demonizing a useful tool such as firearms is crazy when the same liberals would ignore more dangerous tools such as cars, knives, doctors and medications, drugs, alcohol and tobacco.

If I may, the "Useful Tool" is the college professor from Utah, and what a tool he is...

[K.Mooneyham]

Some quick math shows me that the likelihood of being killed with a firearm in America is about .0003%. (10,000 murders with firearms averaged divided into a population of 3000,000,000.) That mathematician should be able to see that is a little bitty number. I'm sure it goes up quite a bit if you are in a bad neighborhood in a big city (and goes down if you are in a good neighborhood or not in a big city), but we won't talk about that fact.

[C-dub]

Demonizing a useful tool such as firearms is crazy when the same liberals would ignore more dangerous tools such as cars, knives, doctors and medications, drugs, alcohol and tobacco.

If I may, the "Useful Tool" is the college professor from Utah, and what a tool he is...

Well, I'm not sure just how "useful" he he is.

[MotherBear]

Ah, these are the times I'm so proud to be a Baylor grad.

I really wish I'd been able to carry as a student there. When I was a freshman, a girl in my dorm found a random (non-student) man in the shower area. And I was expected to do projects in the computer lab, in an unsecured building -- and of course it was mostly available after hours. After I went to the building one weekend and ran into a weird-seeming guy who was hanging around in the hallway "looking for the library" (the next building over, which was very large and well known to anyone who belonged on campus), I bought the software for my own computer and did my projects in my dorm room. Worth the investment.

I carried a knife, tried to be careful and reduce risks, and kept a club and brake lock on my car. Got teased about all of the above but I made it through my four years safely and, in spite of two attempts, with my car unstolen.

But, you know, I'd just hate to have the poor professor unable to properly do his job of teaching and assessing because someone somewhere MIGHT have a legally carried firearm.

[Lucky]

He moved here to get away from concealed carry?

He moved to Texas to get away from students carrying guns in his classroom. He has that in Texas.

To me, the richest thing about this story is that the professor's subject is mathematics.

Why? He admits his feelings are feelings. I disagree but I respect him admitting it's emotionally-based.

"I just could not see myself spending the rest of my career walking into my classrooms knowing that some students might be carrying weapons…. even though I understood the probabilities and knew that my decision was emotionally-based."

[K.Mooneyham]

Wouldn't this guy feel a lot better someplace like San Francisco, New York City, or Chicago? I mean, he's that scared of students with guns, why not move to a "gun-free liberal paradise" like one of those cities I listed?

[AEA]

Hopefully, Campus Carry will pass before he unpacks his stuff and he can just keep moving on.......