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From 1966 to 2007, 41 years, ... only 45 "school shootings" occurred. Indeed, a rare event.

From 2007 to 2011, about 3 years, another 35 or so school shootings", increasingly less rare.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_shooting" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
My math may be off but feel free to count

By Jon Swaine, New York 9:12PM GMT 21 Feb 2011

This is a (partial) timeline of recent shootings at American colleges dating back to the Virginia Tech massacre in April 2007, when Seung-Hui Cho, a student, killed 32 people and injured another 15, in the country’s worst single act of gun violence.
http://www.evri.com/media/article;jsess ... title=Evri" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

SOURCE: The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence

The "current system" is broken

That only goes through Oct 2010, and "school shootings" do not even consider "non-shooting" events such as

University of Houston within just the last 2 weeks:

Armed assault
Armed robbery
Armed kidnapping
Car break-ins (to get guns stored there because Licensees must store them there to run into a library on campus, but not a city library?)

RPB wrote:From 1966 to 2007, 41 years, ... only 45 "school shootings" occurred. Indeed, a rare event.

From 2007 to 2011, about 3 years, another 35 or so school shootings", increasingly less rare.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_shooting" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
My math may be off but feel free to count

By Jon Swaine, New York 9:12PM GMT 21 Feb 2011

This is a (partial) timeline of recent shootings at American colleges dating back to the Virginia Tech massacre in April 2007, when Seung-Hui Cho, a student, killed 32 people and injured another 15, in the country’s worst single act of gun violence.
http://www.evri.com/media/article;jsess ... title=Evri" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

SOURCE: The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence

The "current system" is broken

That only goes through Oct 2010, and "school shootings" do not even consider "non-shooting" events such as

I think this is a weak argument that opens you up to counterattack. I admire your activism with regard to gun rights, but I think you need to more carefully choose your battles. A number of the mentioned cases appear to be "normal" shootings involving drug deals gone wrong, drive-by shootings (drug related) and arguments between two people that become deadly.

Of the cases mentioned, the ones that I would classify as similar to the Virginia Tech situation and possibly affected by campus carry would be:

April 2009 – Dearborn, Michigan – A man shot and killed a female classmate and then himself at MacKenzie Fine Arts Center on the campus of Henry Ford Community College.

November 2008 – Savannah, Georgia – A 19-year-old student shot a fellow student twice after the two argued at Savannah State University October 2008 – Conway, Arkansas – Several men in a car drove up to a dormitory at the University of Central Arkansas and opened fire, killing two students and injuring a third person.

October 2008 – San Antonio, Texas – A librarian shot and killed a fellow librarian at Northeast Lakeview Community College library, where the two men worked.

July 2008 – Phoenix, Arizona – A former student shot three people in a computer lab at South Mountain Community College.

February 2008 – DeKalb, Illinois – A former graduate student armed with several guns entered a lecture hall at Northern Illinois University and began shooting. He killed five students and wounded 16 before killing himself.

September 2007 – Dover, Delaware – A freshman student at Delaware State University shot and wounded two other students at a campus dining hall.

So only four of the cases listed would be comparable to Virginia Tech and, more importantly, possibly have different outcomes if campus carry was allowed.

However, the wikipedia article, I think, is a much stronger argument for campus carry at all levels. Look at the number of K-12 incidents. It's appalling that the fiction of gun free zones is still given any credence at all.

Good points baldeagle

"non-shooting" events where a means of self defense could help, and vehicle burglaries, are much more common anyway.

Thanks for the input

I would change that comparison a little. The ones I would group with Va Tech would include the Appalachian School of Law, the UT Charles Whitman shooting, and ones like that - separating them from ones like the San Antonio College library shooting, which I would also group as a different group. What I am looking at is the threat to others as opposed to a threat to a specific individual. In other words, did the shooter go around shooting somewhat indiscriminately, leaving more than one wounded or killed victim, or did the shooter come in with a grudge against one or two people, shooting only them? In both cases (assuming we only include college campuses), campus carry as we are now proposing it might make a difference. But, in the second group, we would have to acknowledge the possibility of the victim having had warning signs and possibly having alternative means to protect themselves. That is not to suggest the guns are not a valid method, but we should be fair and allow full debate. In the first group, the individuals had no way of knowing ahead of time or providing themselves with any alternative means of protection.

And stipulating that both cases are rare, we have to then discuss the occurrences of other everyday crime, such as the robberies mentioned, and how to allow students and faculty to protect themselves from that occurrence. By focusing on the mass shootings, we ignore the best argument we have - crime occurs there anyway. We can stipulate that the mass shootings are rare enough to be a negligible point. We can then show that self-defense against regular crime justifies the allowance of concealed carry, and if it provides extra protection against a rare event, that is just a side benefit.

And what I usually do when I give them the point that mass shootings are that rare is ask them when was the last time ANY CHL flipped out and started shooting without provocation. Yes, there have been some cases where the justification may not have met the law, but I do not know of any CHL (and I hope no one here does know of one) that flipped out and started shooting at random. No real danger combined with a real threat to defend against usually means some agreement if the debate stays rational.

Obviously, there is no rational answer to the emotional argument of "I would not feel safe."

related topic: 80 light bulbs were found to be burned out at San Antonio College Parking lot ...
Back in November, only 35 were ...