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DEL.ICIO.USWhy upperclassmen might soon be due more respect
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Date: Aug. 25, 2008
Memo to: The 270,000 students at Georgia universities
Subject: 21 and loaded
No doubt during your wanderings you have noticed a new breeze on your campus. It is sharp and distinct and impossible to miss.
For it carries the wafting fragrance of freedom. How to recognize this breeze? First of all, it does not smell like beer.
Possibly you’ve heard some talk by out-of-state university presidents that the drinking age should be lowered to 18 to curtail binge-drinking.
Put this out of your mind.
Solid, conservative institutions such as the North Georgia Conference of the United Methodist Church and even the state university system itself will make sure that irresponsible young people are protected from themselves.
No, this particular freedom smells something like gun oil.
A certain state Senate committee began meeting this month. It has taken on the task of reviewing where those who possess concealed weapons permits are allowed to pack heat.
Booze-serving restaurants and MARTA buses were added this spring.
Georgiacarry.org and some Republican lawmakers would like to see many more locales added, including churches and state universities.
You can see where this might be headed. Concealed weapons permits are available to anyone over the age of 21 with fingerprints and a clean record. By this time next year, should the Legislature act, Big Man on Campus could have an entirely new meaning.
It is not a sure thing. Leftist institutions such as the North Georgia Conference of the United Methodist Church and even the state university system oppose changes to the current law. It’s a scandal how some people think students must be protected from themselves.
“The government put a fully automatic weapon in my hands at the age of 17,” said attorney Ed Stone with Georgiacarry.org. He would like to see college students permitted to arm themselves. Currently, it’s a felony to be caught with a firearm on a Georgia campus.
Mitch Seabaugh of Sharpsburg is chairman of the Senate firearms study committee. He’s promising nothing but a careful look.
Possibly, he said, an armed student or faculty member could have made a difference at Virginia Tech in 2007. But Seabaugh also concedes there might be “some situation where someone loses his temper and has been drinking and then uses a firearm inappropriately.”
Seabaugh also wondered out loud whether a firearm could be considered secure in a dorm room. “You have a lot people walking in and out,” he said.
But there are other facets that need exploring, Seabaugh said. Students who hunt could be allowed to keep shotguns and rifles in their car trunks. Faculty members, rather than students, might be extended permission to carry weapons.
The Senate chairman is particularly concerned about the case of a 45-year-old permit carrier who was prosecuted for having a weapon in an on-campus hotel that serves the University of Georgia continuing education center.
How do you legally distinguish between a 21-year-old student, a 45-year-old visitor, and a 62-year-old professor? That’s what the legislative process is all about, Seabaugh said.
Maybe this’ll be a breeze. But it doesn’t sound like it.
Photo credit: Associated Press
Comments
By GA Resident
August 25, 2008 12:50 PM | Link to this
I don’t think adults carrying firearms on a college campus is a big deal at all. It’s a non-issue, really, except to newspaper scribes who print sensationalized hyperbole about it — in order to drum up sales/web hits — or under-informed readers who buy into the old west shoot-out mentality.
If collegiate carry were an issue worth mentioning, then there’d be mature, compelling discourse that addresses the duality of the idea that we ask our young persons to act as adults, grown up in their responsibilities and awareness, yet not so grown up that they can defend themselves as they walk along Atlanta Streets at night. Essentially the message is: This is college, we want you to act like an adult, without actually exercising the rights and privileges of adulthood. For instance, we’ll grant you the 26th Amendment, but not the 2nd Amendment.
Why can a 21-year old w/ a GFL carry a firearm legally on this street, but cross the intersection onto campus (or even 1000 feet from campus property for that matter) and s/he’s magically a felon looking at a 10-year prison sentence? What changed over the course of that crosswalk?
The prohibition on campus carry, ineffective as gun bans are, also affects faculty & staff and other non-student positions on campus. Bath water, say goodbye to the baby.
Collegiate carry is in the papers because it’s funny to make Fraternity men out to be the butt of adhominem attacks about drunken shoot outs, continuing in the slapstick tradition of Animal House and Van Wilder.
Newspapers like the AJC never miss an opportunity to rail against those civil rights and logical arguments with which they don’t agree. Which Constitutional Amendment will they take on next?
There are states that do not criminalize carry on campus. Where are the stories of drunken shoot outs on those campuses? Why do those states trust their citizenry more than Georgia trusts its citizens? Why does Georgia hold its residents in such low regard?
By Self-reliant
August 25, 2008 2:00 PM | Link to this
While we’re at it we could prohibit students from driving; they could get their keys taken in the dorm room or have too much to drink. For that matter those books are pretty heavy; angry students could bludgeon each other with them: Prohibit! Bike locks: Prohibit (They’re pretty effective bludgeons)! College kids, I guess, should have to carry transparent backpacks, too, and pocketknives, nail files, hair pins, knitting needles, etc…
Wow, It’s a wonder any of us made it out alive! I sure am glad that the fine minds at the AJC are watching out for our young adults’ safety; I’m just wondering how old you have to get before you’re able to fend for yourself…
+1 GA Resident.
By Disarmed GSU grad student
August 25, 2008 2:36 PM | Link to this
Actually, self-reliant, check the code. If I read that confusing description properly, then most pocket knives are already banned as “weapons”. Any blade over 2” long counts. Even my smallest pocket knife is longer than that. I am a 31 year old grad student with a firearms license but I can’t carry to protect myself even though I have witnessed a carjacking and have been approached for nefarious reasons on two separate occasions. I do love those nice little intersections downtown at 10 pm, don’t you? I feel so safe knowing APD is only minutes away when someone rushes my car window. At least we know the car jackers are leaving their guns at home too because of this ban.
By Ken Roberts
August 25, 2008 5:47 PM | Link to this
It’s insanity that guns are prohibited on college campuses, by the same 21-year-olds and over that carry them everywhere else in their communities. During the course of my college education, Georgia Tech was the most dangerous place I had to go during my day. The police officers there did a fine job, but it is impossible for them to be everywhere at once. With frequent campus ‘visits’ by the Atlanta homeless crowd, and the every looming threat of a mass shooting, it is absurd that the state forcing its students to be disarmed in this one location.
To those of you that question the maturity of college students, I say that students are only immature when you expect nothing else. Even younger students frequently go to war for our Armed Forces, in charge of machinery capable of mass destruction. Students of 21 carry firearms on their person every place they go, but must disarm to go on campus.
To those who claim that campus is a unique environment, there are solutions to this. Require, for example, that students keep their weapons in a safe if they live in a dorm room. Perhaps have them notify the school PD that they are carrying, to reduce confusion in the event of a tragedy. Training can be encouraged through campus shooting clubs, as was frequently the case in the past.
The schools themselves can take all kinds of measures to ensure that armed students do not cause harm to the student body. Yet with this state-wide ban still in effect, we are stuck in the worst possible solution. We live in an area with easy access to guns, yet disarms lawful carry in “gun-free” areas, without metal detectors or other devices to ensure that these areas are actually gun-free. Our schools are nothing short of a shooting gallery for the criminal and the insane.
By Aaron Burr V. Mexico
August 25, 2008 5:53 PM | Link to this
Given the intelligence of the average campus law enforcement officer (as compared to REAL cops) vs the intelligence of the average college student, I’m in favor of letting the students have guns.
By Matthew Townsend
August 25, 2008 10:05 PM | Link to this
I am a Senior at Kennesaw State University, I’m 25 years old, and a reservist in the Marine Corps. I think it is crazy that on a campus of around 20,000 students, and fewer that 30 Campus police officers, I cannot carry a weapon to defend myself. There are many colleges and universities in this country were it is legal to carry concealed, but VT is the one that had the massacre. Maybe if there were legally armed students and faculty, they could have saved lives. The same is true for every college and university campus in Georgia, when come lunatic comes into a dorm or class shooting, there will only be campus cope to stop him/her. in my opinion, grade school faculty should be able to carry if they are licensed. As a future educator, it bothers me that I wont be able to carry to work. there have been numerous school shootings across the country over the last dozen years or so, that all could have ended earlier ad there only been some teacher carrying a weapon.
By TBILL
August 26, 2008 11:09 AM | Link to this
The press, the so-called civil rights activists, and certain government officials are playing a shell game with our rights. All the “problems” they claim to have with carrying guns (open or concealed) are a smoke screen using the classic tactic of misdirection used by magicians and con-men for centuries. They fail to mention all the dire circumstances they predict are all ready illegal. It’s not where or how you carry a weapon, it’s what you do with it that matters. If I carry my weapon everywhere I go and don’t use it for an illegal activity, I have commited no crime, end of story. This is the misdirection. they bring up all the “What if”, “Really scary”, “You must be paranoid” scenarios to cover the FACT that in all their hue and cry the actions they refer to are already illegal. Did the fact that carrying his weapon in a “gun free” zone have any effect at all on the VA Tech shooter or were any victims able to hide behind the “No Guns Allowed” signs, thereby saving their lives. The “No Guns Allowed” crowd are in their elitist view better able to judge the behavior of all Law-Abiding citizens and their arguments and lies are sacrosanct never mind the facts. If the facts don’t support your position then lies are allowed because it’s for the “Greater Good”. This is their misdirection, ignore the fact that the behavior is already illegal and ignored by crminals, then pass more restrictions on the already Law-Abiding and deprive them of their ability to defend themselves, which makes them ever more dependent on their elitist masters. I hope we can convince our Elected-Representatives to ignore these lies and misdirections and restore rights back to the Law-Abiding that were never supposed to be taken away.