House Bill 875 includes many reforms to concealed carry laws. The provision that has garnered the most attention would decriminalize carrying a concealed firearm on public college campuses for Georgia Weapons Carry license holders. Currently, for carrying on campus, a license holder can be convicted of a misdemeanor on the first offense and a felony on the second offense. If HB 875 passes the Senate, the only penalty will be a $100 fine.
This bill is a step in the right direction. Every person has a fundamental right to defend himself, and that right should not be revoked when stepping onto a college campus. The bill would only decriminalize concealed carry for those who can already legally carry elsewhere.
Statistics show that people who have gone through obtaining a license, including being background-checked and fingerprinted, are overwhelmingly law-abiding citizens. Studies show that concealed carry license holders elsewhere are 13 times less likely to commit crimes than the general population. Resisting an attacker with a firearm cuts your likelihood of being injured by half compared with compliance or nonviolent resistance, and it reduces a woman’s chance of being raped by more than 90 percent.
It’s clear firearms are the best self-defense tools available today, and there is a need for them on campuses. For example, Atlanta contains several high-crime areas, including the third-highest crime neighborhood in the U.S. It also contains several college campuses, including Georgia Tech and Georgia State.
As it stands now, even students who spend most of their time off-campus can’t exercise their right to self-defense for fear of accidentally crossing over an invisible line onto campus and going to jail. Criminals know students are defenseless, high-value targets. Nearly every student on campus has a smartphone, a laptop and other valuable belongings. Police cannot be everywhere at once, and they usually arrive after the victim has already been attacked or killed.
It’s natural to be concerned about the stresses students are under and other factors unique to college campuses. However, the facts repeatedly show this simply isn’t a concern that plays out in real life. Campus carry has been legal for several years in the Utah public university system and at Colorado State, and there hasn’t been a single instance of a student being irresponsible with his firearm. When Georgia made it legal for weapons license holders to keep guns in their cars on campus in 2009, none of the predicted violence or shootings actually occurred.
It’s important to note this bill would not make it possible for students to carry on campuses with impunity. All this bill would do is decrease the harsh penalties currently applied to people who may have forgotten they were carrying or crossed an edge of campus without realizing it.
Weapons license holders are law-abiding, responsible people who just want to have a last resort if a criminal is about to kill or grievously harm them. These are not people we should be charging with misdemeanors or felonies.
David Sharpe is president of Students for Concealed Carry at Georgia Tech.
