A little over a year ago, our legislature passed a law that all public Community Colleges and Universities in the state would have a certified law enforcement officer on campus with a handgun. It took my Community College District almost a full year before they armed the certified officers they had on campus. I must admit that when they finally got around to doing it, they did it right.

The law was passed in late 2006 or early 2007. Our district took until January 2008 to comply with the law. When they armed the officers the district bought each officer a 9mm automatic. The advantage of having each officer with the same handgun is that if asked, the district would have a ready answer. If each officer had to supply their handgun and could supply any gun, it would cause confusion.

I feel a lot safer having an officer on campus with a gun. With campus shootings in the rest of the country, one thing is a constant. That is that there were no guns on campus except for the killer. Then, when guns show up, the killer has killed students and faculty, then commits suicide. If the campus security had handguns, the chance that this would occur would be greatly reduced.

There is a bill in our legislature to allow students and faculty with a concealed gun permit to carry guns on Community College and University campuses. This will also reduce the chance of a shooting on our college campuses. Even with an officer on campus with a handgun, he is not on campus all of the time there are students. With this bill, it would increase the time that handguns would be available to stop a killer. There should be some kind of registration where the school knows that there are guns in the hands of students and faculty. Students and faculty that want to carry a gun on campus would have to show their permit to the security office before being allowed to carry their gun. This would insure that the security office would know who would have guns. It would make the job of the security officer easier if he knows that there are students or faculty on campus with guns.

The bill in the legislature originally included allowing guns on all schools if the adult had a concealed carry permit. After counting noses, the sponsor realized that the bill would never pass if it included high schools and below. It means that students in our public schools are potential victims for any killer that decides to kill people. That is a shame. Maybe it will take a killer to come onto a school and kill people before the legislature wakes up. I hope not. So far, most of the killings have taken place at a college. I hope none ever happens again, but you have to be prepared.

At my college, there was a memo telling us about the bill in the state legislature. The memo hinted strongly that we should write to our legislators. I wrote to mine in support of the bill. The intent of the memo was that we would write letters against the bill. Just like at most colleges, most people at my college are liberals. They believe that if you take the guns out of the hands of law abiding people, that criminals will lay down their guns. That is a bunch of baloney. Where do killings take place? They take place in “gun free zones”. They do not take place where guns are expected. People do not go to a police office and start shooting. They go where there are no guns to start shooting.

People need to wake up and figure out that people like to do their shooting sprees in gun free zones. If we want a gun free zone, don’t advertise it as a gun free zone. Advertising a gun free zone is to advertise where the next crime will occur. A killer is not going to comply with the law. A killer will look around and decide to do their killing where the greatest chance of success seems to be. They may understand that the long term chance of success is zero, but it is the short term impact they are looking at. People say that the killers always go with the thought of suicide. That is true, but they want an impact first. If they go and get killed before they kill anyone; that would be a failure. If they manage to kill some people before getting killed, then they are successful.

Where guns are in the hands of the public, there are few killings. Where guns are taken from the public, killings occur. Look at Washington, D.C.: before they put in strict gun laws, Washington had a low murder rate. After the strict gun laws were put in, murders took off. Now, Washington is one of if not the highest murder rate city in the country. On the other hand, there was a town in Illinois where the city mandated that all heads of households own a handgun. The murder rate in that town went from the moderate rate it had to almost zero. Home break-ins were also reduced to almost zero. Burglars do not want to face an armed homeowner. Similar results are found all over the country.

Placing handguns on our colleges will reduce the chance that a killer will choose to kill at one of our colleges. That is the goal and it will be realized, if the bill gets passed. It will probably take my district a year to come up with some sort of policy. But, they would have to comply with the law sooner or later.