On April 16, 2007, twenty-seven students and five faculty members at Virginia Tech lost their lives to a madman who possessed one distinct advantage over his victims ' he was not concerned with following the rules. Undeterred by Virginia Tech's status as a gun free zone
this mentally unstable individual carried two handguns onto the university campus and indiscriminately opened fire. In thirty-nine U.S. states, thousands of collegiate students and faculty ' age twenty-one and above ' are licensed to carry concealed handguns throughout their day-to-day lives. And they do so without incident. However, despite the absence of any compelling evidence that these licensed individuals might pose any more threat to college campuses than they do to office buildings, shopping malls, movie theaters, grocery stores, banks, etc., they are currently prohibited, either by state law or school policy, from carrying their firearms onto most college campuses. In the last twenty years, the vast majority of the mass shootings in America ' from the Texas Luby's massacre to the Columbine High School massacre ' have happened in gun free zones. Labeling an area gun free may make some people feel safer, but as the shootings at Virginia Tech taught us, feeling safe and being safe are not the same thing.
For over a year, state law in Utah has allowed licensed individuals to carry concealed handguns on college campuses. This has yet to result in a single act of violence. Numerous studies, including studies by John Lott, David Mustard, William Sturdevant, and state justice departments, show that license holders are five times less likely than non-license holders to be arrested for violent crimes. Clearly, license holders pose little threat to college campuses. While some may argue that guns have no place in institutions of higher learning, the students of the recent Empty Holster Protest contend that it is the threat of uncontested, execution-style massacre that has no place on America's college campuses, and these students respectfully ask that steps be taken to take the advantage away from those who seek to harm the innocent.
Jeffrey Harmison is a graduate student of telecommunications.
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