by Michael Austin, Newman University It has been a bad few weeks for gun-free zones in Kansas. On March 15, the Kansas House passed HB 2055, which brings us several steps closer to requiring municipal buildings--including colleges and universities--to allow concealed weapons on their premises. A similar bill is currently under consideration in the State Senate. The rationale for these bills is now quite familiar: bad people with guns like gun-free zones because they know that they can do anything they want without good people with guns stopping them.
The available data suggest that the real picture is, at the very least, more complicated. But let us allow that concealed weapons may be quite useful in some times and places. It does not follow that they are appropriate at all times everywhere. Some institutions may have very good reasons for prohibiting guns on their premises.
I can speak with some authority about one of these institutions. Like most colleges and universities, Newman University, where I serve as an administrator, does not allow guns on its campus. This is not a knee-jerk reaction against guns and gun owners. We know through deep experience and compelling empirical data that gun-free zones really are the best way to protect our students from harm.
When I have made this claim in the past, most people have assumed that I was talking about the best way to protect people in an active-shooter emergency. In a sense this is true. We have found that our trained security officers are just as likely to be hindered as helped by well meaning civilians with guns.
But this is actually a very small part of what I worry about. Emergencies,
by definition, emerge—often very gradually and usually in predictable
ways. People do not simply grab a gun one day and start shooting. There are identifiable things that happen first, and the best time to stop a horrific act of violence is during the weeks and months before it happens.
The most important way to keep students
safe, then, is to recognize the factors likely to produce a
violent eruption. If we can identify problem situations early enough, we can help people access mental health resources long before their desperation becomes a crisis. In more extreme situations, we can separate potentially
dangerous people from the college—through suspension, termination, or
restraining orders—before they become a danger to others.
If we know what to look for, in other words, we can intervene in potentially violent situations long before the shooting starts. And one of the most important things that we look for is the possession of deadly weapons in violation of our stated policies and our code of behavior.
Prohibiting guns and ammunition
on college campuses creates a very clear line between acceptable and
unacceptable behavior. If somebody brings a gun to campus illegally, for
whatever reason, we know that we have a problem. And we deal with it—far more
often than most people realize. Every day, college security officers and
student affairs professionals diffuse potentially violent situations long
before they become actually violent situations. Unfortunately, horrible events that don’t
happen rarely make the news. If we know what to look for, in other words, we can intervene in potentially violent situations long before the shooting starts. And one of the most important things that we look for is the possession of deadly weapons in violation of our stated policies and our code of behavior.
Sometimes, though, they do. And three days after the Kansas House of Representatives passed HB 2055, Americans got a glimpse of what it looks like when a tragedy doesn't happen when James Oliver Seevakumaran, a 30-year old business major at the University of Central Florida, came within minutes of killing dozens—or more—of his fellow students in a 500-person residence hall.
But it didn’t happen. When the would-be shooter’s roommate saw the gun, he locked himself in the bathroom, called the campus police, and reported “a man with a gun” in the residence halls. Three minutes later, the police arrived, and, as soon as they did, Seevakumaran killed himself with a shot to the head—a tragedy, to be sure, but nothing close to the horrific bloodbath that might have been.
Rather than wringing our hands over this incident and asking what went wrong, we can take the time to ask the much more important and instructive question "what went right?" There are a lot of answers to this question, but here is one that, I think, should make Kansans pause for reflection.
When the campus security office received a
call identifying “a man with a gun” in a residence hall, the officers could immediately make four very important assumptions: 1)
that the gun was on campus illegally; 2) that the person with the gun was not a
law-abiding citizen; 3) that the people in the residence hall were in danger; and 4) that anybody they saw with a gun would be the bad guy. It then took them three minutes to diffuse the situation.
As we contemplate forcing colleges and universities to abandon a key component of their security procedures, we owe it our children to at least ask ourselves what might happen when these assumptions are no longer true.
As we contemplate forcing colleges and universities to abandon a key component of their security procedures, we owe it our children to at least ask ourselves what might happen when these assumptions are no longer true.
