Assistant Professor Charged in University Shooting

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Playing catch-up here ...

As to the issue of training for concealed carry permits, the level of training most likely depends on the state and their policy. 'May Issue' states (i.e., states that don't automatically grant licenses to all applicants who pass a background check and complete a training course, like California or New York) would probably require higher training standards, because they are selective about who gets the permits and are rather high-strung about the supposed dangers of armed citizens on the streets. 'Shall Issue' states (i.e. states that do grant permits to all who pass background checks and complete training) seem to require comparatively lax standards. In my state for example, the training requirement is 4 hours of range time and 4 hours of class time. My state does not tremble in fear at the very notion of a law-abiding citizen walking around with a concealed firearm (and the number of incidents involving permit holders has been shown to bear that 'faith' in the citizenry out). There are comparatively few 'May Issue' states left in the US. Most have become 'Shall Issue.'

Now, bear in mind that what the training is providing for is a basic level of competency in shooting and knowledge of the pertinent laws and what your obligations for personal conduct are. As a permit holder, you are not considered a firearms expert. You are not expected to provide for the public safety; rather, your right to provide for your own safety is acknowledged. (And indeed, it is driven home very forcefully to you that you are not entitled to chase criminals and be a defacto law enforcement officer.)

Furthermore, gun boards generally limit their decision-making to the results of background checks and the existence of training (and the presence of a legitimate 'need' in May Issue states). The person who would make the determination as to your competency is the instructor providing the training. They are entitled to deny you a completion certificate if they deem that you are incompetent. No certificate = no permit.

As applies to armed teachers, I would expect that any school that allowed them would not simply acknowledge existing concealed carry permits, but would require further training to what they deem to be an acceptable level of competency, because to not do so would very likely expose them to unacceptable liability ... which, coincidentally, is probably what is really at the heart of these restrictions in the first place. One of the primary attractions of a contracted security service is that they accept your liability for you.

I agree with NOG that the likelihood of accidents and/or incidents involving enraged permit holding teachers is remote, for the reasons that I mentioned some time ago: carrying a firearm makes you more responsible and measured, not less. And as NOG pointed out, irresponsibility can be seen anywhere and with anyone (there was a case where a chief of police somewhere left his sidearm in a restroom at a school a few years ago). Irresponsibility does not always equal disaster, though. In the case of the police chief, his abandoned pistol was simply reported to the school administration, I believe.

Regarding guns left in vehicles, sure there may be cases where they were put to use effectively (like the Appalachian Law School case - and I'm very glad that one turned out that way), but in general, having to run and get a firearm is not preferable to being able to produce it immediately. That, coupled with the impossibility of properly securing a firearm anywhere other than on your person and the recklessness of leaving them in unoccupied cars, just seems to make the 'you can leave it in the car but don't bring it inside' requirement plain silly and even dangerous. Even in the trunk, the firearm is only as secure as the likelihood that the vehicle won't be stolen.

I would agree that there are places and scenarios where armed teachers would probably be a bad idea, such as high crime areas or schools with a lot of gang activity. The reason for this is the same reason that prisons don't arm their guards in general population. (And no I'm not comparing students to prisoners, just acknowledging that in certain contexts they can be dangerous.)

(More to come later ...)

 

Hey, I'm sure the NRA would be happy to pay to develop such a program. All the School Boards (or states) would have to do is approve one. If we're talking about allowing guns in school at all, this seems more likely to happen than allowing just any teacher to carry.

 

Carrying a firearm does not make a person more responsible. Period. Many people (well over one hundred) have been killed by individuals who had a permit to carry a concealed weapon. The vast majority of these occurred during arguments. More measured? I don't think so.

 

T2, can you cite where you're getting those stats from? According to the state police in my state, from mid 2005 to mid 2006 (most recent available data), 36,754 permits were issued (over 155,000 exist in total), and 175 permits holders were convicted of a crime (most non-violent, these including misdemeanors) that required revocation of their license. This does not even mean that they committed gun-related crimes, just that they were convicted of crimes and their carry licenses were revoked. There were no murders.

Also, do you personally know any people who are permit holders whose mentality you can speak to in general? I know a great many of them myself, and I wouldn't consider any of them to be irresponsible or reckless, and most certainly none of them have used or brandished firearms during arguments. My opinion of each of them is that they have been conditioned to de-escalate conflicts instead of vice-versa.

Lastly, does your data (wherever it may be from) say whether or not these well over 100 people committed the murders with a firearm or whether or not their carry permits were even a factor? e.g., were they out terrorizing the public (presumably only because they were licensed to carry) and brandishing their pistols when the murders were committed, or were they perhaps involved in domestic disputes at home?

Let's try an exercise just to see what numbers come up. If we accept my figure of 155,000 permits in a state as average (more in some and fewer in others no doubt), that would mean there are 7,750,000 carry permits in the US. If we then accept your figure (and even generously round it up) and say that 200 murders by permit holders have been committed, that means that there is a murder rate of .00002580645 among permit holders. Are you really prepared to suggest that such a figure indicates that concealed carry permit holders in general are dangerous? For my part, if the figures are accurate, I am indeed prepared to say that they indicate a remarkable degree of measuredness and discretion among those licensed to carry concealed pistols.

The crackpots are going to slip in no matter what, but if there are so few of them among so many permit holders, things are even better than I dared to hope.

 

Most permit holders are those who have a need for one in their field. These fields require training. You can't just start arming faculty, most of them are out of shape, squeemish book nerds with no experience in dealing with situations where their use of a firearm would be necessary. Why arm faculty? Just hire more security for your campus.

 

Alright if we accept there are 7,750,000 permit holders and there have been 121 murders by permit holders in the past two years, that comes to a rate of 1.56 per 100,000 permit holders. Now lets look at the murder rate in the US -- for 2007 and 2008 the murder rate for the nation was 10.853 per 100,000 (for the two years combined). So your assertation that the permit holders are better than average is reasonable. However, even the NRA and other pro-permit groups concede the murder rate in non-gang related areas (and areas where concealed weapons are permitted) is at ~1.5-2.0 per 100,000 annually. This means the permit carrying gun wielder is only 50% as likely to kill you as the non-gangbanger without a permit -- not good odds.

I really don't see where you're coming from that permit carriers are more responsible and measured. Half as likely when most of that half is professionals, as Blades pointed out, tells me the other half isn't any better than the average non-gangbanger. There really isn't a difference in the average citizen with or without a permit.

 

If your stats are accurate, they would indicate that the national murder rate is almost 7 times higher than the murder rate for permit holders, which seem strikingly significant to me. Even if the average permit holder were only equally likely as the rest of the population to commit a murder, it discredits your notion that permit holders are exceptionally dangerous.

I'd still like to see citation for your figures. As I stated earlier, there have been exactly zero murders committed by permit holders in my state, and I'm largely basing my opinion of the mentality of permit holders on my own experiential dealings with them. The stats that we seem to have generated here were rather a surprise to me. Also, can you elaborate on your own conviction that permit holders are generally not safe, beyond the assumption suggested by our figures that they they are at least no more likely to commit a murder than the general population, and perhaps significantly less likely, which doesn't very well inform such a position? (e.g., again, do you know any permit holders that you can base a personal opinion on?)

I think that Blades' assertions are largely inaccurate. I believe 40 states in the US are now 'shall issue,' which means they issue permits to anybody who applies as long as they pass the background check and receive training. In my state, again, before the law was liberalized, there were about 25,000 restricted permits. As of 2008, there are around 155,000. I don't think it's unreasonable to assume that most of that increase is due to the liberalization of the law, and that indeed most permit holders have no particular association with an industry that requires them to be armed.

 

I find it hilarious when a group (pro-gun) uses a common argument (high murders in gang areas) to "explain" why the US has a much higher murder rate and subsequently lowers 'the real murder rate' to be equivalent to other industrialized countries but abandons the explanation when convenient.

 

Care to cite a source for this, T2? It sounds like you're pulling from a statistical study, in which case I'd like to know everything.

That still means that the average teacher is as likely to kill you without a gun as with a gun and a permit, which means no statistically significant increase in risk.

 

I don't really know what this is supposed to mean, I'm afraid ... are you implying that I'm 'pro-gun' in a pejorative sense? Call me what you like, but I've shown some degree of uncertainty for arming teachers right along. I also acknowledged the possibility of the gang violence element in the murder rates question when I said "Even if the average permit holder were only equally likely as the rest of the population to commit a murder" in the very next sentence after the one you quoted, which you curiously omitted. (If I'm not mistaken, that's approximately what you're second set of statistics suggested). And you still haven't offered any of the explanations I've asked for, not even a basic explanation for why you think what you do, which is deeply ironic in light of your vague implication of being selective with the stats or the topics. So far I can only conclude that you think concealed carry permit holders are dangerous because they have at worst an equal murder rate to the rest of the population. I could list numerous other avoidances on your part throughout this thread, but I won't put you through that.

Maybe it would be better if you simply attempted to discredit the arguments here instead of the arguers.

 

You're right, I was being unfair. My conviction is not that they are more unsafe, but rather they are not more safe than the average person who owns a gun. A second point I have made is that the propensity of guns is inherently unsafe -- especially around children. Guns represent a significant portion of deaths for young people, not all are gang related.

If you read through the concealed carry article on Wikipedia there are several interesting references they use, one of them is from the "Violence Policy Center" which has some good data about murders committed by concealed carry license holders. VPC is the polar opposite of the NRA and of course must be taken with a grain of salt -- just like the NRA they come to a conclusion and then use statistics to support it.

I actually am pro-gun, I am just very anti-guns-around-children. When firearms are a leading cause of death (drunk driving is number 1) for children there is sufficient cause to limit the use of guns around children (suicide rates and injuries due to firearms are directly proportional to gun ownership rates -- I was surprised the suicide rate tracks so closely). Arming teachers is a bad idea because it places guns within reach of the very group most vulnerable.

 

Okay, thanks for clarifying, and your additional contention that firearm proximity to children is inherantly dangerous is duly noted. I don't have much comment on that, as it seems a difficult thing to measure accurately (e.g. how do we define 'danger' or 'unsafeness'), but fair enough.

I agree that the VPC stuff looks a bit dubious. I've seen a few references that indicate that VPC has used arrest data to represent conviction and violent crime stats, for example. But that's probably largely moot to our discussion anyway. If it were learned that there were really 20 or 50 or 80 or 379 murders committed by concealed carry permit holders instead of 127, I don't think it would have that much affect on the percentages.

It seems that we have established reasonably well, regardless, that concealed carry permit holders are at the very least no more threat to the public well-being than the general population.

 

But they are no better either and placing guns around kids is a bad idea. Accidental death and injury due to guns is a huge problem in the US with well over 200,000 hospital admissions annually.

 

I would argue that, while permit owners are no more safe than the average joe in an ordinary situation, they are likely to be more safe than an average (unarmed) joe in a school-shooting situation (meaning they could actually protect themselves and others).

You're right. Most are accidents. Gun safety is woefully under-taught these days, and the number of people (especially young people) who have access to guns without any idea how to handle them safely is tragic.

This is the wrong conclusion. If you look at in-depth studies on this issue, the problem is not that guns exist around children, but that children have access to those guns. The adults who have them are careless and unsafe. In short, think of it the same way as that drunk driving statistic. Removing alcohol from homes with children isn't likely to drop that statistic much, because that's not the problem.

To be clear, the issue isn't one of guns near children. As a child, I often had guns around me. I, however, knew how to use them, how to not use them, and I respected them as a dangerous weapon and tool, not as a toy. On top of that, the guns were secure. I could probably have gotten to the, but it would have taken a lot of work to do so (chisels and the like). As a result, I was safe. As was my brother. No one in our family has ever been hurt by a firearm, nor anyone in my wife's family (similar upbringing and access). The issue is what happens to guns near children. These things don't happen by random chance, but rather by careless neglect.

 

A problem there is that it may be hard put in place sound system of making sure the guns are secure.

Moreover I think it was in a public school that a lady I knew a few years back learned how to open a locked door.

Not to say that a safe placed in every classroom couldn't be made quite secure. But there is stealing in school situations and items for and/or owned by the teachers do make the list of targets.

 

I think that goes under Gaear's point about securing it on the person. I wouldn't suggest guns in a safe, no matter how 'safe' that safe is.

 

You are making a big assumption here, to assume the untrained person can accurately assess a crisis situation and respond appropriately is a big leap of faith. If teachers have guns how do you prevent children from having access to those guns? Simply put, you cannot.

 

I don't want to keep going round and round with this T2, but depending on which statistics we use (did the gang data come from VPC by any chance?) and how we interpret them, they could be as much as 7 times better. Sure we can separate out gang violence or any other defining characteristic we choose to acknowledge (garbagemen, republicans, left handed people), but altogether they make up 'not concealed carry permit holders,' and the narrower issues seem ill-defined. Gangs where? What constitutes a gang murder? Do all murders that occur in heavy gang activity areas or cities count toward those stats? Etc. Plus, there are still further vagaries involved in the nature of the supposed crimes committed by permit holders. The concealed carry aspect of it is really only relevant if they were excercising their carry rights while in the commision of the crimes. The fact that someone who strangled his cousin to death at his home was also a concealed carry permit holder speaks to his suitability for having been granted a permit, but not to his conduct while carrying concealed in public.

 

I'm going round and round about anything. I believe having guns in schools is a bad idea -- I've never waivered. I also believe the statistics the NRA presents in showing how we are just as safe as the UK (by excluding the high murder areas in high gang population areas) demonstrates there is very little difference in people with permits to conceal carry and those who do not. The argument about suitability is not separate from violence with guns from people with concealed carry permits.

You won't get an argument from me that the average person with a concealed carry permit is a lower risk than a gangbanger -- but that has not been the issue here. NOG has repeatedly claimed that an individual with a concealed carry permit is inherently safer than the average person who do not have such a permit -- and that I strongly disagee with.

If you want to believe the world would be safer if everyone is packing, more power to you.

 

Thus the training issue. We've covered that.

Keep the guns on the person, in secure holsters. There are holsters that are harder to get a gun out of than just pulling on it, you know. It will keep a kid from just randomly grabbing the gun out of the holster, but only delay the teacher taking it out by a couple seconds. And, again, the schools that do allow people to carry guns on campus don't have this problem, nor do security guards in schools.

No, actually, I haven't. I've said that they're no more dangerous and, if there is any statistically significant difference at all, it shows them to be safer. Furthermore:

So, that means that permit carriers appear to be only half as likely to kill someone as non-gang non-permit carriers, i.e. everyone else.

I don't think anyone has made that arguement.