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Letter: Concealed-carry opponent leveled some misguided arguments

May 8, 2008

To the Editor:

While I respect the opinions of people who are opposed to allowing concealed-carry weapons (CCW) on campus, I would prefer they use logic and reason to back up their statements rather then misleading statistics and assumptions, as John Calhoun did in his May 5 letter.

First, Calhoun tried to make the number of self-defense incidents with firearms look small by pointing out the number of justified firearm homicides (229) per year. The flaw in Calhoun’s logic is that he assumes justified homicides account for all incidents of firearm self-defense. They don’t.

On the contrary, the overwhelming majority of defensive gun uses don’t involve any death at all. A federal Bureau of Justice study reported 82,500 defensive gun uses per year from 1987-1992, and that’s the SMALLEST number I’ve seen. Other studies put the number much higher. Often just pointing a gun at criminal is enough to stop an attack, and when shots are fired, they do not always result in fatal hits. Does Calhoun judge the effectiveness of the police by how many people they kill each year? I think not. He should not judge armed citizens in that manner either.

Calhoun also complains that CCW holders only need a 12-hour training class to get a permit. Apparently, he thinks that people who want CCW permits go to these classes with no prior knowledge or experience with firearms, and then never attempt to gain any more training for the rest of their lives once they are done. This is not so. People who own guns tend to practice and train with them on a regular basis. Once again, using Calhoun’s logic, we would have to assume that all drivers have only a few weeks of training and experience, because that’s all they get in driver’s ed, and then will never attempt to get any more before or after going.

Calhoun says the massacres at Virginia Tech and Northern Illinois are an “argument toward working harder to keep guns off campus.” Really? Both colleges had a total ban on firearms. How could they have been more strict then that? And yet the gun bans in effect on those colleges did not make anyone safe. The only people those gun bans protected were the killers, who came to campus knowing full well they would not have to worry about anyone fighting back until the police arrived. That’s what organizations like SCCC are trying to change.

Corey Suydam
Nelsonville