In an unfortunate bit of irony, NKU announced the unveiling of “Norse Alert” a mere three days before a Northern Illinois University student shot and killed five of his fellow classmates. While Norse Alert is a welcomed addition to alert students and faculty of emergencies, it cannot help those being shot at. This proves that the university does not recognize the bigger picture: that the ban of legal firearms on campus does not increase the safety of students and faculty, but instead only decreases it.
As the shootings at Virginia Tech and Northern Illinois pointed out, any individual who is determined to murder scores of innocent people is not going to care if an area is deemed “gun-free.” Moreover, criminals are usually aware of places in which its potential victims are likely to be armed or not. Therefore, an armed discontent with the intent to kill people is highly unlikely to walk into a popular gun club looking for action, yet he would most likely make his way to the local shopping mall – or local university.
It is worth mentioning that any one of us could easily be in the wrong place at the wrong time when some individual decides to start killing indiscriminately. However, if we ever find ourselves in this situation, each one of us will pray that someone in the vicinity had decided to defy the gun ban by carrying a concealed weapon and will engage and take out the shooter, protecting us from any harm. This very scenario has taken place before. Regrettably, the “gun-free zones” at Virginia Tech and NIU virtually eliminated any chance, however small, that a student or professor certified to carry concealed could have stopped the shooter and saved innocent lives. Therefore, the question must be asked: How much longer will these failed anti-gun policies continue? How much longer will college students have to remain sitting ducks? When will universities allow students the right to lawfully protect themselves with firearms?
In reality, we should not expect any changes to the prohibition of legal firearms at universities anytime soon. After all, universities are predominantly bastions of liberalism that favor anti-gun legislation. Yet the consequences of gun control policies such as “gun-free zones,” no matter how well intentioned by its supporters, is that it empowers the bad guys to have guns and prevents the good guys from legally carrying a firearm to protect their unalienable right to life.
Unfortunately, the unalienable right to life of the students of Virginia Tech and NIU was denied to them by the policies enacted by university and state-level bureaucrats which eliminated that most basic of God-given rights: self-defense. It is a terrible thing to predict, but the sad truth is that there will be more college campus shootings in the future. The undeniable outcome to this will be a cause-and-effect relationship: namely, college students will eventually rebel against their university and begin carrying concealed firearms for protection, deciding that it would be better to be judged by twelve of their peers rather than carried out by six of their closest friends.
Steve Fritsch junior history major