Editor:
Why do so many random shootings seem to occur in our schools and universities? Because we have mistakenly decided that guns absolutely don’t belong in places of learning.
Although The Chronicle’s Oct. 28 front page article about the shooting at the University of Arizona nursing school shooting said the incident bolstered our school’s case for banning guns on campus, it actually proves just the opposite.
Despite the University of Arizona becoming a “Gun Free Zone” in 1996, such fancy declarations didn’t protect the innocent and law-abiding victims of Monday’s shooting. Why do U administrators believe that their own lofty aspirations would be any less hollow?
The tragic incident was only stopped from becoming even more tragic and bloody because the killer mercifully took his own life. Not one of the other 50 or so people in the room were armed because they were law-abiding citizens and at the mercy of this man who did not follow the law.
As economist John Lott argued here at our law school a few weeks ago, allowing law-abiding citizens to arm and defend themselves is the best way to decrease crime. Just the mere prospect that someone else in that classroom might have been armed could have been enough to deter the killer from even attempting to kill or at least stop him from further killings.
David Sundwall
Graduate Student, Law