Calvin Oyler
JCCC Student
Recently, the Campus Ledger ran an editorial by Caleb Latas against concealed carry. It was lacking in facts but had plenty of sarcastic comments. First up factual errors; the Personal and Family Protection Act was passed in 2013 and not 2006. The colleges had four years to either install metal detectors or accept that concealed carry would become the norm. JCCC did not have the funds to monitor every means of egress so concealed carry is here.
Which brings me to humor; Mr. Latas stick to reporting. Your humor is not funny. Someone once said (reportedly), “dying is easy, comedy is hard”. Stay with your day job.
Bad guys don’t obey laws. They will carry a firearm into a classroom, they will carry it loaded, and they will shoot people even if the law does not allow it. Good guys will obey the law and get training. If you had bothered to read the law (or understood it) then you would have not made the comment about leaving a weapon’s safety off. According to campus policy a weapon will be carried without a bullet in the chamber. That means a safety is unnecessary. You should understand the regulation. Also, the chance of an old west style shoot out in the hallways of JCCC is extremely unlikely. The more likely scenario is the sound of gunfire will alert a person who will retrieve their weapon, they will charge their weapon, and they will defend themselves and the classroom. By the way, women arming themselves in greater numbers. Don’t be a chauvinist.
Your reliance on the FBI shows some confusion on the topic. The FBI defines a mass shooting in which four or more people are killed . An active shooter incident does not require anyone to die. Pearl River, the armed Uber driver, the mall in Colorado had a shooter stopped by an armed citizen but in each case it would not be recorded as a mass shooting by the FBI.
Your snarky comment about wearing body armor and helmet would indicate that you, just like a concealed carry person, want to be prepared for a possible event. The only thing is that whereas a person with a weapon will protect others, you only care about protecting yourself. Most military veterans will move towards the sound of gunfire with the goal of removing a threat to everyone even at risking their own lives. They do not deserve your ridicule or sarcasm.
Finally, no one wants to exchange gunfire with anyone. Ask a veteran from the Middle East wars. No one is looking to be a hero by stopping a shooter. In most cases (according to the FBI), a shooter is stopped when the shooter realizes that they are done and commits suicide or they drop their weapon when confronted by an armed individual (police or civilian). The aftermath of a defensive shooting is going to be an attack by the media and activists, a lawsuit by the family members of the shooter, and an investigation by the local and federal police with a goal of criminal prosecution. No one wants that.
