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Street Team '08: AlexParker
 
 
 
   
 
AlexP­arker
Making Kansas Count

This blog is all about Kansas, and Choose or Lose 2008
 
 
 
 
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This blogger is a member of Street Team '08, a hand-picked group of state-based citizen journalists who are contributing to MTV's Choose or Lose election coverage.
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Clinging to our guns in Kansas
Posted April 30, 2008 at 7:45 PM

There’s been a lot of rat-a-tat-tat in Kansas lately.

Gov. Sebelius recently overturned a 75-year-ban on big guns, including machine guns, sawed-off shotguns and silencers, signing into law a bill that will allow Kansans to own machine guns for the first time in decades.

Conceal-and-carry advocates at the University of Kansas are campaigning to allow firearms on campus to counter potential incidents like the shootings that happened at Virginia Tech and Northern Illinois University.

And security guards at Johnson County Community College outside Kansas City will soon be packing heat on campus.

It has, indeed, been a fruitful couple of weeks for proponents of the Second Amendment in Kansas.

At JCCC, more than half of the school’s faculty, staff and 30,000 or so degree-seeking students said they would feel more comfortable if campus security officers carried weapons, according to a poll published in the Kansas City Star.

The school’s public safety supervisor Jerry Naas said the move is not surprising, given the violence that has occurred at universities across the country, including one today at Florida Atlantic University.

At KU, students supporting the right to conceal and carry weapons in the classroom participated in Empty Holster Week, where they wore, well, empty holsters to class in an effort to raise awareness of the need to carry weapons on campus.

“Since the (Northern Illinois) shooting, it’s become abundantly clear to a lot of students that no-gun signs, no-carry signs on campus really don’t do anything to mitigate a situation such as a campus shooter,” said Eric Stein, a Topeka junior, who is president of the campus’ chapter of Students for Concealed Carry on Campus, in the Lawrence Journal-World.

It’s a controversial idea, which is frightening to some.

Wrote Ross Stewart in a University Daily Kansan editorial, “I’m not going to say whether or not more guns would help in a school shooting because no one knows. I just don’t trust another individual who’s not in the army or a police officer to defend me with a gun.”

At the same time, Stein cites other universities in Utah, Colorado and Virginia that allow students to carry weapons on campus. He says this has cut down on violence on campus.
I’m not sure I’m comfortable with people carrying weapons to school. But the validity of such ideas crossed my mind in the wake of the NIU shootings.

As I sat in a lecture hall the week after, I looked around, plotting my escape route in case the unthinkable happened.

And about half an hour into the First Amendment course, the doors on the left side of the hall rattled. It was clear that someone was trying to enter, but somehow couldn’t figure out how to open the door.

Finally, the doors opened and a man I had never seen before walked in. He paced around the foyer for a few minutes, and was obscured by a wall. From my aisle seat, I tried to figure out what he was doing. I could tell my professor was unnerved by this unwelcome guest.

After walking around the foyer for a few minutes, the man left, and I breathed a sigh of relief. But I wondered, “What if?” What could have happened? And would my fellow classmates protect each other?

On the other hand, I wondered what would happen if a nervous classmate carrying a weapon had an itchy trigger finger. The results could be disastrous, for this stranger did nothing beyond entering our classroom.

The debate will continue in Kansas, and around the country. But for now, the state’s regents are content with its policy.

“Securing our campuses is an ongoing challenge, and our work will never be done in this arena. However, we must never forget that continued diligence on this issue is a vital priority,” Christine Downey-Schmidt, regents chairwoman, said in the Journal-World.
 
 
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Tags: Legislation  Kansas  guns  Street Team '08  AlexParker  KU  Sebelius  conceal and carry  Johnson County Community College  machine guns  Students for Concealed Carry 
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