Would You Be Comfortable With Guns on a College Campus Your Child Attends?

Georgia Senator Frank Ginn (R-Danielsville) introduced Senate Bill 101 this past legislative session, which would have allowed guns on the University of Georgia campus, as well as other college campuses in the state. 

The bill was stalled in the final moments of the 2013 session. But it will likely return during the next session. At a recent meeting of the Athens Clarke County Commission, Ginn took some flack on the bill. Some in attendance suggested he concentrate his efforts on more pressing issues than guns. However, it is a particularly hot topic at the moment, especially in Washington.

April 16, 2013, was the sixth anniversary of the Virginia Tech shootings and a Georgia woman, whose niece was one of the 22 victims of the massacre, asked that people use the occasion to push for more gun control. 

Brenda Cloyd Kendrick, now a member Moms Demand Action America, Ga. Chapter, sent out a press release, and in it she explained that her niece's killer, Seung Hui Cho, had been declared mentally ill by a judge more than a year before the shooting. Federal law prohibits individuals who have been adjudicated mentally ill or who have been committed to a mental institution from owning a gun. Lapses in the law, however, enabled Cho to legally obtain weapons. Although Kendrick didn't specifically address guns on campus, she is asking that Georgia legislators push to expand the laws regarding background checks to include all gun transactions, even private ones. 

Others however, argue that it is these very lapses in the law that make a good argument for guns on campus. John Reece, an assistant professor of criminal justice at Colorado Mesa University and a former director of the Western Colorado Peace Officers Academy, used last year's anniversary of the Virginia Tech shootings to make the case for allowing guns on campus. He wrote an op-ed for Universitybusiness.com giving some of the reasons for this position. He wrote, "Bad guys — people who have bad intentions with weapons — are going to get hold of them anyway." Reese said arming others on campus would at least give them some defense.

What do you think? If you have a student on a college campus would you want him or her to be armed? Would you be comfortable knowing that other students also would be armed?