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University of Central Florida group advocates letting students carry guns
Quote:University of Central Florida group advocates letting students carry guns
Members of the Knight Rifle Association say letting students carry guns would prevent campus shootings.
Jessica J. Saggio | Special To The Sentinel
March 6, 2008
After the deadly shootings at Northern Illinois University on Feb. 14, one club on the University of Central Florida campus thinks it has a solution.
The Knight Rifle Association is a group of UCF students dedicated to promoting their Second Amendment rights on campus while teaching gun safety and self-defense. The club, founded last summer, thinks that students' right to bear arms might be a solution to shootings seen at NIU and Virginia Tech.
"You can have a gun when you're at Wal-Mart; you can have a gun when you're eating at a restaurant; but for some reason, when you come on campus you lose your right to carry," said Patrick Hale, a founding member and president of KRA.
Florida law makes bringing a firearm on a school campus a third-degree felony. This is what the KRA hopes to change.
"It fills me with sadness to see innocent people hurt, not just the victims but their families, too," said Michael Vaughan, a KRA founding member and treasurer. "I also see this as a clear example of why concealed carry on campus is so important. It is just not possible to control everyone's actions in a free society."
This notion seems a bit extreme to some who suggest it might cause more harm than good.
Ross Wolf, assistant professor of criminal justice, said Florida's laws seem fairly lax and UCF's policies seem to be working.
"We don't have security screening or metal detectors, so students could technically bring a gun on campus without anyone knowing," said Wolf. "The problem is if you allow everyone to carry guns all the time it opens up the likelihood that guns will be used."
Many students feel the KRA's approach isn't the way universities should respond.
"To be quite honest, I think it's a horrible idea, especially in the wake of what happened at NIU," said John Martino, president of UCF College Democrats. "The whole point of having police and safety on campus is to prevent things like that. People get really stressed out in college, and I don't think we should allow for the opportunity to let things get out of hand. I think guns should be left to people like the police and not to students."
Martino said he felt expanding the police force on campus would be a better form of prevention.
The club says its 55 members focus on gun safety, laws and sport at their meetings every other Thursday. The club has also arranged for students 21 or older to obtain carrying licenses at a discounted rate. Through collaboration with Bill Bunting, chairman of the Republican Party of Pasco County, students will be able to go through a certification program for $15 to $20. Licenses can cost anywhere from $72 to $450, according to the Florida Division of Licensing Web site. The program teaches federal and state laws along with safety and handling.
Bunting, a certified instructor, has taught students such as former Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris and is pushing for legislation to allow guns on Florida campuses. Bunting said he supports the club and stressed the impact he thinks a change in carrying laws could have on preventing future incidents.
"When was the last time you heard of a gun show being held up?" Bunting said. "Why? Because if you go in there shooting, you're going to get shot. Same thing with these students; if they know they're going to get shot, they're not going to do it. There's only one state in the nation that has concealed carry permits for both students and faculty, and that is Utah, and they have zero problems, and I think they should be a role model for the rest of the country."
Wolf suggested otherwise.
"If police were to respond to an incident like [NIU], if everyone had their gun out it would certainly be difficult for the police to determine who the bad guy is, and those people carrying the gun may be hurt by the police," Wolf said. "There's no right answer; it's an ongoing debate. I think what we need to look at is more the social aspect of why these crimes are occurring and what can we do to stop them."
NIU has a police force of 31 sworn officers for a student population of 25,254, according to the NIU Office of Public Affairs. UCF has an enrollment of 48,699, as of fall 2007, and a police force of 60 officers, said Sgt. Troy Williamson of the UCF Police Department. However, Cpl. James Roop of the UCF Police Department said faculty and staff will soon receive extra training from the police command staff on responding to emergency situations such as shootings.
"Clearly, it's the law enforcement's mandate to deal with those issues," said UCF police Chief Richard Beary. "We have the equipment and the training and that's what it takes to handle these issues. It's not just the firearms; it's the training that goes along with it."
Although not everyone agrees with the KRA's approach, the club's existence wasn't formally challenged. Martino supported the club's voice, along with Eric Eingold, a Student Government Association senator.
"I support their right to speak out [about] whatever they want," said Eingold. "As long as they aren't going around using people as targets, I'm fine with it."
As for university officials, no plan of action has been made to expand campus protection in response to NIU. However, a task force was created to review campus security after Virginia Tech, and the issue is ongoing, said UCF spokesman Grant Heston.
"I am confident in the plans and abilities of our campus police, emergency-management staff and community partners to respond quickly and effectively should the need arise," said UCF President John Hitt in a campuswide message.
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SC Might Allow Guns on Campuses, Universities
Quote:There are ten states in the nation looking at whether or not to allow people with concealed weapons permits on college campuses.
One of those states is South Carolina...
A bill making it's way through the South Carolina State House may allow people with concealed weapons permits to be allowed to take guns on state property, including universities....
"Well, if you're a perpetrator, you take guns onto school property any way... You can look at Virginia Tech as a clear example," said State Representative Gary Simrill, who has a Concealed Weapons Permit, and takes his gun with him to the state house.
He said, "As soon as I pull into the state house parking deck I am in violation of the law."
He says the bill is to clear up some of those loop holes in the law to allow those who legally have permits, who have gone through SLED training, and intensive back ground checks to carry weapons in accordance to the law.
It is not intended to let those people take the law into their own hands.
Rep. Simrill said, "You're giving the same rights to the law abiding citizen... what the second amendment talks about, that the perpetrator or the criminal already takes for granted."
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Sen. Erwin to amend campus gun bill
Quote:Sen. Erwin to amend campus gun bill
Senator said shootings in Auburn and Chapel Hill fueled decision to make changes
Wayne Grayson and Dave Folk
The Crimson White
Issue date: 3/14/08 Section: News
Before going into a committee meeting early Thursday morning, Sen. Hank Erwin told The Crimson White he plans to make two amendments to one of his highly debated campus gun bills.
The first amendment would remove a portion of the current legislation that allows students who meet certain qualifications to carry a gun on state university and college campuses if they are involved in a campus ROTC program.
A second amendment would disqualify any students currently on any psychological drugs from consideration for carrying a gun on campus.
Erwin said he included the ROTC portion in the first draft of the bill to ease the minds of university officials.
"I put that in there originally to make that as a test experiment to make that a very narrow bill that would maybe give feelings of security to the university officials all over the state of Alabama that we're not going to open this up and make it a Wild West," he said.
He said he felt the requirement added an element of supervision to the process required for students to carry a gun.
"It led me to think that, with that type of military training and professionalism, that they would be the best ones to experiment with to see if it would work," Erwin said.
However, Erwin said his opinion has changed in light of the recent shootings in Chapel Hill, N.C., and Auburn.
"But I'm going to put in an amendment to delete that particular point so that it opens it up to any student, especially women," he said. "After the Auburn shooting, I want to make sure that women have priority to be able to carry on campus."
"The girls are the most vulnerable, and I know that a lot of parents are concerned about the safety of their girls when they send them off even if they're sending them out down the road to the grocery store," Erwin said. "And some parents have gone so far as to get their girls license to carry even when they're not in college. So why should they be denied the right to protect themselves on a college campus if their parents feel like they ought to be protected when they're going to the shopping mall?"
Erwin said he thinks, when universities impede students from bringing guns onto their respective campuses, they are breaking state law.
"If the state feels like you're qualified to carry in your own hometown, why would you not be able to carry on a college campus?" Erwin said....
Erwin said the second amendment, which would add a stipulation to the legislation that will prevent students who are on any psychological drugs from carrying a gun on campus, will ensure that those students with a gun on campus will be able to make clear-minded decisions.
"[The amendment is designed] to ensure that folks who have some emotional challenges don't create a problem to the entire student body while they work through those challenges," he said.
Erwin offered the bill for consideration in the state legislative session starting Feb. 5 and said he was inspired to do so after witnessing the aftermath of the Virginia Polytechnic Institute shootings on April 16, 2007.
"The college campus has always been considered to be a bubble of security where students can come and grow into adulthood," Erwin said. "But Virginia Tech smashed that to smithereens.
"I say it's time to let the law abiding students defend themselves."
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Seems good to me. Why should students be denied 2nd Amendment protection?
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Latest: Murdering UIUC student was sexually exploited by perverted UIUC prof:
Quote:Kazmierczak also struggled with his sexual identity, telling his former girlfriend of encounters with men, including a University of Illinois biochemistry professor, according to the magazine.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local...2056.story
Let's assume you are a bored UIUC professor stuck in a dead end job, laboring under the mistaken belief that you have some public service obligation outside your discipline.
You look around for somebody's private business to meddle in under the guise of correcting some great social injustice, and notice:
a) a fellow professor is queering off with a male student, resulting in that student going on a murderous rampage
b) a university administrator who shares your residence but not your last name is cited by the government for selling mutant experimental pigs to the public for food
c) the state administrator to whom you send your extra-discipline "research" is an adjudicated civil rights violator and admitted sexual deviant
d) the website where you post your mindless commentary and drivel is a front for pedophile-pandering gay boy pornography
e) your own daughter maintains two filthy internet blogs where she reveals that she is a lesbian, that she listens to the "suck my dick fuck my ass song" with dear old dad, and that her mother refers to Catholics as "dirty Papists"
f) a professor in your department received his PhD after submitting as his individual work a dissertation that he admits really was co-authored by fifteen (15) people.
To which of these outrageous practices do you devote your spare time to put a deserved end?
According to UIUC physics professor George Gollin (George D. Gollin, George Dana Gollin) the correct answer is: none of the above.
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![[Image: 35714183.jpg]](http://www.chicagotribune.com/media/photo/2008-02/35714183.jpg)
Steven Kazmierczak, troubled UIUC student who was sexually exploited by a colleague of George Gollin (George D. Gollin, George Dana Gollin) before going on murderous rampage.
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