It didn’t take long for many of the normal arguments about campus shootings to emerge in the comment thread in my post on the NIU shootings–and they will no doubt be circulated widely today (e.g., too many guns, too few guns, too much violence on tv, too many violent video games, etc.).
One that comes up in that thread is the notion that these shootings are caused by schools being gun free zones and that if these shooters knew that there might be armed students/faculty/whomever that it would dissuade their actions.
There is one glaring flaw with such thinking: these types of shooters are suicidal. One does not engage in such an action if one expects to live through it. Indeed, more often than not they take their own lives. As such, exactly how would it be dissuasive for them to know that they might be killed? Given that these types of shooters are always killed, where is the deterrent effect of having armed students?
Some will argue that if there were armed students that it would minimize the effects of such events. Perhaps. But using the NIU sitiuation as an example, if a guy jumps out from behind a curtain into a lecture hall and starts shooting, the surprise factor alone could have allowed him to shoot 22 plus himself, as happened here. Indeed, if some dude in the back row happened to be packing heat and tried to shoot back there would be the whole crossfire problem.
There is no neat and tidy solution to this kind of problem, which is sad to say, but nonetheless true. Whenever there are large and regular gatherings of people such events will always be possible.
And really, as a university professor, I would not be comforted by the notion that any number of my students might have a gun in their backpacks.
February 15th, 2024 at 8:42 am
Is it mere coincidence that so many of these attacks occur in gun-free zones, and so few happen where guns are allowed?
But I think the point is not so much that allowing guns would serve as a deterrent (possibly, but that point is debatable), but that once these attacks start, they usually only stop when one of two conditions is met: a) they run out of victims (or ammunition), or 2) they’re met with force (someone with a gun, either a police officer or a civilian (Jeanne Assam in Colorado, for example)).
Further, people put way too much emphasis on the “college kids with guns” idea, intending to instill fear in those hearing it. It worked with you, Doc. Just remember, concealed weapon permits require that the holder be 21 years old (I don’t know of any jurisdiction that gives them out under that age), so you’ve wiped out a huge swath of the student body right there. By the way, I’d hope that any such student who is armed would keep his gun a bit handier than in his backpack.
But my bottom line is, how would this situation be worse than it is now, with unarmed victims waiting to be killed by a madman? You might get caught in the crossfire? Do you think that’s more likely than the madman just picking you off when there isn’t any crossfire? Since he doesn’t have to devote his attention to that adult student carrying a pistol, he can calmly swing his muzzle to bear on your forehead, taking his time to make sure you’re good and dead. Does that really sound better to you?
February 15th, 2024 at 8:48 am
Is it mere coincidence that so many of these attacks occur in gun-free zones, and so few happen where guns are allowed?
Any place where large numbers of people gather, you have the potential for something like this to happen.
Having a bunch of 18-22 year olds armed is not going to mitigate against that fact.
My students aren’t, on balance, responsible enough to do their readings and be prepared for class, yet somehow they are responsible enough to bring weapons to class?
Further, the issue is one of deterrence, and you can’t deter someone who is obviously already prepared to die.
Further, the idea that people are going to be able to whip out their guns and pick off the bad guy with great ease is more movie logic than reality.
February 15th, 2024 at 9:19 am
Having a bunch of 18-22 year olds armed is not going to mitigate against that fact.
That’s a strawman. Stick to the facts and reality. Only gun banners talk about 18-year-olds being armed on college campuses. And I specifically addressed that in my comment: you’ve gotta be 21 to get a permit. So stop drinking the anti-civil rights kool aid and stick to facts, please.
And you keep setting up strawmen: “Further, the idea that people are going to be able to whip out their guns and pick off the bad guy with great ease is more movie logic than reality.” Who said that, besides you? I’ve never fired a gun in anger, and although I train for that possibility, I truthfully can’t say how I’d react were I caught in such an attack.
But I still don’t understand how you can believe you’d be worse off in such a situation because somebody is fighting back against the murderer. At the very least, he won’t be shooting at you.
February 15th, 2024 at 9:20 am
And really, as a university professor, I would not be comforted by the notion that any number of my students might have a gun in their backpacks.
Yeah, but Steven, YOU could also come armed. Imagine if you showed up to class the first day with a Rambo-style machine gun and a string of bullets! There would be no students sleeping in class, reading the news paper, etc.. Any transgressions would be met with a “warning shot” fired above their heads.
February 15th, 2024 at 9:56 am
“There would be no students sleeping in class, reading the news paper, etc.. Any transgressions would be met with a “warning shot” fired above their heads.”
Students sleep in class? We must therefore tear down the university!
February 15th, 2024 at 9:58 am
Boyd,
Ok, 21-22 year olds. I still think that at the end of the day you create more potential problems than you solve.
February 15th, 2024 at 11:32 am
It would be nice to have an empirical study of colleges that don’t ban all guns in all circumstances. But since we don’t have that information, we’re just guessing about what would happen. I can’t see how it would be any worse than what we have now, and believe it would be a damn sight better. You guess differently.
What we have ain’t workin’ though. That fact is indisputable.
February 15th, 2024 at 3:28 pm
Even if people were allowed to carry weapons in school zones, it is highly unlikely that they would be used, even in a life-and-death situation. The statisics on people who actually carry weapons and their ability to even produce the weapon, much less fire it, in a real bullets-are-flying environment are pathetically small.
This is why, in the Army, we spend weeks and weeks training with firearms, and go to such great lengths to make training realistic. The so-called fight-or-flight reaction really isn’t just fight-or-flight. There is a third response, and that is to freeze. This is the response that most people have, whether armed or not. I’ve been in combat and I’ve seen highly trained soldiers freeze under fire. These are people who have been indoctrinated in the use of violence, and trained in the effective use of firearms.
Even if you had some people in the lecture hall who were carrying weapons and overcame the freeze or flight reflexes (which will come before the fight reflex in a huge supermajority of cases), you have the issue of training. Most of these people will not have been professionally trained. Their probability of successful use of the weapon under combat conditions will be very low.
And, Dr. Taylor’s right – these gunmen are usually suicidal. Putting more guns in the room is not going to deter them, and ineffective use of weapons is more likely to add to the death toll than subtract from it.
Add to that the fact that most college students are not fully emotionally developed and mature; that there is a lot of alcohol abuse on many campuses; and what you have by putting guns on a college campus – especially in student hands – is a recipe for homicides and accidents.
Bad idea.
February 15th, 2024 at 3:30 pm
You do of course realize that while there have been some horrific events that have taken place, that the bottom line is that thousands upon thousands of classes met across the United States yesterday with no problems whatsoever.
In other words, things actually are working. The problem is that is is nearly impossible to stop a crazy person who is willing to die in the act.
Even if there had been an armed guard in the classroom, an armed nutcase jumping from out from behind a curtain could easily kill half a dozen people before the guard could react. We would still have essentially the same tragedy.
You seem to assume that guns would a) dissuade the crazy persons from attacking–but i do not accept that premise, as I note in the post, these people are suicidal, and you assume that b) people will guns are action heroes who can pull their piece and drop the badguy. You further assume that c) having a significant increase in guns on our campuses won’t have any possible negative side effects, like accidents or crimes of passion or other problems.
February 15th, 2024 at 3:46 pm
The problem is that is is nearly impossible to stop a crazy person who is willing to die in the act
Actually, this is also easy to deal with–have more robust access to mental health treatment and more scrutiny over the increasing use of pharmaceuticals as the primary form of treatment (as opposed to therapeutic methods)
In all of the “debate” over guns, the real issue gets ignored. Both the VA Tech shooter and the guy last night had histories of mental illness. According to the NIU shooter’s former professor, the kid had said he had been discharged from the military for psychological reasons and authorities investigating the shooting said that he had “recently stopped taking medication.”
Framing the issue in terms of “guns on campus” is, frankly, unhelpful and obscures the real challenge–finding ways to get people with mental illness access to effective treatment.
February 15th, 2024 at 3:49 pm
Ratoe:
Thanks for getting to that point, as it was one I was thinking about earlier, and I had not yet found out about the condition of the gunman.
Clearly the only chance we have in stopping these incidences lies in the mental health realm, not in the area of arming college students or professors.
February 15th, 2024 at 4:30 pm
You know, though, it’s a whole other ball of wax to talk about what could or should be done with people with “mental health problems.” Mental health is just like any other aspect of health, and there are privacy and civil liberty issues at stake.
Where do you draw the line? Are we willing to restrict the rights of individuals based on mental health diagnosis? Where do we draw the line? Are we willing to say that anyone with depression, for example, is not allowed to own a gun? How would we enforce that, without a massive sharing of private medical records across different government agencies?
I have several mental health disabilities. I know a lot of other people who do, because I’m a disabled vet, and that’s the bag that a lot of us end up holding. I go to group therapy sessions and the like.
I’ll tell you this for sure – if someone passed a law that took away some of my rights, or allowed the sharing of my private medical information without my consent, I would seriously consider refusing further treatment, and would think very hard about what I did and did not tell my doctor. My health would suffer as a result. I know a lot of my buds would probably lie about their health condition, rather than be treated and risk having information that could be used to either take away their rights, or become the basis of unlawful discrimination (if it fell into the hands of potential employers, insurance companies, banks, or even neighbors)spread all over the place. I am treated successfully because I know that what I tell my psyciatrist and psychologist will go no where else.
A lot of people with mental health conditions are high-functioning and safe people. This is especially true when their conditions are treated. The dangerous mentally ill are typically people who refuse or do not have access to treatment. If we start making discriminatory laws against the mentally ill, it is likely that many people who would otherwise be perfectly safe will become dangerous, because they will take their condition underground. In my thinking, it would not only be discriminatory, but would make matters worse.
The only thing that I think is both fair and has a chance of helping in cases like this is to improve access to mental health medicine; but without court intervention you can’t force someone to use it, and we shouldn’t take away the rights a vast majority of good people because of the bahavior of an infinitesimally small sample.
There are millions of Americans who suffer mental health problems, some diagnosed, some not. How many become violent?
February 15th, 2024 at 4:40 pm
The mental health aspect occurred to me as well. Not only do we need for individuals to have better access to better mental health care, we need to change attitudes toward it. If mental health issues weren’t something that people felt they needed to be ashamed of then maybe fewer people would feel the need to stop taking their meds. I don’t know exactly what this guy’s problems were or what meds he was taking, or why he stopped taking them. But I do know that too many people equate mental problems with “crazy” and too many people view getting help as a sign of personal weakness or inadequacy. If we could learn to change society’s views on mental health it would be a good start.
February 15th, 2024 at 4:47 pm
Ah, here we go with the mental health end of things. We are so quick to legitimize the taking of individuals rights for mental health reasons. There are a huge number of people in the US who have a mental illness of some sort. Where do you draw the line?
I suffer mental illness, and know a lot of people who do, through group therapy and other types of treatment. I’ll tell you this much – the only reason my treatment is successful is that I know what I tell my doctor or my psychologist is confidential, and won’t leave the room. There are only a few conditions under which it is lawful for them to share information about me without my consent, and if that were to change, I would probably refuse further treatment. I know some of my friends would probably begin lying about their conditions to avoid losing their rights and privileges under the law.
We’re talking about a tiny, tiny population of the mentally ill that become violent. Usually they are untreated, or refusing treatment. If we start allowing or requiring doctors to share diagnoses with other government agencies, we will force a lot of people with mental illness to take their illness underground. They will fear – with good reason, in the information age – that the information that leaves the doctor’s office will end up in places it need not end up, Like in employer background checks, and become a basis for unlawful discrimination. They will worry that the information will find its way to potential creditors or insurance companies. And it probably will.
All you succeed in doing by destroying doctor-patient confidentiality is forcing a lot of high-functioning people to take their conditions underground. You make the problem worse, not better.
The best you can do on the mental health end is make treatment more accessible – but treating people differently on the basis of a medical condition, and sharing information about a medical condition, is a slippery slope. You would hurt a lot of good people by going down that road, and I’m not convinced that it would help. I would argue that anyone who is both homicidal and suicidal is highly motivated, and it’s quite easy for a highly motivated individual to get a gun illegally if they can’t get one legally. I mean, if a person is hell-bent on shooting up a room, they’re going to get a gun one way or another.
There are civil liberty issues at stake when we talk about limiting a person’s rights based on a medical condition; and, with mental health, you don’t always have clear-cut diagnoses. This is muddy water that is best left unentered.
February 15th, 2024 at 7:01 pm
[...] could have done much to stop the attack if the shooter was prepared to kill himself so quickly. Sphere: Related Content Filed under: Academia, Criminal Justice || [...]
February 15th, 2024 at 7:09 pm
Cap’n D-
I don’t think anyone said anything about restricting people’s rights based on their health condition.
I mentioned quite specifically access to appropriate treatment. By all accounts, the US has a health care financing system that is inadequate. Millions lack access to insurance and those who do often have policies that don’t cover particular mental health procedures adequately. Policies that do have a mental health component are biased towards cheaper methods of treatment–usually through pharmaceuticals–and don’t cover long-term, one-on-one therapy.
Many anti-anxiety drugs have rare side effects that can induce anti-social behavior. Because of a lax regulatory regime and the power of pharmaceutical coompanies, alternative treatment methods are downplayed.
My point is that we should look at the structure of mental health treatment instead of talking about secondary issuues like gun control.
February 15th, 2024 at 7:29 pm
Ratoe -
I’m sorry if I implied that you were on the side of making mental health records more accessible to different government agencies. My comments were not directed specifically at you.
I was really just trying to get out in the open the issue of civil liberties and medical information regarding mental health. There was much talk about this in the wake of the Virginia Tech shootings, and it seems to pop up when these things happen. There is a rush to deny the “crazies” of the world the same rights as others (such as access to firearms) when a person with a mental illness commits a crime. Why it is acceptable to suggest such things but unacceptable to deny rights on the basis of things like race or religion is something I don’t fully understand, but it happens.
I agree in part about the state of our mental health system, but even with free mental health care, an individual has to voluntarily go to get it, and there will always be a number of individuals who don’t. This is where we have to face the fact that not all crimes can be prevented. Gun control, better mental health – the highly motivated will always find a way. As long as people are free – that is, not being forced into therapy, or otherwise deprived of liberty – some of these kinds of tragedies will happen.
I’m sure in the aftermath of this there will be much talk about what to do about the problem, but I guess what I’m saying is that I don’t think these things can be prevented.
February 15th, 2024 at 11:07 pm
Concealed Carry and University Shootings
Prompted by the NIU shootings, Stephen Taylor persuasively demolishes "the notion that these shootings are caused by schools being gun free zones and that if these shooters knew that there might be armed students/faculty/whomever that it would dis…
February 17th, 2024 at 7:29 am
Truth be told, I’m all for concealed carry permits. I haven’t ever heard of a similar attack at West Point or a police academy.
On the other hand, just before this shooting there was another at a city council meeting. Of all places, you’d expect the city council to have significant police security. And, if I understand correctly, this one did (it just didn’t have metal detectors at the door). Even so, the shooter killed three plus himself and wounded the mayor.
February 17th, 2024 at 11:15 am
My points are that this “gun-free zone” made nobody safer, and also that “more guns present must make things less safe” is presented as a pseudo-fact, with no basis in reality.
If you ever spent time in the presence of many law-abiding people who are armed, and you came away from such events with no one being killed, injured or even scared by those firearms, you would begin to understand why many of us shake our heads in frustration when people say the opposite of what we know to be true.
We have, at least, the empirical evidence of our own experience. We can add to that the experience of places such as Utah, where state colleges are forbidden from banning guns from their campuses, and not one person has been harmed by the presence of guns.
It’s unlike you, Dr Taylor, to misrepresent the truth in this way. You have swallowed the “more guns equals less safety” lie without anything to back it up. More guns in the hands of bad guys is less safe for us, but the same isn’t true when you apply it to the law-abiding. Since we follow the law, and don’t carry firearms when the law says we can’t, we’re put at a huge disadvantage compared to those who don’t care about the law.
So I ask you, please stop repeating the lie that proposals to allow concealed carry permit holders to continue to carry concealed firearms on-campus would make you less safe. You don’t know that, and you’re reacting from emotion, not logic. What you keep saying is demonstrably untrue.
February 17th, 2024 at 11:36 am
Boyd,
The issue here is whether having guns in classrooms will solve the problem of campus shooters.
I don’t think they will.
1) As I noted in the original post, these shooters are suicidal. As such, it is rather unlikely that they will be deterred by the possibility of more guns on campus.
2) The notion that having a permit means that these people will have the skill to draw their weapons and take down the shooter. This strikes me (as I said before) as nothing more than action hero logic. As Capt. D. notes above (#8) even trained soldiers often freeze under fire. The notion that 21 and 22 year old students who are half-comatose during a lecture will be able to instantly know what is going on and reaction properly and quickly in the midst of panicking colleagues is sheer fantasy.
3) BTW, as you yourself corrected me earlier, students under 21 couldn’t have concealed carry permits. So, what if the shooter attacked a freshman level general studies class?
4)You are being awfully simplistic (i.e., good guys with guns are better than bad guys with guns). While I won’t argue with that, per se, I maintain that the issue at hand is whether having more guns on campus would decrease these types of events or diminish their harm. I don’t think that there is any evidence that they would. Now, while it is appealing to assume that having armed persons present could prevent extended attacks, I am not convinced that a firefight in a conference hall would have as perfect an outcome as you think it will.
As such, I am not sure where the “lie” is in my position.
February 20th, 2024 at 3:02 pm
[...] Message sent? Posted by Brenna Ehrlich In Crime 20Feb 08 The other day I got a text message during class. That’s not an unusual ocurrence– my friends are big on texting– what was weird was the message. “NU EMERGENCY,” it read, “You are now confirmed to receive alerts from us.” I know that most schools have this system by now. The University of Chicago used it when grad student Amadou Cisse was killed. The texting system is nothing new. That doesn’t make it any less weird. Texting is for friends–and sometimes random advertisers who somehow get your number– not life-threatening emergencies. But that’s where we are now. We’re scared and grasping for options. Meanwhile, we’ve got the NIU gunman becoming a regular man of mystery. According to the Chicago Tribune, Steven Kazmierczak took great pains to conceal why he did what he did, and why he did what he did when he did (Valentine’s Day), etc. It won’t make life better to know, but we all want to know–desperately. It’s a mystery of In Cold Blood proportions. What kinds of weapons do we have to fight people like this? Not guns; that would be chaos. But some, like this commenter on political site PoliBlog, aren’t so sure: Is it mere coincidence that so many of these attacks occur in gun-free zones, and so few happen where guns are allowed? But I think the point is not so much that allowing guns would serve as a deterrent (possibly, but that point is debatable), but that once these attacks start, they usually only stop when one of two conditions is met: a) they run out of victims (or ammunition), or 2) they’re met with force (someone with a gun, either a police officer or a civilian (Jeanne Assam in Colorado, for example)). Well, that’s obviously an inane idea. A whole classroom of stressed-out college kids packing heat? Please. So, what are we left with? Our cell phones? The reliability of our Verizon plans? Somehow, I’m not that comforted. [...]