In 2013, the North Carolina General Assembly passed House Bill 937, making it legal for concealed handgun permit holders on public college campuses to keep a firearm locked in a car’s glove box while it was parked. At the time, the UNC System’s official stance was that having more weapons on campus was not a necessity.
On March 2, House Bill 251 was filed to allow concealed handgun permit holders to carry their weapons on UNC System campuses, alongside North Carolina community college campuses. The argument for this action is reminiscent of the vocabulary that we’ve heard infinitely for years now, being that “the only bad thing stopping a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.”
To preface, I have grown up around guns my entire life. I recognize the physical safety that they can provide and understand that the right to bear arms is enumerated clearly in the Constitution and has been maintained through many Supreme Court decisions, notably with the District of Columbia v. Heller ruling in 2008.
That being said, House Bill 251 is absurd by all measures and only provides a perceived allure of safety on college campuses. In reality, this bill not only puts the lives of students at risk, but also defies the logic and judgement of university leadership, whom we should be listening to the most when making decisions related to higher education.
Students share the same sentiments, as indicated by Pack Poll several years ago, finding that 57 percent of NC State students are opposed to concealed carry, with 29 percent saying that they are strongly opposed to any law that would allow for concealed carry on campus. In the same vein, only 17 percent indicated that they strongly supported the measure. It’s worth noting that Pack Poll found a high correlation between party affiliation and concealed carry attitudes, but that doesn’t detract from the data showing that students don’t want more weapons surrounding them.
College students are also statistically shown to have higher suicide rates than other age groups, with suicide being the second leading cause of death among people aged 15-34. Furthermore, firearm suicide attempts have the highest rate of suicide attempt fatality, totaling at 85 percent. A report by the CDC showed that the highest percentage of adults that have seriously considered suicide and those who have made a suicide plan in the past year was highest in the 18-24 demographic, with the latter totaling 2.5 percent of demographic. There is very little discussion around mental health and suicide rates when discussing the notion of concealed carry, which is ignoring a potential giant of a problem. When statistics show that you are less likely to be killed by someone with a gun on campus than you are to kill yourself, the argument of self-defense should play second-fiddle. A Harvard study from 2008 found that states with higher gun ownership had higher rates of suicide than states with low gun ownership. There is a fatal link between accessibility to firearms and suicide rates.
In a January meeting of the legislature’s Joint Emergency Management Oversight Committee, Brent Herron, the UNC System’s associate vice president of campus safety and emergency operations, reiterated that in an active shooter scenario, armed officers would have a harder time distinguishing between the perpetrator and an individual armed with a firearm. This echoes the UNC System’s stance at the time of 2013, being that higher education leadership realizes that simply flooding the campus with more firearms will not prevent violence from happening.
The individuals who understand safety and emergency procedures should be the ones who we are listening to regarding our … well … safety and emergency procedures. Representative Kyle Hall, an outspoken sponsor of the bill is a real estate broker. Brent Herron is the associate vice president of campus safety and emergency operations. The latter is the individual whose advice we should heed, with no disrespect to Representative Hall, but rather an understanding that experts in the field are the people who should be influencing decision-making on these types of matters.
House Bill 251 is dangerous. House Bill 251 is absurd. House Bill 251 shouldn’t make it out of committee. To the Republican leadership: Will you value common sense and take the advice of higher education officials that understand the negative effects of this bill, or slip into a partisan sense of disillusion that endangers the lives of young people across the state?
