If we allow guns on college campuses, will it deter or increase the overall crime at a particular university? There have been a number of shootings on college campuses. For example, there is the well known campus shooting at Virginia Tech, leaving thirty-three dead in 2007. Also at Northern Illinois University, there was a shooting leaving five dead as well as the University of Arizona shooting with four dead accounting to "Ready,Fire, Aim; The College Campus Gun Fight." However, there is one problem to these shootings, all of these crimes have happened in states that are against guns on college campuses according to "armed campuses." 

States like Utah, Colorado, and Idaho are states that allow you to carry concealed firearms on college campus and have seen no shootings on campus. This is not just about college shooting this is also about the safety of are students at these universities. College students walk the streets at all hours of the day and attend night school classes. Some people walk to their cars and some are force to walk home because the university campus shuttle is shut down for the day. Women and men are forced to walk defenseless without a firearm even if they have obtained a concealed weapons permit. Every year students do not report assaults and rapes because they are afraid and scared. Someone who knows this first hand is Amanda Collins. In Amanda Collins' testimony, she tells her story of being raped on a college campus. The incident took place in a parking garage in front of a police building but could not do anything but lay there helpless, even though she had a concealed weapons permit. She was abiding by the college rules and did not want to be expelled. In her defense, she paid the ultimate price for something that could be easily fixed. She uses a first person experience to advocate for guns on college campuses. She prospective on this issue may be biased because of her immediate involvement with the subject topic at hand. She also leaves you with the idea of "what if." If she had her gun, she may have been able to stop her attacker and also could have stopped a future attack. 

In the article "Ready, Fire, Aim; The College Campus Gun Fight," by Robert Birnbaum, he suggests that there are two different prospectives on the topic of guns on college campuses. "MoreGuns" is Birnbaum's first opinion on the fight on guns on campus. "MoreGuns" are for increasing the number of people with trained firearm experience on college campuses. "MoreGuns" views that the more guns you have, the more secure an individual will be when it comes to self-defense. "MoreGuns" advocates argue that college students and faculty members should be able to carry weapons for their own protection, particularly since history has shown that "colleges cannot protect them from assailants"(Birnbaum, 2013). Birnbaum's other position on this issue is called "BanGuns." This group want to ban all guns from college campuses. They claim that having more guns on campus can cause more violence and more harm to students. One report in Birnbaum's article by the American Association of State College and Universities in 2008 suggests that;

"Gun rights advocates argue that easing gun restrictions for both individual and collective security on campus and made the tear violence. In contrast, the vast majority of college administrators, law-enforcement personnel and students maintain that allowing conceal weapons on campus will pose increase risk for students and faculty, will not get your future attacks and will lead to confusion during emergency situations." 

This quote is significant because it deals with both arguments from "MoreGuns" and "BanGuns". "MoreGuns" thinks increase in guns will lead to less crime and "BanGun" thinks more gun more will lead to an increase in crime.

Getting away from Robert Birnbaum's article, there is another situation at hand. Some people mitake that is unconstitutional. It states clearly in the Declaration of Independence that United States citizens we are given "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness"and have Second Amendment rights. The Declaration of Independence also states "A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed," According to "heritage.com." So it raises the question are you banning someone from their pursuit of happiness or are you violating someone's second amendment right by not allowing them to bear arms? College campuses are restricting students from protecting themselves in a world that is changing everyday and are leaving people more susceptible to violent attacks on college campuses. So the real question is, will guns keep the arbitrator out and the defenseless students safe?

