Paul Helmke’s Reasoning For Not Allowing College Students To Have Guns
June 10, 2007
Paul Helmke is the president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. He previously served as the Republican mayor of Fort Wayne, Ind., and is former president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors.
This is what he had to say in a recent editorial about why college students shouldn’t be allowed to have a gun for protection on campuses.
As a former mayor, I am familiar with police activities and how police officers are trained. And one of the lessons they are taught is how extraordinarily risky it is to fire a gun at a suspect in a crowded environment. It is a terrible idea.
Therefore, I don’t support it as part of the answer to making our classrooms safer.
If you went to college, think back to that busy lecture hall with 40, or 60, or even 90 people in it. Think of your position anywhere in that room, and think of an adversary’s position, and think about how difficult it would be to successfully fire at that individual without endangering one of the other people in the room. It’s practically futile.
We all wish James Bond or John Wayne had been in the room when Seung-Hui Cho opened fire. But real life doesn’t work that way. Real life is very complicated, and in a gunfight in a crowded place there are far more possibilities of a bad outcome than a good one.
I guess it’s far better to sit idly by and watch more and more people get slaughtered than prevent it from getting worse. What about a deterrent factor? What about the professor who wedge himself against the door and sacrificed his life to save others? Couldn’t he have stopped it? Or even better, what about the Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States that people like Helmke don’t believe in?
Maybe we should limit his right to free speech. I wonder how he would like that?
Helmke advocates for the decision to be left up to the police departments as to whether guns should be allowed on campus. What is he nuts? That’s as bad as asking our federal government to look out for our tax dollars. Nothing against the hard working policemen who sometimes put themselves in harm’s way for our protection but they are the last people I want to decide whether I can carry a gun.
It is very unfortunate that our society no longer believes in our Constitution, for it is the people of this nation who should decide. The more power and control that we instill in the government, the sooner we are destined to no longer be a great nation with freedom to be all we can be.
It is obvious Helmke was a mayor. That’s why he still advocates for control over the people.
Tom Remington
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Another issue that no one likes to mention, but which sometimes needs to be addressed is this: Sometimes one person will need to be sacrificed to save the lives of many.
The professor who saved the lives of his students at VA Tech knew that. If an armed student or professor had been on the campus that day, it is true they might have injured or killed an innocent person in their attempt to stop the gunman. They might also have been able to prevent a large number of needless deaths.
No one advocates handing out guns like candy and allowing everyone to have them without any vetting or training. It is also true that no one can predict how they will act in a crisis situation until that situation occurs. If, however, you are trained to use a gun, have been taught how to shoot, and have been certified by experts as having the necessary knowledge and expertise to handle a firearm responsibly, why is it out of the question that you could handle that firearm responsibly in a crisis situation?
Actually, all of the reports placed the shooter at the front of the room(s) and the rest of the people hiding together at the back of the room. Furthermore, the fact that when the professor blocked the door the shooter only shot at teh door a few times and then left suggests that, like many shooters, he was not looking for a fight. If he was not looking to encounter resistance, the mere presence of an armed individual trying to stop him might have caused him to wither stop or change his position to enable a clear shot.
But the the real question is if a “civilian” (I hate that term) can not shoot at him because they could hit someone esle, what are the police going to do when go in after him??