Many of the responses to my last article “The trouble with University gun policy” cited the apparent rarity of campus crime (particularly violent rape, though that is not the topic at hand in this article) as witness against the various points I made about the necessity of allowing students to carry firearms in self-defense. Some argued that police were sufficient to stop crime, and that nothing more than that would be necessary.
Last Friday, of course, the front page of Student Life carried a story that weighs against the first point, and flatly contradicts the second. Crime does happen, and the police did nothing to stop it. I don’t claim to know very specific details about the mugging, but nonetheless, it’s a relatively safe bet that the perpetrators will see no real negative consequences come out of their action (“The case is being investigated, but we haven’t gotten anywhere as of yet.”).
Reading through this story, there are several very obvious points at which a gun would have prevented or stopped the crime. The most obvious, of course, is that if the perpetrators knew that their potential victims might be armed, they would probably think twice about attempting such a robbery-two college students’ wallets are hardly worth the risk of serious injury or death at the end of a firearm. Even if these particular students had decided not to carry, they would be safer because other students would.
Also, the female student in the story had the time and opportunity to pull out a cell phone from her purse. If she had had a handgun in her glove box, say, she would presumably have been able to use that to stop the thugs who were robbing them from punching and beating her friend. (Of course, per Washington University gun policy, she would not be able to have a gun in her car if it were on campus.)
Would anyone honestly say that she should not be able to use force, or the threat of force, to stop a group of apparently physically superior men from assaulting and battering her friend? Note that the robbers had a gun themselves-if things had gone differently, her friend may very well have been murdered for his disobedience to their demands. I would suspect these two students are responsible ones, at least as much as most other Washington University students are. Why should they be prohibited from the means of defending themselves in such situations?
Now, one might object that even if such a thing does happen occasionally, it does not happen frequently enough to justify allowing students to carry weapons. This seems to be a very upside-down claim. For something as important as, potentially, saving my own life, it seems negligent and cruel to deny me the means of doing so, simply on the grounds that it isn’t likely to occur. It doesn’t seem that the defense of my very life by the responsible owning and carrying of a small firearm should be trumped by considerations of the uneasiness of other students on campus, or simply that it’s not worth the trouble, or any such argument.
Second, one might object that an increased amount of firearms would simply increase the amount of violent crime occurring on campus. However, would anyone seriously doubt that the gun-if it was real-used by the assailant in the mugging was obtained illegally? For criminals who thrive off of using violence and intimidation, having such an enormous advantage over victims is worth the relatively small amount of trouble necessary to obtain an illegal weapon. Responsible citizens, however, tend to follow the law and remain disarmed. So, gun control will tend to keep guns in the hands of criminals, and out of the hands of their victims. Why is this a good policy?
The final point I’d like to repeat and emphasize is that police simply are not effective at stopping crimes in progress. We cannot rely on them to save us from attackers. They won’t get there in time, and they probably won’t find the aggressor to bring to justice when they do. I would honestly be very surprised if the police even did further investigation into this mugging, let alone actually track down the perpetrators. We cannot rely on them to save us.
Violence and crime are unfortunate circumstances of our lives and we must meet them by defending ourselves. But first, we have to let that be an option.