BGSU does not stand for “Bring Guns, Shoot Us.”

The State Senate of Ohio is considering a bill, already approved by the House as HB 48, to allow guns to be carried and concealed on college campuses (and some other places where they’ve been forbidden, like day care centers). Currently, firearms are not permitted on campus, and this does not seem to have been a problem. If the bill is passed, and the Administration decides to opt-in, BGSU staff, faculty, and students can apply for a conceal/carry permit and start packing heat.

The only rationale I have heard for why it would be a good idea to allow guns on campus goes like this: someone with a gun might come to campus and start shooting others, so it’d be a good idea if other people had guns on campus, too, with which to defend themselves from the first person.

I am not a lawyer, but I am familiar with the “Reasonable Person” standard used in law and law-making. I assert that the rationale for having guns on campus is not one that a reasonable person should embrace. While there have been many shootings in the last several years (due in part to the easy availability of guns), the actual likelihood of being shot and killed in a school shooting remains relatively remote. That opinion was recently expressed by Chief Monica Moll, of the University Police, at a meeting of the BGSU Faculty Senate; she said tornadoes were of greater concern and likelihood. Saying we need guns on campus to increase safety is like if someone had said, during the Cold War, that all classes needed to be held in underground, lead-lined bunkers in case of a nuclear attack. Guns on campus are an overkill solution to something that, statistically, is unlikely to be a real problem at a particular school.ⁱ

In fact, the nuclear weapon analogy is one that helps illustrate how ridiculous the arguments of gun advocates actually are. If everybody having a weapon makes everyone safer, well, fine: stop worrying about Iran having a nuclear weapon. Stop worrying about North Korea. Stop worrying about terrorists using a dirty bomb. See? The proliferation of weapons does not make anyone safer; it makes people less safe. I support the idea that people should have a right to own firearms to protect themselves and their homes. But I don’t believe that right is completely without limits – and neither do you, unless you think it is okay for your neighbor to stockpile nuclear weapons. Just as there are limits on the First Amendment guarantees of freedom of speech – you can’t shout “fire” in a crowded theater, because it poses a public hazard to do so – there ought to be limits on how many and what kind of weapons people can have, as well as requirements for licensing, training, and background checks. Because, absent those things, guns pose a public hazard. But the NRA resists all legislation along those lines, invoking Second Amendment rights as absolute.

The distinction between private and public is one that bears some thinking about. It’s all good and well if you want to have a gun or several to protect your private property (although the statistics on the number of accidental gun deaths in the home are disquieting). But do we need to have guns in a public space, at a public university? What does the Reasonable Person know about a public university? We know that university students are typically between the ages of 18 and 23, and that recent neuroscience research suggests that brain development related to judgment does not mature until the age of 25. We also know that many university students consume alcohol or other drugs, which impair judgment. We know that intoxicated students sometimes end up fighting one another. We know that some students experience the onset of schizophrenia at around the age of typical college students, while others may experience depression and suicidal thoughts. We know that threats of violence and actual violence are part of those incidents of stalking, domestic abuse, and rape experienced by some members of the campus population. We know that having a diverse and international student body and campus population means that not everyone is the same, and that misunderstandings can easily arise; we also know that, despite our best efforts, our campus is not free from racism, xenophobia, or other forms of prejudice. A Reasonable Person might regard introducing firearms into any of these situations as a recipe for disaster.

As far as I can tell, there have been no accidental gun deaths on campus so far this year. That will change in the future if we allow conceal/carry on our campus. The number will vary, but more young people will die at college by accident (to say nothing of drunken rows and suicides) than do now if we allow guns on our campus, because we will have allowed a hazard into our environment. Do we want to send our children to BGSU, so they can die? Is that what college is for? I thought universities were places to learn how to solve problems and get along with one another. In a civilized society, guns have no place in that process.

In the background of this debate, some weird stuff is happening in America. A group of armed, right-wing, anti-government cowboys have seized control of a public bird sanctuary, and demanded that control of it and its lands be returned to the public (by which they mean only themselves). They say they are prepared to defend themselves to the death, but so far the federal government they hold to be tyrannical has responded by not responding. These yahoos appear to be deeply confused about the distinction between private and public property. Meanwhile, elsewhere in America, Black Lives Matter activists have to protest with their hands held up in surrender, in response to an ongoing wave of lethal, excessive force used by police against unarmed black men and women across our nation. And on the campaign trail, more than one candidate for POTUS has been scoring percentage points in election polls by fanning the flames of intolerance against ethnic and religious minorities.

All of these things are, I think, signs that we have become a nation that is afraid. Arguably, this began shortly after 9/11/2001, when our Little Wooden President successfully stampeded Congress into giving up civil liberties under the Orwellian-named PATRIOT Act, and misled the nation into a war that lined his ventriloquist’s pockets. The origins of our fears are ignorance, and ignorance is precisely what universities are designed to combat. Our mass media, too, are supposed to combat ignorance by conveying information, but too often (ever since the demise of the Fairness Doctrine in the 1980s, and the subsequent consolidation of corporate ownership of mass media) our mass media choose sensationalism over level-headed analysis, in the name of ratings and profits. In the service of combating ignorance and seeking the truth, the principles of Academic Freedom are supposed to render the conditions of free speech at a university among the most free in society. There can be no doubt in the mind of any Reasonable Person that the presence of guns on campus, and the implicit threat of violence that they convey, will have a chilling effect on free speech at our university and any other public space into which guns are allowed. Guns and violence never solve an intellectual puzzle; they just change the subject of the conversation to the question of who can exercise the most force. Solving all problems by force is the solution subscribed to by fascists.

Since 9/11, the police have become increasingly militarized, despite the fact that the FBI’s crime statistics indicate that the overall crime rate has been going down every year since 1991, with violent crimes decreasing every year since 1992 except 2001, 2005, 2006, and 2012. Since the election of Barack Obama to the presidency in 2008, both gun ownership and the number of Hate Groups have increased markedly. The state of our mass media is such that a considerable number of Americans are confused about where our president was born, and whether or not he is a Muslim (because his middle name is Hussein), even though the First Amendment renders that question moot, especially if you understand the difference between the public and private spheres. Clearly, since 9/11, we have become a nation that has been made afraid of people we think are unlike ourselves (even when those people are our neighbors). That is a national tragedy for a nation that is a pluralist nation, and whose national motto is E Pluribus Unum – “out of many, one.”

As an undergraduate, I had an internship at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change, in Atlanta. And so, on every MLK Day that passes, I am frustrated with media coverage of Dr. King and his significance. The media seldom remind us that Dr. King held a degree in Sociology, or that he was an avid student of Philosophy. Dr. King’s ministry was profoundly influenced by the philosophy of Personalism as espoused by Edgar Brightman, the social thought of Reinhold Niebuhr, and the theology of Paul Tillich. King’s thinking was interdisciplinary. Let us remember the message as well as the messenger. Dr. King did not practice nonviolence because he was a nice guy, or even because he was a devout Christian; he practiced nonviolence because he understood that violence does not work. Dr. King rejected the premise (practically a proverb in American culture) that the ends justify the means; he was certain that they did not, and that means had to be in keeping with one’s desired ends. Thus, one could not secure peace through violence, or secure justice through unjust means. King did not conceive of his pacifism as a mere turning of the other cheek, or as a sign of weakness (as proponents of violence usually characterize pacifism); Dr. King considered nonviolence a courageous confrontation with violence, and a refusal to participate in the cycle of violence, even if it meant coming to harm oneself. Let us understand, then, from this perspective, that guns will not ensure peace, and that the promise of violence will not keep us safe from harm. Let us understand that we cannot achieve a just and democratic society through unjust and anti-democratic means (whether those be the armed occupation of a bird sanctuary, the political scapegoating of some portion of our population, or the unchecked exercise of power). Let us understand that the people who want to bring guns into public spaces are cowards and fraidy-cats who have no real conviction in the strength of their ideas to persuade others, and let us pity them, but not humor them. Our national motto, “Out of many, one” requires that we strive to get along with one another, and not eradicate those with whom we disagree, or those whom we fear are different. And as our diverse world becomes smaller and more complex, our responsibilities as Americans to promote democratic deliberation rather than the use of force become even more important. Like charity, peace begins at home. Conceal/carry has no legitimate place in the land of the free and the home of the brave; we can do better without guns. Why don’t we celebrate MLK’s life by trying not to kill anyone today. Or tomorrow. Or the next day. Instead, try to imagine a world in which the means were in keeping with the desired ends. Try to imagine the world we might have, today, had Dr. King not been killed by an assassin’s bullet. As the rock band Concrete Blonde observed, “John Lennon, Dr. King, Harvey Milk, all gone for goddamned nothing. [If] God is a bullet, have mercy on us, everyone.”

– Dan C. Shoemaker
Bowling Green