This May Comes As a Shock

The BBC has an article about the movement here in the United States to enact laws allowing people with legally recognized ability to carry a firearm to do so on college campuses. Like most issues involving guns you have those who are for the right of the people to carry and thus defend themselves and then you have the side that is wrong. The article interviews David Burnett, the president of Students for Concealed Carry on Campus, as well as some Brady Campaign shill show should know better. What interested me was the following quote by the Brady Campaign shill (literally in this case):

“You think you know what you would do. But, honestly, you will lose your mind if you are involved in something like that.”

Colin took four bullets from the Virginia Tech shooter back in 2007. “One above my left knee,” he explained, “in both my hips, and through my right shoulder.”

Colin was a defenseless victim of the Virgina Tech shooter and still advocates that he and every other student remain defenseless. If I believed he had malicious intent instead of just being stupid I’d almost think he believed that everybody else should get shot because he was shot.

The fact of the matter is had somebody at Virginia Tech had access to a firearm they could have stopped that scumbag shooter before he murdered those 10 people in Colin’s French class.

“These people are afraid. I totally understand that. I was there. But their fear is misdirected.

“If that idea (that carrying a gun makes you safer) was true, we’d already be the safest place in the world.

This is a false type of logic. What Colin just implied was because A implies B and B implies C then A implies C. I can point out that there has been no case of liberalized (using the classical definition of liberal) carry laws leading to an increase in violent crime. On the other hand I can point to states such as Florida where liberalized carry laws were following immediately by a lowering of the violent crime rate. Thus it can be said that liberalized carry laws imply either lower or no change in violent crime rates but not an increase in violent crime rates. The implication is not causality though as there could be any number of other factors that lead to the lower violent crime rates. What can be stated though is liberalized carry laws do not cause higher violent crime rates.

The other mistake Colin makes is trying to imply liberalized carry laws are for the safety of society. I’ve already explained how liberalized carry laws don’t lead to an increase in violent crime but these laws also aren’t meant to benefit all of society but to benefit individuals. Liberalized carry laws allow individuals to carry a means of defending themselves. This individual benefit, like most individual benefits, can end up positively effecting society as a whole but the basis of this benefit is to help individual people.

Since everybody isn’t carrying a gun liberalized carry laws don’t make all of society safer. Since I carry a gun liberalized carry laws have made me safer though. This increase in my safety has lead to no negative impact to the safety and quality of life of other people around me. Thus the law has a net positive effect as in benefits somebody and doesn’t negatively impact anybody (besides the criminals who are trying to negatively impact individuals of course).

Due to these statements I put forth the fact that anti-gunners like Colin have absolutely no leg to stand one.