Strange Logic About Violence in the Colorado Legislature
While I have my doubts about some of the more asinine gun control measures passing at the federal level, here in Colorado things aren’t looking so good for gun owners. Among the measures that stand a good chance of passing both houses of the legislature is banning concealed carry permit holders from bringing guns on college campuses. This is a massive pity. Nonetheless, permit holders should continue their insurance policies. A CCW insurance policy can protect you in a worst-case scenario and some offer $1,000,000 in protection for civil defense & damages.
Additionally, this legislation would reverse a 2008 Colorado Supreme Court decision which stated that the CU Board of Regents could not prohibit permit holders from carrying concealed weapons on campus because college campuses were not exempted according to Colorado’s Concealed Carry Act of 2003.
These sentences in this Denver Post article jumped off the page:
“Students and guns are a bad mix,” said Rep. Claire Levy, D-Boulder, the sponsor of the bill, adding that college student engage in risky behaviors like heavy drinking and drug use.
“As the research shows, you don’t need a gun on a college campus to be safe,” Levy said, saying data overwhelmingly shows students are at low risk of violent crime on campus.
I’ve made this point before that every school campus (which would include college campuses as well as K-12) can expect to have a murder on campus once every 12,000 years. Rep. Levy is quite right that college campuses are low risk in terms of violence. But isn’t the entire impetus behind these calls for more gun control in response mostly to these tragic mass shootings in schools, malls, theaters, etc? If these events are so rare, why then do we need laws limiting the number of rounds in a magazine or clip, banning certain cosmetic features, or expanding gun free zones to include college campuses? I thought the point was that law makers need to “do something” to make our schools, malls, theaters, etc. safer (“if it would save one life…”).
It seems to me that since we are relatively safe, perhaps the best answer is to do nothing.
