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In response to the campus-carry bills that are making their way through the Nevada Legislature, I ask the following questions and offer the following thoughts:
1. Who will be allowed to carry concealed firearms? Anyone 21 years of age or older who holds a current Nevada concealed weapons permit. How many hours of training must they complete for this credential? Eight. These are not trained law enforcement officers. They are college students insufficiently trained to resolve gun violence in public settings. I fear stray bullets from inexperienced gun owners more than I do from criminals. Not insignificantly, there’s a reason 21- to 25-year-olds pay much higher auto insurance rates.
2. What problem(s) are we trying to solve with these new laws? According to the bill’s author, sexual assault is the crime we are attempting to prevent, as if knowing a 19-year-old girl might have a gun in her purse is going to dissuade a would-be assaulter.
3. How many sexual assaults occurred on the Truckee Meadows Community College campus in 2013? 0.
4. I am told by gun advocates that I might as well assume students in my classes and many faculty and staff members on campus are already armed. If true, why would passing a new law make any difference? If I may assume this, they cannot be “good guys” or “law-abiding” gun owners because they are breaking the law by carrying a gun on campus.
5. Assemblywoman Michelle Fiore, how many sexual assaults happened on Nevada college campuses to women who were within reach of a hypothetical locked box in a car that contains a victim’s gun? Which sexual assault victims, in the midst of an attack, would have time to unlock the box, remove the gun inside and use it?
It’s clear the proposed law to arm college students, faculty and staff isn’t a solution at all. Quite the contrary, it will almost certainly make matters worse.
The writer is a professor at Truckee Meadows Community College.
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