Michigan Considers Partial Repeal of Victim Disarmament Law

The State of Michigan is mulling over a bill that would remove the statewide ban on concealed-carry on college campuses, which sounds like a “Win!” but the bill is rendered practically impotent: it would basically permit you to concealed-carry on the sidewalk, and to keep a firearm in your car. But you can’t have it in dormitories or classrooms or stadiums, etc. Cue the alarmists, anyways:

There are already too many crazy people. Why would anybody need a gun in this city? —Laura Harlow, U-M employee

I don’t know, Laura. Why don’t you ask the residents and students living in Blacksburg, VA.  (Hint: There was only one person who needed to be disarmed on that infamous day.)

There’s a huge number of people who drink in college. It’s absurd to mix alcohol with the right to have a gun. —Unnamed student

I’m willing to wager that the number of individuals who have used a legally permitted concealed weapon in the commission of a crime is exceeded at least 100-fold by the number of individuals who have committed crimes with unlicensed/illegal concealed weapons, but since the bill still prohibits firearms from dormitories and many campus buildings, this is kind of a red herring.

The Brady Center likes to highlight about 130 problem events involving CCWs over the last decade and a half. However, a cursory examination of these events shows that some of them are legitimate accidents (e.g., 56, 97), and many of them involve the failure of the State to properly enforce the CCW statutes and regulations already on the books (e.g., 43, 47, 49, 89, 94). For example, No. 89 highlights about 5,000 violent crimes committed in Texas between 1996 and 2001.

Texas • January 1, 1996 – August 31, 2001. The Violence Policy Center has published four reports on CCW licensees in Texas. They found that Texas CCW licensees were arrested for 5,314 crimes between January 1, 1996 and August 31, 2001, and since Texas’ CCW licensing law went into effect, licensees have been arrested for an average of 2 crimes per day.

This sounds alarming, until you learn that during that same period of time in Texas there were over 700,000 violent crimes committed; so violent crimes involving CCW permit holders numbered less than 1% of all violent crimes.

The overwhelming majority of our campus members, including students, faculty and staff as well as parents of our students, demand a safe and secure campus and would not endorse the idea of having firearms on campus —Ken Magee, University of Michigan Police Chief

This again? Every victim of gun violence represents failure of the State in its most hallowed charge: keeping its citizens safe. Until the gun control advocates recognize that there are times in our lives when the police cannot protect us, I’ll have to keep reminding them that occasionally the need arises for an ordinary citizen to take matters into her own hands.