03-08-2008, 11:31 AM
Penn State students seek right to carry weapons
Quote:Friday, Mar. 07, 2008
PSU students seek right to carry weapons
By Adam Smeltz- asmeltz@centredaily.com
UNIVERSITY PARK -- Nathaniel Sheetz, 23, a Penn State graduate student in industrial engineering, often carries a handgun. And he can: He has a permit to carry a concealed weapon.
The moment he steps on campus, however, the permit is no good. Like most other U.S. universities, Penn State prohibits concealed guns on campus, including for those licensed to carry them.
Police receive the sole exception.
But since an outburst of shootings at Virginia Tech and Northern Illinois University, Sheetz and some other Penn Staters are looking to assert their gun-carrying privilege on campus.
"Even an exceptional response time (from police) doesn't stop a killer" from a massacre, Sheetz said Thursday. "When (police) take minutes to get there -- it doesn't matter to someone who's willing to commit suicide.
"The only people who would be able to stop something like that would be students, faculty and staff who are on-site, who already are right there and could engage the shooter," he said.
Plus, Sheetz said, carrying a concealed weapon can enable self-defense. "If you refuse to give people the opportunity to defend themselves, you put a lot of people at risk."
He and roughly 50 to 100 other Penn State students have loosely aligned themselves with Students for Concealed Carry on Campus. SCCC, a national lobbying group that promotes the cause, has grown to include some 20,000 supporters over the past 10 months.
Its presence here is unofficial. There is no formal student group at the University Park campus, though as many as 20 students participated in a weeklong empty-holster protest in October, Sheetz said.
They wore empty holsters to object to the university ban on concealed handguns. Another protest is planned for late April.
Sheetz also has met with Steve Shelow, the director of university police services.
Shelow said he does not see the advocacy as "necessarily radical or extremist."
But he does disagree with Sheetz's arguments. Allowing firearms on campus could launch a string of safety concerns, Shelow said.
They include worries connected to judgment, training, usage, theft and alcohol abuse, he said.
Asked whether more weapons on campus could diminish overall safety, Shelow was frank.
"I'm not sure how to answer that," he said. "But I just think it's not where we want to be."
Bill Mahon, the vice president for university relations, pointed to tragic shootings at non-campus sites, such as shopping malls, where people can conceal handguns.
"Nobody stepped forward and stopped the shooter" in most non-campus circumstances, Mahon said. " ... We all wish it could happen. It sounds like it would be so awesome to see it happen. But there is not, in fact, a long record of it."
He called attention to the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. Of 29,569 Americans who died by gunfire in 2004, only 229 were killed in justifiable homicides by private citizens with firearms, according to FBI data on the Brady Web site.
"We don't believe guns are safe on campus," Mahon said. He also emphasized that nearly none of the accidental gun violence in the U.S. happens on college campuses. (In 2001, more than 800 people in the U.S. were killed in accidental shootings, according to federal data.)
Sheetz said he and his allies on campus will continue to raise awareness for their cause.
Their goal, he said, is "to educate people that every day in Pennsylvania, thousands of people are carrying guns all over the state, and they're not doing anything wrong with them."?