As reported, two suspects from Tennessee have been charged with multiple felonies after they allegedly held a gun to a University of Tennessee student’s head, while robbing that student in his own dorm room. One of the suspects is also being held on unrelated theft charges. My thoughts are below:
Those opposed to gun rights tend to be especially opposed to allowing university students to have guns in their dorms or on their person for self defense. They argue that guns have no place in the halls of higher learning, where ideas should be exchanged peacefully. While this may sound like a good philosophy on the surface, it ignores the fact that the students who are bent on committing school shootings will be quite willing to ignore the gun control laws, as happened at Columbine, Virgina Tech, Northern Illinois University, etc. This should come as no surprise, since no punishment on earth is of any deterrence to a person who plans to kill as many people as they can before taking their own life. The only people who obey the gun bans are the law abiding, non-murderous students, since they don’t want to be expelled and have a felony conviction ruin their future.
Even when it comes to violent individuals who have no intention of killing themselves after committing their crime (such as the armed robbers in this case), the ban on gun possession in a school zone is still no real deterrent. That is because the punishment for committing an armed robbery is much greater than the punishment for possessing a gun in a school zone. Combined with concurrent sentences and plea bargain deals, it is not uncommon for such a criminal to serve not one extra day in jail for the gun possession charge. As a result, the robbers are still willing to bring guns onto campus, where they find only unarmed and defenseless victims.