Individuals openly carrying handguns recently organized and gathered for a “No More Sitting Ducks” demonstration to demand campus carry at Ohio State University.
The demonstration came in the wake of the November 28 car and knife attack on the OSU campus, and it puts more pressure on Governor John Kasich (R), who is now weighing whether to sign the state’s recently passed campus carry legislation.
According to the Lantern, Merrill Kaplan, “a professor in the English and Germanic departments” who said the armed demonstrators made her “feel unsafe,” opposed the pro-campus carry demonstration. Kaplan said:
One of my nightmare scenarios is that an attacker bursts into my classroom, with a weapon, and that students leap to their feet and there’s crossfire, and there are several people who [are] armed, who are not law enforcement, who make the situation more complicated, with more lead in the air. The chances of that happening go up when there are people in that room who have guns.
But campus carry is not being considered in a vacuum. In other words, it is not theoretical proposition for which we have to run through list of what-ifs. Rather, campus carry is the law of the land in Colorado, Utah, Idaho, Mississippi, Oregon, Texas, Wisconsin, and, beginning July 1, 2017, Kansas. Kaplan’s scenario has not occurred on campuses in any of these states.
A mass shooting at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon, on October 1, 2015, but that school had a ban on campus carry. (Oregon’s campus carry law applies to universities, while allowing colleges to opt out.)
Campus carry legislation is sitting on Governor Kasich’s desk right now: “No More Sitting Ducks.”
AWR Hawkins is the Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and host of “Bullets with AWR Hawkins,” a Breitbart News podcast. He is also the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.