Higher Ed Law Prof Blog

Are More Guns the Answer?

In the red wake of the horrible tragedy at Virginia Tech in which more than 30 students died at the hands of a single crazed shooter, weirdness rules. On a number of college campuses across the country last week, sick hoaxes emptied dorms and classrooms. The weirdest sequel of all, however, was a call by the Virginia Citizens Defense League to permit students over 21 to carry concealed weapons.
VCDL’s President Phillip Van Cleave was quoted by the media as contending, “Imagine what would happen if the gunman was lining people up and somebody had pulled a gun and shot him in the head --- this would be over,” Never mind that the Virginia Tech killer reportedly entered classrooms randomly and just started spraying bullets. Would the result, if other students had been packing, more likely have been a sort of gunfight at the OK Corral?
More significant are these statistics for 2004, the most recent year for which comprehensive data is available on the web:
• Of 29,569 gun deaths in the U.S., 16,750 (56%) were suicides.
• Among 26 industrial countries, 86% of all gun deaths involving children occurred in the U.S.
• A gun kept in a home was 22 times more likely to be used in a domestic homicide, an accidental shooting, or a suicide than to be used in self-defense.
These stats from the Illinois Council Against Handgun Violencesuggest that arming all adults, as the VCDL proposal implies, will result in more shootings, not fewer.
Compared to America’s 29,000+ gun deaths in 2004, the United Kingdom reported 163 gun deaths in 2003. Most West European countries, as well as Japan, recorded similarly low incidents of gun-related injury and death. Why? In my humble opinion, it’s mainly because people in those countries don’t have easy access to guns.
Similar to VCDL’s crackpot notion that students over 21 should be authorized to carry concealed firearms is the notion, floated every time a students dies of alcohol poisoning, that the solution is to lower the drinking age to 18. Here it’s the proponents who have the advantage where our European cousins are concerned.
Yes, most European nations have lower drinking ages than the U.S. To my way of thinking, several crucial differences argue against going down the European path of low (or non-existent) drinking ages. First, the U.S. lacks the centuries’ old Continental tradition of treating wine and beer as common items on the lunch and dinner table. Our kids simply aren’t reared to consider alcoholic beverages as commonplace components of every meal.
Second, most Continental kids, like most European adults, especially in urban areas, rely on public transportation. Drunk driving isn’t the threat across the pond that it is in America, where even 16-year-olds have easy access to wheels.
Last but not least, our Euro cousins aren’t armed the way we are. Even the most avid firearm proponent would agree, I think, that booze and bullets don’t mix.
We’d all love a simple solution to the mindless carnage that occurs annually due to firearms and alcohol abuse. Living uncomfortably close to a city which averages in excess of one homicide per day, I would welcome a quick, painless remedy as much as the next guy.
Unfortunately, making firearms and alcohol more easily accessible to young adults is no silver bullet.

When Will the Classroom Killings Stop?

Today a crazy gunman opened fire in a Virginia Tech
residence hall and a little later in a classroom across campus, killing
some 30 people in what is being labeled “the deadliest shooting rampage
in U.S. history.” The gunman subsequently was killed, bringing the
death toll to 31. As I wrote this column, no one knew the murder’s
motive.
Virginia Tech’s president was quoted by the Associated Press as
saying, “Today the university was struck with a tragedy that we
consider of monumental proportions. The university is shocked and
indeed horrified."
In 21st century America we have almost come to accept these
horrible mass murders as natural disasters. This community has been
hit by a hurricane. That one has been torn up by a tornado. Oh, and
that one over there has been blasted by a madman with a gun. The Tech
student body no doubt will be afforded free access to “grief
counselors.”
We used to say, "Everybody talks about the weather, but no one
does anything about it." Should we now say, "Everybody talks about gun
violence, but no one does anything about it?" Living here in suburban
Philadelphia, I watched as the City of Brotherly Love averaged one
homicide per day in 2006. Philly passed the 100-homicide mark during
the first quarter of ’07, suggesting it well may be on its way to
breaking last year’s record. Here, too, students are, often as not,
counted among the innocent victims of gun violence gone out of control.
Yeh, I know… guns don't kill people, people kill people. But these
killers are better armed than ever before. When I was a Franklin and
Marshall College student a lifetime ago, I witnessed plenty of fights,
often of the town v. gown variety. A group of fraternity punks, such as
myself, might get a bit rowdy in a local tavern. The blue-collar crowd
at the opposite end of the bar might take umbrage. The upshot might
then be a quick exchange of fisticuffs. On a rare occasion a knife or a
broken bottle could come into play.
My point is: almost nobody carried a gun.
By contrast today, if you are confronted by a belligerent bar
fly, run for your car.
Odds are better than even the guy is packing.
No need to look for trouble in a local bar, however. Virginia
Tech is not the only school where guns have gotten into classrooms.
Just last year a local high school student entered one of my home county’s
Catholic high schools, discharged his father’s AK-47, then shot
himself. We could only be grateful that the troubled youth didn’t
first kill his classmates, making Delaware County [PA] the scene of a new
Columbine massacre.
The Canadian college professor, Marshall McLuhan - best known
during my college days for saying "The medium is the message" -
asserted that Americans live in "Bonanzaland," i.e., the Wild West of
the 1880s. Well, folks, that time is long past. Our K-12 schools have
rightly adopted zero-tolerance policies toward weapons in their halls
and classrooms. Colleges, too, have clamped down on violence --- even
the fisticuffs of my era.
Obviously, this isn’t enough.
Neither are grief counselors enough.
The Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution may give us all the
right to bear arms… though some judges and scholars have questioned the
Supreme Court’s reading of that bit of the Bill of Rights. Regardless
of what rights we want to read into the Second Amendment, I say our
daughters and sons have a higher right: to enjoy and benefit from their
educations without looking over their shoulders and wondering whether
today is the day their classroom is riddled with bullets.
I don’t have the answer, folks. I just know in my guts that,
until we dispense with the grief counselors and the platitudes, and get
mad as hell about travesties like this latest massacre at Virginia
Tech, the killing is just going to continue.

Duke Lacrosse Players Aren't Heroes

The Duke Lacrosse players, charged with an assortment of sex crimes, are now entirely exonerated, and the DA who charged them has apologized. MSNBC News Report

Let's not make these young men out to be either heroes or maryrs. Yes, they have been cleared of the rape and other felony charges which have haunted them. And, yes, those who were so quick to assume they were guilty have come to regret their rush to judgment. Well and good.

All we are suggesting is that, as the pendulum of justice now swings in the opposite direction --- the miscreant DA may face disbarment --- we shouldn't lose sight of the underlying facts. These young men are part of the fraternity who brought the strippers to the frat house. Is this what Duke, or any other university, ought to allow? And will anyone, other than these young men, ever really know what happened on, as they say, "the night in question?" Does the young dancer who accused them of rape really know the truth... or was she actually so traumatized by "something" that happened that night, that she has lost her grasp of the facts?

These hard questions linger, and are likely to haunt the lives of the major players in this sordid drama for the rest of their lives.