The latest GOP guns fix: Top NC Republican suggests arming students | Opinion
House Speaker Tim Moore has a solution for the gun violence that has sent UNC-Chapel Hill into lockdown twice in a matter of weeks: arm college students.
Seriously?
Moore seemed to suggest that college campuses shouldn’t be gun-free zones, saying the “best deterrent against a criminal with a gun is a good guy with a gun,” The News & Observer reported Thursday.
Moore then went on to question why students have to be unarmed “when clearly there’s a way bad guys can get on campus.”
Because what we need is for thousands of college students to be walking around with firearms in their backpacks or hoisted to their hip at frat parties.
The “good guys with guns” myth, coined by the National Rifle Association, is often parroted in response to those who call for stricter gun laws. As school shootings have increased across the country, many conservatives have suggested that teachers ought to be armed to better protect their students. Bills have been proposed in the North Carolina General Assembly that would give raises to teachers that undergo basic police training and carry guns at school, though they haven’t passed.
But this theory is problematic for a number of reasons. It risks an increase in unintentional shootings from unsafe storage and insufficient training. Simply put, the idea that more guns might lead to fewer deaths is illogical and unsupported by evidence. Reporting has shown that shootings are stopped by bystanders only a small percentage of the time, and higher rates of gun ownership is correlated with higher, not lower, rates of firearm homicides.
The United States is the only country in the world that has more guns than people. If having more guns really makes us safer, then why do far more people die from gun violence in America than in any other developed country?
Moore is right that we can’t simply snap our fingers and get rid of guns. That’s both unrealistic and unconstitutional, as Americans do have a right to bear arms. But gun violence is on the rise in part because we have allowed our society to become saturated with firearms, and inviting even further proliferation is the last thing we need.
There are steps that can be taken to address gun violence — reasonable ones that don’t involve an 18-year-old bringing a Glock to Biology 101. Universal background checks, restrictions on assault weapons and a red flag law, which allows authorities to temporarily take guns away from those deemed to be a threat to themselves or others, would be a start. It may not solve every problem, but it’s better than nothing.
The problem is that lawmakers have historically refused to take such steps, and they don’t show signs of changing that anytime soon. According to WRAL, Moore said there’s little chance of the legislature even passing something like a red flag law, which could keep guns out of dangerous hands, despite recent events and the pleas of traumatized UNC-Chapel Hill students.
Instead, Moore and his colleagues might want more weapons, not fewer, on these college campuses. With ludicrous suggestions like these, Republicans aren’t even bothering to pretend they take gun violence seriously. Rather than passing laws that might make us safer, they want to turn college campuses into the Wild West. God help us all.
This story was originally published September 14, 2023 at 3:41 PM with the headline "The latest GOP guns fix: Top NC Republican suggests arming students | Opinion."
