Supporting Lawful Concealed Carry on Campus

Supporting Lawful Concealed Carry on Campus
by David Felbeck

Lansing, MI – -(AmmoLand.com)- I am writing this in support of Senate Bill SB-747, sponsored by Senator Randy Richardville. As a resident of Ann Arbor and a concealed pistol licensee, passage of this bill is essential to the well-being of myself and all licensees, for without this law a person travelling through the University of Michigan (and all the other public universities) will have no way of knowing whether he is violating some unknown university ordinance.

State preemption of firearms laws is essential to an orderly state, where everyone knows the rules wherever he travels.

Every objection to this bill that I have seen has been rebutted forcefully by factual experience during the past eight years, following passage of 2000 PA381, the “shall issue” concealed carry bill. There has been no “blood in the streets.” There has been no more road rage than already existed, and virtually never by a licensee. The record shows that concealed pistol licensees in the country’s concealed carry states possess the lowest crime rate of any identifiable group, including police and kindergarten teachers. Why does anyone believe that allowing concealed carry on university property would lead to a different outcome? It hasn’t happened in Michigan and it won’t happen.

The down side of mandating any place where honest licensed citizens cannot carry is that such laws convert those places to criminal safe zones, for criminals by definition do not obey the law. If only a miniscule number of armed licensees had been present at the recent Fort Hood shooting, for example, the Islamic terrorist would not have been able to kill nearly as many people as he did. When will we learn that the best protection from criminal attack is more in the hands of armed licensees who are present, than in the hands of police who are five or ten minutes away?

It is essential that we remove dormitories and classrooms from the prohibited list, for those were precisely the areas where the Virginia Tech madman killed his victims. It will happen again if we don’t take this action.

About:
The Michigan Coalition for Responsible Gun Owners is a non-profit, non-partisan organization. Formed from just eight people in 1996, we now have thousands of members and numerous affiliated clubs across the state. We’re growing larger and more effective every day.

Our mission statement is: “Promoting safe use and ownership of firearms through education, litigation, and legislation”