It’s quite clear that at least a few criminals look at
university folk as easy prey, since you’re not going to be
doing much in terms of self-defense against a 9mm handgun with your
iPod or the “downward dog” learned in yoga.
Life dictates that some of us are on campus at night when these
robberies occur and when few, if any, police are seen patrolling.
What do I do if a guy accosts me tonight with a gun and demands my
wallet?
I was always told to do whatever the assailant tells me, and
hand over my wallet while wishing I wore Huggies. But what if the
person demands, “Now come with me!”? It happened to a
good friend of my family, and she’s no longer alive.
A common solution presented is to hire more police, since our
police perform a critical aspect of delivering justice after
someone commits a crime. The problem is that you or I have to be
shot, raped, stabbed or mugged for someone to be arrested.
Preventing crime from occurring is a solution I’m more
fond of. It’s also a daunting task. For police to effectively
prevent crime, they would have to be an omnipresent force that
never left a would-be criminal without the watchful gaze of an
officer.
Of course it’s an expensive solution. We could take money
out of our dwindling education budget and more jaywalking citations
could be issued, but as soon as we start scaling back the police,
I’m back to wearing jumbo Huggies.
Pepper spray’s an option, unless of course there’s a
gentle breeze, and then the joke’s on me as my eyes swell
shut, or the spray is ineffective and now he’s angry while
pointing a gun at me.
There’s the Taser. Tasers can instantly incapacitate
someone, if I hit. If I miss, I’m left holding an
electronically advanced musket, without the ability to refire.
And then there’s the firearm. You know, it’s the
same thing the assailant is pointing at me.
So let’s get rid of guns, right? I’ve heard the
argument that if we ban guns, this guy wouldn’t be pointing
one at me. After all, a straw purchase, or when someone purchases a
gun for someone else, is how Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris obtained
the guns they used at Columbine.
Unfortunately, when looking at England, which banned privately
owned handguns, the BBC reported on several occasions where there
is a flood of illegal guns entering the country, and criminals have
access to firearms. We’ve outlawed most narcotics, but there
are still those who “powder their noses.”
Right here in California, the feds made a bust of more than
2,000 smuggled fully automatic AK-47s in 1996. If you’re an
optimist, they seized every weapon and no one’s tried since
to smuggle illegal arms.
But if you’re like me, you’d look over at the guy
who just “powdered his nose” and wonder.
So what if I carried a gun too? I’ve seen Westerns where
everyone has a gun and I don’t want to be in an ultra-violent
society, but as we see with states that allow CCWs, or permits that
allow people to carry concealed weapons, this ultra-violent society
doesn’t exist.
A number of states issue CCWs to anyone with a clean background
check (California law enforcement issues CCWs on a discretionary
basis.) While the debate rages about how effective CCWs are in
lowering total crime, people with CCWs don’t make life more
dangerous. Over one million CCWs were issued in Florida in an
18-year period, and only 2,888 were revoked due to crime after
licensure.
Guns are used in self-defense thousands of times each year, and
unlike the police, we can be everywhere for free.
I’m liberal, I’m abortion rights, I support social
security, and I want affordable health coverage for everyone.
We should absolutely pursue social means of reducing crime.
But we should not naively assume that crime and murder will
stop. As our two fellow students just experienced, we
shouldn’t have to stare down the barrel of a gun, hoping for
aid that doesn’t come in time.
Anand is a student in the David Geffen School of
Medicine’s combined MD/PhD program.