FEDERAL GUN CONTROL NECESSARY FOR CAMPUS SAFETY

In the wake of the Parkland, Florida, shooting in February of last year (and the 31 school shootings in America that occurred in the following year), there has been an eerie lack of federal legislation being passed in order to prevent such events from transpiring yet again.

Even in Oregon’s progressive-leaning House and Senate chambers, there has been unmistakable inaction to protect grades K-12 school students from facing the threat of mass shootings.

In fact, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures, in what legislation that has been proposed since February 2018, the most popular form of “gun control” has been allowing teachers to carry weapons on campus, across 20 states – completely ignoring the possibility of an active shooter actually being a teacher, such as the case in 2012 when a teacher opened fire in the Episcopal School of Jacksonville after being fired earlier that day.

Additionally, when it comes to college campuses, Oregon’s famously liberal political leadership has not successfully produced any major new legislation on campus safety since 2011, when the Oregon Court of Appeals overturned a previous holistic ban of firearms on every college campus. The ruling therefore allowed concealed carry across all college campuses in the state; a law so conservative it hardly resembles the culture we seem to be most known for.

Soon after, in 2012, the Oregon Board of Higher Education protected students from this major threat of gun violence as much as they could without imposing on the 2011 law: it prohibited the possession of firearms inside any/all buildings on the major public university campuses across the state.

This means that carrying a firearm outside of buildings on a campus is still legal. Ideally, there should not be a threat of a firearm in proximity to any learning environment, and so the ability to carry one across campus only makes it easier to endanger students.

While it would be a step in the right direction, banning firearms on all campuses will not prevent gun violence in college permanently, however.

Common-sense federal regulation is the solution not only to school shootings, but for gun violence in general. If we are to prevent another mass shooting, the only solution is to regulate and limit access to firearms. While strong supporters of the Second Amendment dislike hearing this, it is a fact of American life that at times we must sacrifice certain personal luxuries for the benefit of the common good. 

Of course, I don’t mean to take away guns from every current gun owner. I mean that it is necessary to make the process of purchasing a firearm more thorough, and to maintain a certain level of safety standards to be achieved after its purchase.

When thinking about possible solutions, I look at the actions of other countries that have suffered from mass shootings, similar to the ones we seem to experience on a monthly basis. These nations have promptly and successfully changed their laws to prevent further casualties.

For instance, Norway, with some of the highest gun ownership rates in the developed world, regulates the commerce (sale/purchase) of firearms by requiring citizens to present their reason and intent of purchase (sport, hunting, etc.), on top of the more common procedures such as comprehensive background checks. After purchase, safe usage is regulated by enforcing random safety checks by government officials to ensure guns are kept in safes when not in use.

This way, citizens are not completely blocked from their right of owning a firearm if they feel it is their inherent right, while still ensuring safety and proper use of these weapons.

This only scratches the surface of the changes that must be made, but the more we have a conversation between opposing sides, the closer we can come in preventing the far-too-common school shooting.

Until then, I side with New Zealand’s Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, on the U.S. gun control laws (after she implemented strong measures in her own country following the recent Christchurch mosque mass shootings): “I just do not understand the United States.”