What do the vast majority of mass murder incidents, such as the Virginia Tech, Northern Illinois and Columbine shootings, have in common?

They all occurred in so-called "Gun Free Zones."

This week, the UT chapter of the Students for Concealed Carry on Campus, along with campus chapters nationwide, will be observing the National Collegiate Empty Holster Protest to bring to light the fact that outright prohibition of the legal carrying of firearms on school grounds does little to prevent criminals from breaking such rules and killing their fellow defenseless students.

There are many who believe that allowing qualified students and faculty to be able to protect themselves by conceal-carrying a handgun is a bad idea, and understandably so. The maxim "people fear what they do not understand" is applicable to this situation. Most opponents probably do not own a gun or have never experienced positive gun culture in their lifetime and therefore have gained insight on the gun control issue only from the media's frequent reports of firearms-related crime. Naturally, such a negative experience tends to sway many toward favoring gun control.

With mass fear comes the creation of many myths and generalizations., such as that guns on campus will lead to more crime or that a student with a gun will only aggravate a school shooting. However, statistics prove that these assumptions are baseless.

Eleven public universities in Utah, Colorado and Virginia have allowed qualified students to conceal-carry for more than 60 semesters, and not one of these schools has experienced any sort of firearms-related crime, including violence, accident and theft incidents. Forty states in the U.S. allow the carrying of handguns, and none of them have seen gun crime rate increases since passing right to carry laws. According to the FBI's Uniform Crime Reports, states such as California and New York, which enforce strict gun control laws, still have a higher violent crime and murder rate per capita than more gun-friendly states such as Ohio, Oklahoma and Texas. I am not advocating that all students should be armed, but it is evident that gun control does not equate to crime control.

Another popular myth is that armed students and faculty will only escalate the liklihood of a school shooting and that police will be unable to distinguish the good guys from the bad guys. However, concealed handgun license holders are trained to get themselves out of harm's way, not to chase the criminals. First responders, who are trained in tactical scenarios to expect armed members from both parties, can therefore tell that the bad guys are shooting into the crowd, while the good guys are hiding in the crowd. In addition, a National Institute of Justice study from 1997 determined that most civilian-defensive shootings occur at point-blank range and last only for a couple of seconds. Therefore, a person does not need to be extremely accurate in order to successfully take down an attacker without collateral damage. It is also unreasonable to claim that a couple of seconds of exchanged gunfire is any worse than 10-minute and hour-long, execution-style massacres committed at Columbine and Virginia Tech, respectively.

Protection from harm is an individual's own responsibility. The police are a reactive, not a preventive, force. They cannot stop a criminal from committing a violent crime and can only give pursuit after the act has been committed and the body count starts rising. That being said, the firearm equalizes unequals. It gives women and the elderly an advantage over a stronger aggressor. It greatly increases the chances of survival in the event of a shooting. Above all, it allows students and faculty to fight back and put their lives in their own hands instead of in the hands of the criminal. During the 1966 UT tower shooting, students brought their rifles from their homes and assisted out-gunned police in providing suppressing fire at Charles Whitman, preventing him from popping out and taking aim at more people. In 2002 at the Appalachian School of Law, two armed students managed to quickly subdue a gun-toting and disgruntled former student before he managed to harm any other students. These examples, along with the millions of defensive shootings that occur each year in the U.S., serve to demonstrate how guns can be used as a tool to save lives.

Therefore, this week, when you walk around school grounds and see students wearing empty handgun holsters, take a minute and think about the fact that, in the event of a school shooting, these students would otherwise be properly equipped to defend themselves but, because of a prohibition that only affects the law-abiding, they would instead be just another number on the death toll.

Jeff Shi is a computer science junior and co-founder of the UT chapter of Students for Concealed Carry on Campus.

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