Cornell U. News Editor Is Conflicted

Get past some of the mistaken assumptions, and a little bit of empty rhetoric picked up from reading too many Brady Campaign and Violence Policy Center email alerts.

Read this story from the Cornell Daily Sun closely. This student editor in Ithaca, New York is conflicted on the issue of concealed carry on campus. My guess is, previously, he had no conflicts and probably thought these jobs are best left to the police. In fact, he probably holds that opinion today.

"However, one has to consider the alternative possibility — with nobody there to attempt to check the rampage, the carnage is prolonged and the danger increases for all the bystanders. As for the roles of campus security and police in such a conflict, one has only to look at the events in both Virginia and Illinois to understand that the police, for all their hard work, can’t always react with necessary speed to end the violence."

"Is concealed carry the ideal solution? Hardly. It would be infinitely preferable to prevent weapons from working their way onto campus, and to know that nobody’s going to try to kill anybody. But this isn’t an ideal world, and nothing can prove indubitably that someone won’t do something."

The continual shootings on supposedly safe, supposedly "gun-free" campuses has Mr. Lane wondering, and looking deeply inward. Anyone else think facts are beginning to trump his previously held, highly personal assumptions?

Playing amateur psychologist, that's what I think.