On August 13 Florida League of Women Voters (FLWV) Gun Safety Committee chair Patti Brigham will hold a conference for leaders who oppose arming women and other law-abiding citizens on college campuses for self-defense.
Brigham’s conference comes as Florida state senator Greg Evers (R-Baker) and representative Greg Steube (R-Sarasota) prepare to renew their push for women with concealed carry permits to be able to carry guns on college campuses for self-defense. Evers and Stuebe both offered bills that would have allowed women to arm themselves in 2015, and both bills were defeated by opposition from gun control groups geared toward women. Groups like FLWV and Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America both rallied to keep women on campus from being armed.
Now FLWV is gearing up to fight to keep women unarmed on campus in 2016 as well.
According to the Miami Herald, Brigham contends that arming women and other law-abiding citizens on campuses increases the risk that an argument will escalate into a shootout. Brigham offered no evidence to back up this contention nor did she contrast it with what we have seen in Colorado, where women have been allowed to arm themselves for self-defense on campus since 2003.
The Colorado example can best be summed up thus–12 years of campus carry, no mass shootings, no crimes by permit carriers. Yet Brigham is determined to fight giving women the opportunity to be armed against sexual predators and other attackers on campus.
The Herald quotes her saying the problem is not just that arguments might escalate but that people drink on campus “and firearms and alcohol over and over again have been shown to be a really bad mix.”
Bloomberg-funded Everytown for Gun Safety made the same argument on March 19 in expressing their opposition Campus Carry in Florida. In a tweet, Everytown asked campus carry proponents if giving guns to their “drunk, college-age daughters” is really a great idea.
Evers and Steube believe it is a good idea to open the door for women and other law-abiding citizens to arm themselves for self-defense on campus. And unlike the gun control crowd’s rhetoric, Evers and Steube believe armed women on campuses in Florida can and will be just as responsible as armed women on campuses in Colorado have been.
Follow AWR Hawkins on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.
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