Another Benefit of Concealed Carry on Campus: Professor Threatens to Leave

pedantic professor opines on Inside Higher Ed about what he would do if students were allowed to carry guns in his classroom:

Then, among many other things, I wondered what I would do if the state allows guns on university campuses.

The idle fantasy of quitting one’s job is normal and healthy and sometimes even savory. That’s what I’ll do, I thought. If the state lets students carry guns onto campus I’ll just quit. It’s that simple. I’ll just quit. The hell with it. I’m not living that way. I could quit and feel principled and self-righteous.

I don’t fear guns. I fear the person who wants, for any reason, lawful or otherwise, to bring one into my classroom.

I don’t fear the person who carries a gun through the woods. Under certain circumstances, guns belong in the woods. They never belong in a classroom.

I first shot a gun when I was in kindergarten, under the supervision of my father and grandfather and great-uncle. I’m not sure I was even old enough to spell my own last name at the time. I am comfortable with guns, which is why I could carry one through the woods at the time I contemplated what I would do if my state condones sending them into my classroom. Many of the advocates of pro-gun legislation repeat the platitude that it is people who kill people, not guns. They are exactly right. I fear the kind of person, the kind of barely-not-a-child-anymore-student, who would want to carry a gun on campus, legally or otherwise. I fear that kid, and I don’t want to be around him. It isn’t his gun that scares me. What scares me is his brain, which controls the hand that controls the gun that can kill.

I hope I would just quit. I doubt I would actually have the courage to take a stand, to really quit. Maybe that makes me a part of the problem that is more solvable than some want us to believe that it is. An 18- or 21-year-old with a gun — legally or not — in my classroom, in our sanctuary?

I hope I would just quit.

His sanctuary?  This is tenure explained — the only person who deserves to exercise his Constitutional rights is the professor. 

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