With the recent Colorado Supreme Court ruling on concealed weapons, students 21 and older can receive a permit to conceal and carry a gun into my classroom.
The only rationale for concealed guns I've heard depend on dubious, rights-based claims and fear-driven, gunfight logic. Guns have no place in the university classroom where learning is intellectually and emotionally demanding.
Learning, when it is more than information or skill mastery, is a challenging and risk-ridden process. In the humanities, teachers aren't always looking for particular answers and frequently challenge students to examine critically their own lives and worlds. Sometimes students don't like what they see. In the sciences, students are required to extend their skilled comprehension of increasingly demanding subject matter. Frequently students are frustrated and don't achieve their goals. In the arts, students are encouraged to see and create anew the worlds around them. A sense of vertigo can result. Sometimes students are successful, other times they fail.
These settings stretch students and engender personal and intellectual disequilibrium. As a result, a level of trust is required. Students need to trust that the teacher is taking them someplace worthwhile. The teacher needs to trust that the students will do the work. And students need to trust one another. Students need to believe that they can state unpopular views without fear of reprisal. Intellectual and personal risk is ever-present in university classroom settings and is counterbalanced with various kinds of trust. The presence of concealed weapons in the classroom exacerbates these classroom risks to potentially deadly levels and destroys instructional trust.
So why is it now legal to carry a concealed weapon in the Colorado university classroom when they are not allowed in K-12 settings, courthouses, or our state legislature? Two responses are prevalent and neither is legitimate.
The principled claim maintains that, constitutionally, adults are entitled to the "right to bear arms." We don't have the right to bear arms always and everywhere. When our legislators won't allow them in the statehouse, why legalize their presence in the classroom? Educational settings have traditionally curtailed that right due to safety and educational concerns. The right to bear arms doesn't trump the right to a safe education.
The gunfight rationale claims that if an enraged student were to attack, the concealed-gun carriers would "save the day." The gunfight logic is, at best, unpredictable. It relies on the claim that a concealed-gun carrier would harm or kill the illegal gunman before too much death and injury could be sustained. According to the state law any non-felon, adult U.S. citizen can be deemed by the local sheriff to be capable of combating crazy and outraged gun toters. Minimal appraisal of shooting skills and no assessment of mental health are required. A check for past felonies is the central criterion. Young adults with guns are now sanctioned by the state of Colorado to tote and shoot if necessary. Given that skilled and sane police officers kill and maim innocent bystanders in these public gunfights, this "save the day" logic doesn't suffice. Our state cannot ensure the sanity or skill level of concealed-weapon carriers or maintain the safety of university students.
We shouldn't take any chances with such precarious shooting odds. Guns in the classroom threaten lives and damage learning. The promise of education should not be denied by the presence of guns. With guns in the classroom, teachers will not be inclined to challenge students and students will not be likely to trust each other. There is more than a chilling effect going on here — this legislation immobilizes learning and sanctions reckless, deadly force. There is a much simpler, saner, and more satisfactory solution: Ban all guns on campus.
Dan Liston is a faculty member at the University of Colorado at Boulder.