A student group, Students for Concealed Carry on Campus, is advocating for the right to carry concealed weapons on campus. This group, which has several dozen college chapters on Facebook, believes that the right to carry guns on campus would make them safer in the occurence of another school shooting.

This idea might have merit in a preventive sense. A person who is contemplating a retaliatory act like opening fire in a classroom or dorm may be less likely to carry it out if he or she knows that there is a chance that others will have guns themselves. Then again, many of these perpetrators, such as the Virginia Tech shooter, felt that they were victims, and considered themselves martyrs. To be killed while taking what they see as vengeance might make the idea more appealing.

As far as students being able to protect themselves and “neutralize” a shooter, this idea is absurd at best, and dangerous at worst. In an unfortunate incident last year, policemen fired 85 shots at a man waving a gun, who is believed to have been under the influence. Less than a quarter of those shots hit the target. Interestingly, two of the police officers were grazed by friendly fire.

This incident demonstrates the volatile nature of guns and emergency situations. Even police officers, with years of dealing with gunfire, missed much more often than they hit. How can a student, among dozens of other panicked students, have the composure to identify, target, and kill the shooter? In reality, we know they cannot. Also, what if police arrive on the scene and see three or four students firing away, and assume that this is a mass attack?

Emergency situations are not video games, and cannot be treated so lightly as to allow more firearms into the mix. Allowing guns on campus would be asking for a bloodbath that could become exponentially more dangerous than the original danger.