A guest speaker was scheduled to appear at the University of Texas and tell why concealed weapons should be allowed on all Texas college campuses. However around 8:30 that morning shots rang out, warning sirens went off and the order came to lock down the school; someone on campus was shooting a gun.
"Bystanders with Guns Can Prove Deadly ", written by Arthur Markman, was published the next day in The Dallas News. Markman, who is a professor at the University of Texas and also a psychologist, had some very convincing arguments as to why concealed guns should not be allowed on campuses
He had two reasons for not arming civilians: abstraction and chocking under pressure. When people think of something that can happen in the future, they look at it abstractly. It is easy to think of what one might do if put in that situation because the brain does not add the chaos into the scene. He compared it to a movie in which it is easy to identify an “armed suspect”, but real life is not like the movies. If you have someone shooting in a crowded area there are going to be people screaming, running around, and it is going to be very chaotic. Now add one more tier to the existing chaos when civilians start pulling out guns from their back packs. Who are they going to shoot at? What if they shoot the wrong person and kill a would - be- hero just like themselves? Police officers go through months of training to learn how to deal with this type of situation, the average civilian with a gun does not.
No comments:
Post a Comment