Explore The NRA Universe Of Websites

APPEARS IN News

Gun Shy Professor Claims Need to Counter Campus Carry

Friday, January 6, 2017

Gun Shy Professor Claims Need to Counter Campus Carry

Do you look back on your college years and remember the impassioned debates, when disagreements over the Periodic Table of Elements, theories of supply and demand, or the status of Pluto as a planet could sever friendships and result in otherwise well-adjusted academics coming to blows?

No?  Neither do we.

But to read of the reactions of some professors to campus carry, you would think America’s college and university campuses are a seething cauldron of anger and resentment poised to explode whenever students differ on their interpretations of Wuthering Heights or grapple with Newton’s Laws of Motion.

Perhaps betraying more than they intend to about their own inability to handle differing opinions or process novel circumstances or information, many academics have reacted to the prospect of campus carry not with reason or open-mindedness but with pitched emotion and almost comic hyperbole.

Some simply pledge to defy the law. Some have quit their jobs. And others insist the law infringes on their academic freedom because they’ll be too scared to teach subjects or give grades that might challenge or anger students. 

Now, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, claims he’s even created a new curriculum in the event the legislature passes campus carry in the Badger State. As detailed in a guest column for the Cap Times, Prof. Larry Shapiro states he prepared two syllabi for his Philosophy 101 class, the usual one he believes would be interesting to students and an alternative one he thinks they would find boring.

His plan is to present both to students and let them decide which one to pursue. If they opt for the interesting one, however, they have to promise not to exercise any right they may gain to carry firearms in his class.

The professor’s justification is that the interesting material is also the material more likely to generate murderous differences of opinions in his students. The boring one, so his theory goes, should avoid this problem. “The topics on the first syllabus that get my students so excited are also the topics that arouse the most passion,” he writes. “And, if some of our state legislators have their way, passion is the last thing I’ll want to provoke in my students.” Then he poses his own philosophical question, “Why teach topics that increase the probability, however small, of provoking an unstable but legally carrying shooter?”

To which we respond, “Why subject your students to the risk, however small, of having to face an armed attacker without their own means of defense?”

The professor admits that he can’t really enforce any such promise from his class, but he nevertheless “has faith” the students would keep their word.

In other words, he trusts his students to keep a promise to surrender their rights but not to refrain from shooting each other, should they be lawfully carrying a concealed firearm for self-defense.

If evidence, logic, and experience should be taken into account in forming opinions, the best we can say of the response by Prof. Shapiro and his gun-phobic colleagues is that they are gross over-reactions. We could also say that they make the academics who profess them look ridiculous and undermine confidence in the whole enterprise of “higher education.”

Campus carry is not a new phenomenon. It has been occurring (overwhelmingly without incident) in a number of states for many years. Recent interest in expanding campus carry is in fact a reaction to violent acts committed against college students not as a spontaneous reaction to academic debate but because of pre-existing motives related, for example, to terrorism or predatory criminality. 

It’s unfortunately all too easy to find examples of these sorts of crimes.

It’s considerably rarer, if it’s ever happened at all, to find examples of classroom gunfights erupting over the material in an introductory philosophy class.

Needless to say, the people who victimize college students don’t care about the rules. Campus carry is not for them. It’s for the law-abiding student who wants to be prepared to meet such people on equal terms.

It’s ironic that many of the same academics who are bending over backwards to avoid any “trigger” or “micro-aggression” that might offend a student’s sensibilities nevertheless insist on the “academic freedom” to whip them into a murderous frenzy as an excuse to deny them the right to carry firearms.

Adults attending college deserve the same Second Amendment rights as anybody else. And they certainly deserve better than the nonsense and hypocrisy of the faculty members who seek to deny them those rights.

TRENDING NOW
Gun Control “Journalist” Says the Quiet Part Out Loud

News  

Monday, September 8, 2025

Gun Control “Journalist” Says the Quiet Part Out Loud

Pure gun control. As in disarmament and banning of firearms. It’s rare that anti-gunners get straight to the exact point that we have been warning of for decades. 

The Desperate Deflection to the “Red State Murder Problem”

News  

Monday, September 8, 2025

The Desperate Deflection to the “Red State Murder Problem”

California Governor Gavin Newsom (D) may have thought he had scored against President Donald Trump in a recent war of words over rampant crime and the deployment of federal law enforcement agents to Democratic-led cities

Illinois: Governor Signs Mandatory Firearm Storage Law

Wednesday, September 3, 2025

Illinois: Governor Signs Mandatory Firearm Storage Law

Earlier this month, Governor JB Pritzker signed Senate Bill 8 into law. This legislation imposes new mandatory firearm storage requirements on law-abiding gun owners.  

Due Process: The Backbone of Legal Legitimacy

News  

Monday, September 8, 2025

Due Process: The Backbone of Legal Legitimacy

Close observers of the gun debate often see references to due process.

Florida: Second Amendment Sales Tax Holiday Signed by Governor

Monday, July 7, 2025

Florida: Second Amendment Sales Tax Holiday Signed by Governor

Governor Ron DeSantis recently signed the Florida Budget for Fiscal Year 2025–2026, which includes a Second Amendment sales tax holiday from September 8 through December 31, 2025. The NRA is thankful for Governor DeSantis’ strong ...

Report: Senior ATF Official Joins (Private) Firearm Prohibition Lobby

News  

Tuesday, September 2, 2025

Report: Senior ATF Official Joins (Private) Firearm Prohibition Lobby

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) is the federal agency whose jurisdiction encompasses federal firearms laws. 

Arkansas Atrocity Highlights Need for Reform in Rules Governing Carry in Public Parks

News  

Monday, August 25, 2025

Arkansas Atrocity Highlights Need for Reform in Rules Governing Carry in Public Parks

On the heels of the shocking and seemingly random murder of a couple in an Arkansas state park while they were walking a trail with their young children, many are revisiting their self-defense plans in the great ...

Update: North Carolina House Reschedules Veto Override Vote

Tuesday, August 26, 2025

Update: North Carolina House Reschedules Veto Override Vote

Today, the House rescheduled the veto override vote on Senate Bill 50, Freedom to Carry NC, to Monday, September 22. 

Grassroots Spotlight: Oklahoma Rifle Association Annual State Convention

Take Action  

Monday, September 8, 2025

Grassroots Spotlight: Oklahoma Rifle Association Annual State Convention

Each year, the Oklahoma Rifle Association (ORA), the NRA's State Association for Oklahoma, hosts its Annual State Convention in August. 

ABAs Latest Resolution Continues to Ignore Liberty and Hinder Justice for Gun Owners

News  

Tuesday, September 2, 2025

ABAs Latest Resolution Continues to Ignore Liberty and Hinder Justice for Gun Owners

Last month, the American Bar Association (ABA), via its Standing Committee on Gun Violence, passed yet another anti-gun resolution at their annual meeting in Toronto (the venue should serve as a clue regarding their commitment ...

MORE TRENDING +
LESS TRENDING -

More Like This From Around The NRA

NRA ILA

Established in 1975, the Institute for Legislative Action (ILA) is the "lobbying" arm of the National Rifle Association of America. ILA is responsible for preserving the right of all law-abiding individuals in the legislative, political, and legal arenas, to purchase, possess and use firearms for legitimate purposes as guaranteed by the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.