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
First Affirmative Lawsuit in Support of Gun Owners Filed by Trump’s DOJ

News  

Monday, October 6, 2025

First Affirmative Lawsuit in Support of Gun Owners Filed by Trump’s DOJ

California officials’ egregious foot-dragging over the issuance of carry permits has finally attracted the ire of the federal Department of Justice (DOJ). 

California: Governor Newsom Signs Gun Control Bills Into Law

Monday, October 13, 2025

California: Governor Newsom Signs Gun Control Bills Into Law

For someone who has claimed to be"...deeply mindful and respectful of the Second Amendment and people’s Constitutional rights,” Governor Gavin Newsom has once again proven that actions speak louder than words.

NRA Files Another Lawsuit Challenging the National Firearms Act

Thursday, October 9, 2025

NRA Files Another Lawsuit Challenging the National Firearms Act

Today, the National Rifle Association—along with the American Suppressor Association, Firearms Policy Coalition, and Second Amendment Foundation—announced the filing of another lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the National Firearms Act of 1934 (NFA).

Firearm Prohibition Advocates Mute on Jay Jones “Two Bullets to the Head” Scandal

News  

Monday, October 13, 2025

Firearm Prohibition Advocates Mute on Jay Jones “Two Bullets to the Head” Scandal

Democrat Jay Jones, candidate for Virginia attorney general, still has not suspended his campaign, even as pressure mounts over disclosures that should disqualify, to put it mildly, any individual from serving as the chief law ...

FBI Persists in Underreporting Armed Citizen Defensive Gun Use

News  

Monday, October 13, 2025

FBI Persists in Underreporting Armed Citizen Defensive Gun Use

Three years ago, Dr. John Lott of the Crime Prevention Research Center (CPRC), writing for RealClearInvestigations, described how the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) was vastly undercounting, “by an order of more than three the number of instances in ...

Rehearing En Banc Sought in NRA-Supported Challenge to New Jersey’s Carry Restrictions

Wednesday, October 8, 2025

Rehearing En Banc Sought in NRA-Supported Challenge to New Jersey’s Carry Restrictions

Today, the National Rifle Association announced the filing of a petition for rehearing en banc in Siegel v. Platkin, a challenge to New Jersey’s carry restrictions.

North Carolina: Update on Permitless Carry

Tuesday, September 30, 2025

North Carolina: Update on Permitless Carry

Last week the North Carolina General Assembly briefly returned from recess and re-referred Senate Bill 50, Freedom to Carry NC, to the House Rules Committee.

Trump Administration Repeals Biden Era Firearms Export Crackdown

News  

Monday, October 6, 2025

Trump Administration Repeals Biden Era Firearms Export Crackdown

Last Monday, the Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) at the U.S. Department of Commerce published a final rule that reversed a crackdown on the commercial export of firearms from the U.S. to other countries.

NRA Files Amicus Brief Urging SCOTUS to Hear Challenge to Ban on Firearms Possession by Nonviolent Felons

Thursday, October 9, 2025

NRA Files Amicus Brief Urging SCOTUS to Hear Challenge to Ban on Firearms Possession by Nonviolent Felons

Today, the National Rifle Association, along with the Second Amendment Foundation, Firearms Policy Coalition, and FPC Action Foundation, filed an amicus brief urging the U.S. Supreme Court to hear a challenge to the federal lifetime prohibition on ...

US Virgin Islands: Sweeping Gun Control Measures Advance

Wednesday, October 8, 2025

US Virgin Islands: Sweeping Gun Control Measures Advance

The 36th Legislature of the US Virgin Islands is continuing to advance sweeping gun control measures through the legislative process.

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.