Letter From The Editor

Today on the quad The Arbiter is hosting a Free Speech Forum, with the topic “Guns on Campus.”

We decided to open our media to students because we honestly are not sure how they feel about this. Our online forum flooded with pro-gun writers who bashed on everyone who refused to accept weapons on campus. Only a few comments online were from students. Anyone can post at arbiteronline.com, even people who are not students.

We want to know how students at Boise State University feel, so we will be on the quad today, rain or shine, asking you how you feel about allowing guns on campus.

Our editorial board had such diverse and complicated opinions on this subject we were forced to write each of our opinions individually in Monday’s paper.

As state legislators work their way toward a solution, the students of this campus are left waiting, unsure of what this will mean to us.

One thing that is certain is the trend of violence we have seen on college and university campuses in the last year needs to stop. We cannot continue to kill each other.

For those out there who have been calling college students cowards for not wanting guns on campus, I think you have us mistaken. It’s not that we are afraid of guns, it’s that we are honestly afraid of the people who wield them. Realize that, yes, if students are allowed to carry concealed weapons on campus, they will be able to stop would-be murderers from a continued rampage, but also that passage of this law would also allow those same criminals the same right to legally bring weapons on campus.

By legalizing concealed weapons on campus we are inviting anyone who wants to carry a gun to bring one. BSU is a metropolitan university, in the heart of an active city. I have seen dozens of homeless people and absolute creeps walking around campus, some of whom are sex-offenders and others are just people I misconstrue as dangerous.

I am always on the lookout for others willing and able to due harm to students at this campus. I think that as a student leader it is my responsibility to keep an eye out for my employees, to assure them of a safe working environment.

There are people willing to commit these crimes. Legalizing guns on campus would make them able. I don’t want that atmosphere of kill or be killed to exist on this campus. That atmosphere should exist in open war (which is why the Second Amendment was added to the constitution, to assure that when push came to shove, Americans could protect their homes), but not on a university campus. There is no war in Idaho.

I do agree that the police are not in position to stop this from happening. In both of these major shootings, the gunmen killed themselves. I have seen nothing from Boise Police to make me think things are different at BSU.

But the consensus of my staff is that guns are plum dangerous, that people who wield them are often irresponsible and that though there are people out there who are very responsible with their weapons, we don’t want them here.

Sincerely,

Dustin Lapray

Editor-in-Chief

DUSTIN LAPRAY
Editor-in-Chief

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