How America Got Its Guns by Briggs William;

Author:Briggs, William;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of New Mexico Press
Published: 2017-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

13 | CARRY, STAND, AND DEFEND

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

—Tenth Amendment, US Constitution

TO HER CLASSMATES in a contracts course at the University of Colorado Law School, Katherine Whitney is a spirited, twenty-seven-year-old, third-year student, studying sixty hours per week for her law degree. Nothing suggests that she carries a loaded .38-caliber handgun, which she does lawfully under Colorado’s concealed-carry law. Despite the state law, the university had long prohibited firearms on campus, arguing it has charter authority to set such policies. In 2012, the state supreme court settled the matter, ruling that the university must comply with state law. Ignoring wails of protest, many from faculty members, the university board of regents agreed to suspend the campus policy, enabling concealed-carry permit holders to have guns on campus.

Katherine first came to my attention when she attended a lively campus forum about the change in university gun policy. In a room crowded with vociferous folks who wanted guns nowhere in the same zip code, she took the floor, coolly identified herself as a gun owner, and with great conviction, explained why she carries a gun. When I met her a few weeks later, I expected an oral argument from an aspiring trial attorney. Instead, I was happily surprised by a hearty conversation with an unlikely advocate for gun rights.

Raised on a Kansas farm, Katherine was eight years old when her father taught her to shoot a BB gun. Target shooting and hunting became as ordinary as jump rope and dodgeball, and she moved comfortably to rifles, shotguns, and handguns. Every step of the way, she was indoctrinated with gun safety: “This is a weapon; if it’s not treated properly, there can be some tragic consequences. It’s unacceptable not to follow the basic rules of firearm safety.”1 Today, she attributes her willingness to carry a handgun to her familiarity with guns. “In fifteen seconds or less, I can take [my gun] apart and see that it is two pieces of metal, a spring, and some plastic. It’s not going to kill someone. That gun is not dangerous until we add me to the equation or some other person. And then it transforms these two pieces of metal and some plastic into something that can kill someone.” She knows that most people do not have that sort of comfort with guns. For those people, she has two messages: do not carry a gun without training, and try to learn more about guns.

Now living far from her Kansas home, Katherine has persuasive reasons for carrying a gun. “When I balance having guns in the classroom with being left defenseless the rest of the day, … I err on the side of preserving the right” of self-defense. “My life is no less valuable on-campus than it is off-campus.” Like many gun rights advocates, she believes campus gun bans are dangerous. They broadcast to criminals that law-abiding people on campus are disarmed and vulnerable.

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