Student carry holsters for a cause

By Caroline Monday
cmonday@mountaintimes.com

Students at colleges and universities nationwide are attending classes this week, wearing empty gun holsters in protest of state laws and school policies prohibiting individuals from carrying concealed weapons on university campuses.

This week marks the second Empty Holster Protest, an effort organized under Students for Concealed Carry on Campus (SCCC).

The SCCC is a national organization asserting that these laws and policies “stack the odds in favor of dangerous criminals and armed killers by disarming law abiding citizens licensed to carry concealed handguns virtually everywhere else,” according to the group’s Web site, concealedcarry.org.

Appalachian State University does not have a campus chapter of SCCC, but Cameron Morrison, a senior in management, is working to get a chapter started. He and likeminded students have joined the national effort this week and will be wearing empty holsters or T-shirts communicating their message throughout the week.

Morrison said he is hesitant to call the effort a “protest,” but rather considers it an opportunity for students to express their opinions on the subject.
Morrison worked to ensure the peaceful nature of the protest by alerting university security of the group’s plans for the week.

In an e-mail to university police chief Gunther Doerr, Morrison stressed that the group would make no attempts to disturb the peace.
Morrison said he did not want his fellow students and members of the faculty and staff to become alarmed when they saw a student wearing a holster.

SCCC encourages responsible gun ownership. An individual must be 21 years old or older and adhere to a rigid set of regulations in order to be licensed to carry a concealed weapon.

These regulations include training requirements and stipulations on when a concealed weapon can be carried or used. Shootings on college campuses, specifically those at Virginia Tech and Northern Illinois University, have called attention to the limitations placed on individuals when they are on a college campus and has opened the discussion about the ability of these individuals to protect themselves.

While proponents of the movement to allow concealed carry on campus argue that they should be able to protect themselves as they would be able to in other public places, opponents say the introduction of more weapons on a college campus would not make it a safer place.

“At this point, I don’t see that a college campus is such a dangerous place that it warrants large numbers with concealed carry weapons,” Doerr said.
However, Doerr said he does recognize that there are other areas where individuals may be justified in their desire to carry a weapon.
He added that he could see the introduction of additional weapons on campus turning into a safety concern.

By banning concealed carry on college campuses, he said, one eliminates the risk that those weapons may be misused or involved in an accident.
For more information about SCCC and the Empty Holster Protest, go online to concealedcampus.org.

To read ASU’s full policy prohibiting the possession of firearms on campus, see the Code of Student Conduct, section 4.01k, at studentconduct.appstate.edu.