Editor,
The meeting held Thursday on the Students for Concealed Carry on Campus was hardly a debate. Arguing for SCCC were two highly qualified individuals with extensive experience speaking on the issue, and arguing against them was a student who admitted he knew very little about the subject (and who I was told only participated for a class) and an ambivalent city councilman who said he could see himself on the other side.
Secondly, audience members were asked to submit questions during the break. But after the third question, an audience member asked to interject and was allowed to do so. Allowing audience members to speak at random also undermines the legitimacy of the debate. But the worst problem, and the reason I left, was what this particular audience member said. The question was about the difficulty of identifying the ‘real’ killer if other students were armed and firing. The man’s answer was basically, “If you have a classroom full of students that look like you and you and you, and then a guy in a black trench coat with an AK-47 comes in, you’ll know who the killer is.”
This type of view is uninformed and egocentric – especially since the Virginia Tech shooter didn’t look anything like the Columbine students (the stereotype this man was referring to). When this kind of ignorance and narrow-mindedness is allowed to be spouted, it’s not a debate – it’s propaganda. Next time, I urge SCCC to host a balanced, informative debate.
Timothy A. Schuler
Senior in Print Journalism