EDITORIAL - Guns on campus: Students are less safe when everyone packs heat

Pittsburghers are still recovering from the shock of three city police officers killed during a domestic call in April and three women murdered and nine injured in a suburban health club earlier this month.

While the crazed acts were due to gunmen armed to the hilt, we doubt that few people here would buy the solution to gun violence, put forward for college campuses, by a Michigan state legislator.

Republican Sen. Randy Richardville has introduced a bill to allow college students with concealed-carry permits to strap their guns on before heading to class this fall. He subscribes to the misguided notion that arming students, faculty and visitors will make everyone safer.

Obviously, some college students are mature and level-headed enough to be trusted to carry a weapon under certain circumstances, like hunting or target shooting. But how about a loaded handgun during a campus activity like, say, a fraternity kegger?

Never mind that, says Mr. Richardville, who is obviously in the thrall of the gun lobby. Students have to be able to protect themselves from some rampant campus crime wave.

The truth is while incidents like the massacre that left 32 people dead at Virginia Tech in 2007 are horrific, they're also extremely rare, and while campuses aren't crime-free, statistics compiled by the U.S. Department of Education show that students are much safer there than in the outside world.

Gun-rights extremists like to say that if students at Virginia Tech had been armed, shooter Seung-Hui Cho might have been stopped before so many died. But even police officers systematically trained in weapons use don't hit their targets all of the time.

Mr. Richardville wants the Michigan Legislature to fix a problem that doesn't exist by creating a problem that shouldn't exist. That's just crazy, and downright dangerous.