10 College Students Raped And Shot Dead In Georgia

I'm sorry, that headline is incendiary, and violent, and actually didn't happen.  You see, one of those ten students carried a gun in his backpack. 

A story making it's way around the blogs, but absent from the nightly news is that of a group of college students who were the victims of an armed home invasion in Georgia.  They were throwing a birthday party for a friend, when two young men came into the house and held guns on the group.

Pretty scary.  The two masked gunmen separated the men and women, demanding their cell phones and wallets.  One gunmen then stood guard over the men, while the other took the women into a room where he was preparing to rape them.

Luckily for this group of students, one of the students was carrying a weapon in his backpack.  It wasn't a shotgun, and it wasn't a musket.  It was a handgun.  He grabbed the gun, shot at the first intruder and missed, and when the first gunmen fled, the student kicked in the door where the women were being held and shot at the second gunmen, wounding him and forcing him to jump out a window.  The second gunmen died of his injuries.

Now first - let me say this is not a cause for rejoicing.  One young man is dead, and will not get a chance to redeem himself.  Another young man will have to live with the fact that his actions cost another person their life, and though justified, that's not something to rejoice in.  In addition to the anguish, the shooter, and the other nine students, will have to worry about retaliation, as well as the post traumatic stress of a violent situation.

But they're alive.

From the story, we also don't know if the student was a lawful gun holder with a concealed carry license, and though Georgia's laws are comparatively less strict, the shooter could face legal trouble, even though it was clear he was acting in self defense.

There are lessons to learn from this, however.  These lessons are important, and can apply to the current debate at Mizzou about the right to concealed carry on campus.

Naysayers will claim this was off campus, but learning to carry a gun is not something you can just pick up.  It requires training for safety, practice for aim, and to be quite frank, carrying a gun in the proper manner makes you a hell of a lot more responsible.  It is a learned skill, and if 80% of your time is spent without the gun, you will not be prepared for its use when you need it.

1) The shooter was not some kind of Clint Eastwood renegade.  When the invaders burst in, the student didn't immediately grab his gun and start blazing away.  Even when the students were separated, nothing happened.  First reports claim one gunmen asked if they had enough bullets, to which the other replied "yes," and only then did the shooter decide to act (keep in mind that's hearsay, and may not be accurate).

2) The chances of you ever needing a gun are very slim.  So are the chances of you needing to use CPR, and yet both are matters of life and death.  You cannot use a gun effectively if you do it carry it with you for long periods of time.  It's a skill, and is not like carrying mace or pepper spray.  Handguns are dangerous.  They're meant to kill.  Banning lawful permit holders who underwent background checks and training to carry lawfully actually makes them less safe with their own gun.

3) One of the advantages of concealed carry is criminals don't know who carries a gun and who doesn't.  Advertising that no guns are allowed on campus eliminates the threat of deterrent.

The truth is very simple.  10 college students are probably alive and were not sexually assaulted because one person was carrying a gun.  When we look at Virginia Tech, at the church shooting in Belleville, and every other mass murder event, we recognize that a disarmed citizenry is a recipe for tragedy.  The decision on whether or not to carry should be left up to individual students who have demonstrated the willingness to express their Second Amendment right to protect themselves.