UW-M Is Safe!! Please: No Guns!!

No, folks, I didn't write that.  Jessica McBride did.  Unfortunately, Ms. McBride assembles no worthwhile arguments for her position.

(Let's ignore the language of the Second Amendment, especially that part about "....SHALL NOT infringe..." and go to her own discussion of the case.)

If we're going to have the "guns on campus debate" – and due to warring pieces of legislation, we must – let's at least argue the issue using accurate information. And according to that information, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee campus, if it were a city – and it sort of is one, like Vatican City is within Rome – would be one of the safest around.

Comparing Vatican City to UW-M is to prejudice the concept a bit, no?  But that's what propagandists do.

...when you look at crime statistics, the UWM campus emerges as a violent crime-free island within a city plagued by crime despite UWM's large population (more than 25,000 students, several thousand staff).

So that's where they want to inject a bunch of guns?...

Actually, no.  The State law will not "inject" a "bunch of guns."  The State will allow duly qualified and licensed gun-owners to carry them (concealed) on the UWM campus.  Not the same thing, Jessica; not even close.

...Legislators should instead take that new surplus and give campuses, including UWM, more money for safety measures, like funding more BOSS vans that ferry students around,...

'Scuse me, but that's MY money, not yours, to spend.  And UWM faculty has already made a very solid case that Administration payroll is ridiculously out-sized.  How about a reduction in instructor-pay instead?

But Jessica now shows her real fear:

...instead of allowing the arming of a bunch of impulsive undergrads in campus buildings....

Since Jessica makes this point a couple of times, it's clear that she 1)  thinks UWM students are a bunch of violence-prone thugs and 2) thinks that violence could play out in the classroom at any time.  She knows her students better than anyone, I suppose, but that makes us wonder about the admissions policies at UWM, no?

...The proposal [to allow carry] was more predicated on reports of supposedly rising crime around the UWM campus, Kremer [an author of the bill] said, than it was on mass shootings in other states (not sure why that means we need guns on campus in Eau Claire). In fairness, Kremer made it clear he was not only talking about crime ON campus, but news accounts said he did say gunless students would be "vulnerable targets" on campus too, and he expressly discussed how the bill would allow them to have guns in dorms.

He's also talking about the dangers students face when they walk TO campus "disarmed" through close neighborhoods. Legally, they can walk to campus armed now if they obtain a concealed carry permit, but they can't carry the weapon into a campus building. Thus, he's arguing that they'd have nowhere to put their guns once they reached the campus boundaries, so it's essential to let them carry them inside.

Ms McBride has a real hodge-podge of silliness hare beginning with her reference to Eau Claire as a city and campus so pristine that even the driven snow looks dark in comparison.  Where was Umpqua Community College again?  Oh, yah, in Roseburg, OR., a town so small that crime-stats for the last 20 years fill one 8.5X11 sheet of paper.

But the neighborhood immediately west of UWM is not Roseburg, is it, Jessica?  You want to make the case that 'only a little' violent crime is......well.......acceptable.  (But not in YOUR classroom.  We get it, Jessica.)

After Ms. McBride embeds a bunch of crime-report graphs in her article, she goes back to her principal fear:  the students themselves!!

...It seems risky to inject a lot of guns into what can at times be a complex, confrontational campus environment that is packed with concentrations of impulsive, sometimes immature, sometimes intoxicated young people, some of whom have severe mental health issues.

Every instructor has had to deal with angry, mentally ill students. Often, students with mental health issues succeed. However, I don't want to sit in my next campus meeting with an angry, mentally ill student across from me with a gun. I'd be more worried about the impulsive stuff (including suicide) than the planned out stuff....

Offhand, I'd counsel Jessica to find another job, right now.  Apparently she's surrounded by violent nut-jobs who are also intoxicated and angry.  Really.  Just ask her!! 

See, Jessica has another problem:  she will not carry for her own self-defense.  That's admirable or utterly foolish, y.m.m.v..  Jessica makes her own choice for her own reasons.  Now she wants to impose her choice on all the other 25,000++ people on that campus.  

Seems kinda, I dunno, typical Lefty to me.

ADDED:  Grim observes that UWM is definitely under-performing on its "rape quota."