I read Sean Tierney’s column on Friday, and I have to say, he has conventional wisdom on his side. If you warn most people about the dangers of mixing alcohol and firearms and insist that college students are largely irresponsible, overgrown children, you can probably get them to oppose concealed carry on campus. However, conventional wisdom can often be wrong; and in this case, it most certainly is. In my view, the two most important factors supporting the pro-rights side are these: liberty and raw historical data. In Tennessee, any storeowner may post a sign prohibiting the legal carry of firearms within his establishment. Any private university, such as Vanderbilt, may do the same. However, state law currently prohibits concealed carry permit holders from carrying on both private and public universities. As a private institution, Vanderbilt deserves the freedom to choose whether or not it will allow concealed carry. Taxpayer-financed public universities, however, ought to be prevented by law from infringing on civil rights in this manner. And I do deliberately refer to public self-defense with a firearm as a civil right. The primary issue here is that one of your individual rights is being violated by the state government. True Americans have always refused to acknowledge the supposed legitimacy of any violation of any of their Constitutional rights by any level of government. Your right to keep and bear arms is not any less important than your right to due process of law, or your right to petition the government for a redress of grievances, or your right to be secure against unreasonable searches and seizures. Gentle reader, even if you do not consider yourself or certain others responsible enough to carry on campus, do you respect freedom enough to keep from interfering with the rights of those who are responsible enough? With regard to the practical aspect, I understand the fears of those who are hesitant to support concealed carry because of substance abuse on campus. Happily, we have a real-life example of a state which decided to prevent state colleges from prohibiting concealed carry on campus; Utah passed such a law in 2004. Did an “obvious spike in accidental shootings… inevitably occur”? I’ll let you look it up online and see for yourself. One last point: if the two average thugs that fired at students in Morgan had instead been angry killers bent on gaining their last fifteen minutes of fame by murdering as many students as possible before taking their own lives… would Mr. Tierney still be glad that there were no “panicked, trigger-happy cowboys” to shoot back? Drew Rankin Senior, A&S michael.d.rankin@vanderbilt.edu