Guns-on-campus bill surrenders collective safety to the feelings of a few

The 33 state senators who voted Feb. 12 to allow concealed-carry handguns on South Dakota’s college campuses sounded positively giddy with themselves as they passed Senate Bill 100 and sent it on to the House of Representatives.

Listening to the chamber congratulate itself on passing this bill, which Sen. Jim Mehlhaff, R-Pierre, described as possibly the “finest piece of legislation we will deal with all year,” was galling to many South Dakotans. It certainly was to me, and others like me, who simply don’t believe that the Second Amendment is so sacred and sacrosanct that it takes precedence over public safety, common sense and the collective good. Mehlaff absurdly went on to suggest that Senate Bill 100 might just be the best bill he’s ever seen in the Legislature.

Really? The best bill ever? I can only imagine governors from Peter Norbeck to Dick Kneip to Bill Janklow rolling over in their graves. Hyperbole like that is proof that our Legislature truly has become a far-right echo chamber that speaks to a very narrow base of voters — those who put individual gun rights over the public good.

What SB 100 will do, if and when it is passed by the House and becomes law, is prevent the South Dakota Board of Regents from having a policy prohibiting concealed carry of handguns on campuses at state universities and technical schools, as all currently do with most guns. Today, it’s still against the rules for students to carry a handgun to class or other college events, although individual schools have created some limited exceptions for other guns on campus.

Bill to allow concealed pistols on college campuses clears state Senate

Mehlhaff was far from the only senator tripping over himself to praise the bill and its prime sponsor, Sen. Mykala Voita. She’s a young freshman legislator from the Bonesteel area who got kudos from many of her fellow legislators for crafting an amendment to her original bill that addressed some of the Board of Regents’ concerns.

Instead of letting any student keep a handgun in their dorm room and carry it to class if they wish (as the original bill, unbelievably, would have done and as Voita made clear she still prefers), SB 100 now allows only gun owners who have qualified for an enhanced concealed carry permit to have a pistol on campus. Also, guns will still be prohibited in a few sensitive areas. Only in today’s political climate, and its guns-are-good-everywhere culture, would this concession to common sense seem worthy of high praise. But that’s where we’re at in South Dakota now, a place where I once encountered a man carrying an AR-15 rifle at a summer festival.

Voita said she carries a firearm much of the time. As a female who has lived in South Dakota for most of my 66 years, I don’t share Voita’s apparent fear of our fellow residents. I can, however, see that a pistol in their purse may give some female students a sense of security as they walk across campus in the dark. Good for them, and any potential crime they deter.

But what SB 100 won’t do is make any South Dakota college campus a better, safer place for all students — “all” being the operative word here. It’s important for Voita and every other legislator who votes for this bill to be clear about the exact cost of that pistol in the purse. The individual right to carry it, and the peace of mind it affords, comes at the expense of every other student, all of whom are now at a greater risk of gun violence simply due to the very presence of more guns on campus. Many of them will now add to their list of college worries the stress of wondering who in their classrooms or cafeterias is carrying a loaded handgun.

Voita naively believes that is not true, but all the data on gun violence prevention proves otherwise. More guns — in any environment, for any reason — increases the risk that one of them will injure or kill someone.

It is, sadly, inescapable and inevitable that if we allow guns in places and at an age when alcohol overconsumption, impulsivity and poor choices are still commonplace, some of those guns will be misused. Often by the gun owner themselves.

Easy access to a gun is the common denominator in so many gun violence injuries and tragic deaths, whether it be a suicide, an unintentional shooting or an act of simple negligence. And there is absolutely no evidence that more guns on campus can prevent a mass shooting event. The belief that a good guy with a gun trumps a bad guy with a gun is mostly a marketing ploy created by a gun industry that only wants to sell more guns.

I will grant you that SB 100 may make some students feel safer. But in reality, it will make all students less so.