Critical thinking is perhaps the most important thing I hope to impart to my students here at CNM. Thus I was extremely dismayed to see such blatant illogical fallacy coming from a psychology major in your article “Shooting Club flyers create controversy.” This student said, as quoted by you, “I don’t want to be in a classroom with someone who has a concealed carry gun legally and then, if for some reason, they thought someone else was pulling a gun and they weren’t, or even if they were, they could pull that gun and shoot me or anyone else by mistake.”
Let’s see…you have someone who is carrying a gun illegally, intent on shooting and killing as many people as he can (because that seems to be the point of the game) on the one hand, and a trained citizen carrying legally, intent on stopping the shooter and protecting everyone else, on the other hand. Let’s see…criminal…law-abiding citizen. This student would prefer to take her chances with the criminal, who WILL shoot her on purpose, because the law-abiding citizen MIGHT shoot her accidentally?
She further states that “most people are not trained in how to respond to a situation correctly. They’ve done studies on this.” Really? People who have undergone concealed carry training have been trained EXACTLY how to respond to situations correctly – part of which is when NOT to draw a gun. This is why I discount the part of her first comment “if for some reason, they thought someone else was pulling a gun and they weren’t…” I would love to see the studies she references.
I think she’ll find that significantly more people have been protected by law-abiding gun carriers than have been shot accidentally.
Finally, I commend CNM Chronicle Editorial Board’s response to the controversy. I, too, call for an open forum, or perhaps even a debate between Lisa Orick-Martinez, who is the adviser for the Shooting Club, and Robert Anderson, Policial Science instructor, both of whom you quoted in your article. Let’s talk about it!
Connie Gulick SAGE Instructor CNM CAG Adviser
