We have a Second Amendment, let’s use it

On Oct. 27, 2007, Amanda Collins was raped by James Biela on the UNR campus in a parking garage near the campus police office. She said she could hear officers driving off even as Biela put a gun to her head and violated her.

Amanda, life-long firearm enthusiast, had a concealed carry permit. She was not allowed to carry on campus. Nevada campuses are gun-free zones. She became an armed self-defense activist after the rape.

On April 3, 2013, Amanda testified before the Nevada Assembly Judiciary Committee in favor of a bill that would have allowed Nevada concealed carry permit holders to carry on Nevada campuses. Biela went on to rape two more women and killed one of them before he was caught and sentenced to death. Amanda believes that if she had her weapon she could have, at some point in the rape, ended it and Biela’s crime spree as well. Although the bill died in that committee, Assemblywoman Michele Fiore, R-Las Vegas, promises to bring it up again in 2015.

Campus carry opponents say concealed carry would increase crime while making students less safe, and that the evil rapists will take away the gun from the poor little victim and use it against her. Seven states, including Utah, have campus concealed carry with no increase in crime, and numerous studies suggest that the decades-long national decrease in violent crime correlates well with the increase in shall-issue concealed carry laws. Criminals rarely take the weapon of a permit holder and usually flee after the weapon is merely brandished.

This time in Nevada, with a Republican-controlled Legislature and governor, a campus concealed carry bill would likely pass. Recently, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the constitutional right of individual armed self defense. Even Sacramento has reluctantly begun to issue concealed-carry permits. Many Nevada women enjoy their gun rights. The natural right to armed self-defense is becoming as recognized as gay marriage and marijuana reform.

Opponents of campus carry cite student drinking as a reason not to allow it. Actually, it is not student drinking, but rather binge drinking, that is the problem. Binge drinking on college campuses is out of control. Libertarians, however, have the solution: repeal the federal minimum drinking age of 21 years. Let the states decide the minimum drinking age, which most will set to 18 years.

An 18-year-old can vote for president and die for his country but cannot legally drink a beer. Not all frat boys are pigs, but those who are gain power over the women they call “beer wenches” because they control the flow of alcohol at their parties. Since most college coeds are under 21, they must obtain their drinks at underground venues. Psychology 101 teaches us that repression breeds over-compensation, which in American colleges results in binge drinking and sometimes in rape. If coeds have friendly and legal venues at which to consume alcohol, binge drinking and sexual assaults would decrease.

The solutions the left have proposed to the problem of campus rape have failed. The Department of Education’s affirmative consent rule threatens to portray every stolen kiss as a strong-armed robbery. Committing rape is a crime, and the accused are deserving of due process. We have tried the left’s repressive approach to the problem. It has resulted in several high profile false accusations and numerous silly analogies. America is not Afghanistan, we do not have a “rape culture.” It is time to say “I Believe” to freedom.