‘Concealed Carry’ and ‘No Guns’ face off on election day

No verbal shots were fired across Bigelow Boulevard at high noon on Tuesday even though two… No verbal shots were fired across Bigelow Boulevard at high noon on Tuesday even though two opposing student groups were playing with a loaded subject.

Pitt’s chapter of the national group Students for Concealed Carry on Campus assembled at the base of the Cathedral of Learning for their Empty Holster protest, their camp facing the William Pitt Union. Their opponent, the No Guns on Campus student group, stood across Bigelow Boulevard in front of the Union protesting SCCC’s movement.

Though opposed to each other’s views, the warring factions coexisted peacefully. When SCCC’s rally faced the threat of being asked to disperse because they lacked a permit, No Guns on Campus organizers Cassidy Gruber and Josh Shulman crossed the street offering juice boxes and table space at the Union to their adversaries.

This civilized discord was reflected in the way members from each group responded to each other’s arguments.

On the side of No Guns, Gruber said that the bottom line is that both groups have at heart the interest of ensuring safety on campus, but they are approaching the issue from opposite directions.

“It’s a matter of being proactive as compared to being reactive, which is what they’re trying to do,” Gruber said.

She said she believes that campuses will stay safer if guns are kept off the premises, as is currently the case at Pitt and most, but not all, higher-level institutions in the United States. Allowing gun owners with concealed carry licenses to be armed on school property is a solution only to gun violence after the fact – it does nothing to prevent the possibility in the first place, Gruber said.

“The point of a university, as a private institution – and I say ‘private’ because even a public university is private in that its students apply to live and work here and not just anyone can walk into a dorm room off the street – is to provide students with an environment where they feel safe,” Gruber said.

“They should be able to feel that they are here to learn and shouldn’t have to feel that in order to be safe, they need to carry a weapon of lethal force,” she said. SCCC, however, feels differently.

The national group, which formed after campus shootings at Virginia Tech and, more recently, Northern Illinois University, claims “state laws and school policies