Even as the city council in Baltimore is taking action to ban possession of replica guns that look real, students at the University of Maryland are taking action to support their right to carry concealed weapons on campus.
The University of Maryland student newspaper The Diamondback reported that a group of students wants to bring concealed carry to campus. A group of Libertarian students calling themselves Students for Liberty hope the college will allow a concealed carry weapons policy for the purposes of self defense. The group doesn’t want the policy to be just about guns, but also other defensive weapons such as tasers and mace.
“Owning a taser, owning a can of mace, these are all victimless crimes,” said Students for Liberty President Ethan Pritchard, in the Diamondback article. “Using it, especially if you’re the aggressor, that’s not okay. We try to divorce the idea that just because something is legal means that it’s moral to use.”
Yusuf Mahmood is president of Young Americans for Liberty. The two groups polled students to gather opinion about the topic. The poll asked students what they would use to defend themselves if given a choice of a taser, a knife, a can of mace or a gun. The results showed mace was the most popular with 44 votes, taser with 20 and knife and gun both with 14 votes.
Some students said people had a right to use all four weapons as self-defense. Those forward-thinking students were then told about a petition to change campus policy surrounding self defense weapons. The petition received 26 signatures.
