Dear Erica Setnick, 

I read your piece in the last edition of The Communitarian and can’t begin to express to you how refreshing it is to finally hear from someone who feels the same way I do about exercising rights that our forefathers felt it of the utmost importance that we take advantage of.

Although I agree with pretty much every paragraph and your points made, I think what is very important for dissenters to realize is that, just like you said, these events transpire in mere seconds and without warning or reason.

A gun in the hand is always going to be better than a cop on the phone. This is just simple common sense that many fail to want to believe.

Giving students who are legally carrying pursuant to state law the ability to protect themselves and their fellow students is at the very heart of what this nation was founded on: loving thy neighbor (and protecting if need be).

Let me tell you a quick story. I live in Montgomery county, but go to school at DCCC. There is a store owner not too far from where I live who has a sign in his window that says, “Store owner is armed three days a week. Guess which three?”

He has never been robbed in his 60 years of business.

The same logic can be carried over the students having a right to protect themselves from serious bodily injury and/or death.

I have had a county issued carry permit for just under 10 years now and what that says to me is that since I have passed all of the required checks and been screened according to what “the government” says is sufficient, why does my constitutional right to carry stop as soon as the tires of my car drive onto college property?

Perhaps you feel as well that it can be classified as a “constitution free zone.”

DCCC is funded by tax dollars and as well as federal and local grants and yet my rights are restricted unnecessarily along with the other students who are in my shoes who are responsible, upstanding citizens.

Passive effective-gun control policies in a nation brimming with over 300 million guns

is difficult. Don’t believe anyone who tells you otherwise.

We need to accept that a certain amount of gun violence is inevitable in our country.

The hard truth is, just like we have deaths from automobiles, swimming pool drowning’s and drug overdoses, we are going to have some from people with evil intentions in their hearts who think squeezing a trigger will make it all better from them and the world.

Those are people who we need to keep guns away from, but lets stop pretending that ending mass shootings and things of similar nature are a matter of “common sense” gun control.

If the only thing that is keeping us from being mass-shooter free is failure to heed suggestions of Obama and other champions of “common sense,” then I invite them to try— and then to take personal responsibility for everyone that they miss.

Thanks for your editorial. Very well done.

Maybe I will have to write one next!

Sincerely, Michael M.