Why Florida needs to legalize concealed carry on campus: A rape survivor’s compelling argument

The Florida legislature is considering bills in both houses to allow students with a concealed carry permit to bring their gun on campus. Educators have a responsibility to keep their students safe while on campus. Students currently give up their unalienable rights to defend themselves while on a school campus. Making college and K-12 school campuses gun free zones puts safety on the back burner and self defense impossible.

In November 2014 three Florida State University students were shot on campus by a lone gunman. One of the wounded students was a military veteran and holder of a Florida concealed carry permit. He was unarmed because current Florida law prevented him from carrying while on campus.

The following are excerpts from an op-ed by Amanda Collins titled “Counterpoint: A rape survivor argues why we need guns on campus.” Amanda writes:

Across the country, legislators are debating the right of law-abiding concealed carry permit holders to legally carry firearms onto university campuses.

Just the other day, I was asked “Why do you need a firearm on campus? What’s so threatening about becoming educated?” Here’s my answer: Eight years ago, during my junior year at the University of Nevada-Reno, I was raped in the parking garage only feet away from the campus police office.

As this stranger raped me while holding a pistol to my temple, I could see the police cruisers parked for the night, and I knew no one was coming to help me. Eventually the man who raped me, James Biela, was caught. He was tried and convicted for not only raping me at gun point in a gun-free zone, but also raping two other women and murdering Brianna Denison. So, I ask, “How does rendering me defenseless protect you against a violent crime?”
At the time of my attack, I had obtained my Concealed Carry Weapons (CCW) permit for the personal choice of not wanting to be a defenseless target. In Nevada, permit holders are not allowed to carry firearms on campuses. As a law-abiding citizen, I left my firearm at home, which means that the law that is meant to ensure my safety only guaranteed the criminal an unmatched victim.

I still wonder what would have been different if I’d been carrying my weapon that night. But here’s the truth: Had I been carrying my firearm, I would have been able to stop the attack. Not only that, but two other rapes would have been prevented and three young lives would have been saved, including my own.

Any survivor of rape can understand that the young woman I was walking into the parking garage that night was not the same woman who left. My life has never been the same after my attack. Legalized campus carry would have saved my family, who happens to be the collateral damage in my story, and me a great deal of untold torment.

My case is a perfect example that despite law enforcement’s best efforts to ensure our safety, they are unable to be everywhere at once. All I wanted was a chance to effectively defend myself. The choice to participate in one’s own defense should be left to the individual. That choice should not be mandated by the government. As a law-abiding citizen, I should not have to hand over my safety to a third party. Laws that prohibit campus carry turn women like me into victims by stripping away our Second Amendment rights.

Unfortunately, legislators opposed to campus carry are more intimidated by law-abiding citizens like me sitting in class with a legal firearm, than the rapist waiting for me in the parking garage. Most people are unaware that one in four women will be raped while attending college and one-third of them occur on the campus they attend.

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EDITORS NOTE: Amanda Collins’ op-ed is a response submitted through the National Rifle Association to a Feb. 24 column, “More Guns on campus is not the answer to sexual assault,” by Shannon Watts, the founder of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, a Michael Bloomberg funded anti-gun organization.

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