The Human Cost of "Reasonable" Gun Laws

Dear Dartmouth: I’m Being Stalked – Please Let Me Protect Myself

Fearing for my safety, I finally contacted Dartmouth College’s Department of Safety and Security in June and asked if I could keep a permitted handgun on campus. But no luck. The advice was that I call campus security and arrange for an escort if I ever felt unsafe after dark. I was also told that there was no way to appeal this decision.

Yet, the escorts have proved to be impractical and humiliating. Campus security has told me, “you can’t keep calling us all the time.” When requesting transportation, I am grilled over whether I have a justifiable reason.

Campus security tells me that I can’t call until after 9 PM, but my stalker doesn’t really care what time of day it is.

What are women in these circumstances supposed to do? Keep themselves locked in their dorm rooms, as I have done?

Gun laws always come at a cost to the individual. Ther more restrictive they are the greater the potential cost. No matter how safe it may make the self-righteous controlist feel, there will be instances where a peaceable individual is harmed because of restrictive gun laws. The infamous Merced Pitchfork Murders is a good example. I sincerely hope the young lady in the above story does not become another. The right of self defense is fundamental to all civilized peoples and, in a civilized world she would not have to live in such fear. She does because a significant number of her countrymen do not care about her and rank her genuine safety concerns as less important than their feelings of security.