When I first read Naomi Forman’s op-ed “Guns for Campus Safety are unnecessary,” I wondered if The Clarion was imitating The Onion. This editorial was illinformed and misleading on the important question of whether campus security should be armed. Ms. Forman is certainly entitled to her own opinion, but not her own set of facts.

Ms. Forman’s argument hinges on her observation that Fort Hood has soldiers “proficient” in using weapons. Since two mass shootings have occurred there, Ms. Forman concludes that weapons are not effective in countering public shootings.

Ms. Forman is grossly wrong in her assumption that since Fort Hood has soldiers trained to use weapons, it is full of armed personnel. In fact, military installations like Fort Hood have far stricter rules about carrying weapons and ammunition that off-base settings. Officially issued weapons are kept carefully segregated from ammunition; only on-duty military police carry ammunition with weapons. Soldiers living on base require the explicit written authorization of their commanding officer to have a personally owned weapon on base, and the concealed or public carrying of weapons with ammunition is strictly controlled and usually prohibited by military law and regulations.

In fact, you’re probably around a lot more armed people at your average shopping mall or grocery store than you are on a military base.

Several of Ms. Forman’s other assertions are equally ill-informed. It’s facetious to suggest that campus safety officers would simply be given guns to walk around with; a shift from campus security to campus police would entail greater training and professionalism for these people charged with our protection. More overly, it is both unwise and morally irresponsible to ask a public safety officer to enter a situation where a shooter is killing people with real bullets and arm the good guy with only a BB gun or a non-lethal munition.

Ms. Forman’s gross inaccuracies muddle the truly important questions: Can the DU community afford to wait on the Denver Police to respond with lethal force when that is needed? Or should the university invest in the additional resources (with significant costs) to create our own armed university police?

I don’t know the right answers to those questions. However, shoddy editorializing like what you printed by Ms. Forman serves to obscure rather than illuminate this issue, and undercuts any reasoned discourse on what our community should do.

Note from the editors:

We sincerely appreciate you voicing your concerns about the article published in last week’s Clarion. The aim of the article was to stimulate a thoughtful conversation about the controversial topic of arming on-campus safety officers, and we greatly value you becoming involved in creating this nuanced conversation through your feedback.

What do you think about arming campus safety officers?

We encourage our readers to weigh in on this topic and any other campus-related issues.