OUR VIEW: Don't jump the gun

AT ISSUE: Learn all the facts, think about why this concerns you before

Statistics and guns do not mix well.

Ponder this for a second - three-fifths of convicted felons would not "mess around" with a person they thought was packing heat, according to statistics provided by Students for Concealed Carry on Campus.

Makes you want to have a gun on you to protect yourself, doesn't it?

But that also means two-fifths of all felons wouldn't care if you had a hand cannon tucked away in your backpack.

If 40 percent of convicts don't care, maybe it's not worth the risk of having a firearm among your textbooks while you walk to your class.

Students for Concealed Carry on Campus has brought this to our attention saying the risk of being mugged or seeing a repeat of the Virginia Tech or Northern Illinois' shootings would diminish if we could carry guns.

At the other end of the barrel is the argument that more guns on campus would mean more gun deaths.

All the arguments and statistics about whether concealed guns should be legally allowed has college students arguing about the possibility of crossfire on campus. And the excess of statistics being fired at us has left us in the crosshairs of confusion.

If we plan to find a solution about the gun debate, we need to filter through the facts we're given.

But more importantly, we need to reflect on one thing: How did we get to the point that we're arguing about whether concealed guns should be allowed on college campuses?

We got here, in part, out of fear.

In less than a year, we saw the horrors of two campus shootings - one was the deadliest shooting in U.S. history - broadcast across the country. The thought of one of our classmates at Ball State being the next Seung-Hui Cho or Steven Kazmierczak shoots shivers down our spines.

Campuses responded by tightening security. No university wanted to be the next to call parents to say their children were killed in a shooting.

One of the solutions that has emerged is to allow guns on campus.

Some like the idea, saying crazed and desperate students would never unload on a campus if they knew their classmates could return fire.

Some hate the idea, saying crazed and desperate students would have an easier time unloading on a campus if they could legally carry their weapons with no one else knowing.

Either way, the response has been because we're afraid of being the next campus to have its own "massacre."

Before deciding if you're for or against carrying concealed weapons on campus, find all the facts - not just the ones you're given. And more importantly, ask why you're so concerned about it.

This solution is going to be a hard target to hit.