http://www.dailybruin.ucla.edu/news/articles.asp?id=34465
It's quite clear that at least a few criminals look at university folk as easy prey, since you're not going to be doing much in terms of self-defense against a 9mm handgun with your iPod or the "downward dog" learned in yoga.
Life dictates that some of us are on campus at night when these robberies occur and when few, if any, police are seen patrolling. What do I do if a guy accosts me tonight with a gun and demands my wallet?
I was always told to do whatever the assailant tells me, and hand over my wallet while wishing I wore Huggies. But what if the person demands, "Now come with me!"? It happened to a good friend of my family, and she's no longer alive.
A common solution presented is to hire more police, since our police perform a critical aspect of delivering justice after someone commits a crime. The problem is that you or I have to be shot, raped, stabbed or mugged for someone to be arrested.
Preventing crime from occurring is a solution I'm more fond of. It's also a daunting task. For police to effectively prevent crime, they would have to be an omnipresent force that never left a would-be criminal without the watchful gaze of an officer.
Of course it's an expensive solution. We could take money out of our dwindling education budget and more jaywalking citations could be issued, but as soon as we start scaling back the police, I'm back to wearing jumbo Huggies.
Pepper spray's an option, unless of course there's a gentle breeze, and then the joke's on me as my eyes swell shut, or the spray is ineffective and now he's angry while pointing a gun at me.
There's the Taser. Tasers can instantly incapacitate someone, if I hit. If I miss, I'm left holding an electronically advanced musket, without the ability to refire.
And then there's the firearm. You know, it's the same thing the assailant is pointing at me.
So let's get rid of guns, right? I've heard the argument that if we ban guns, this guy wouldn't be pointing one at me. After all, a straw purchase, or when someone purchases a gun for someone else, is how Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris obtained the guns they used at Columbine.
Unfortunately, when looking at England, which banned privately owned handguns, the BBC reported on several occasions where there is a flood of illegal guns entering the country, and criminals have access to firearms. We've outlawed most narcotics, but there are still those who "powder their noses."
Right here in California, the feds made a bust of more than 2,000 smuggled fully automatic AK-47s in 1996. If you're an optimist, they seized every weapon and no one's tried since to smuggle illegal arms.
But if you're like me, you'd look over at the guy who just "powdered his nose" and wonder.
So what if I carried a gun too? I've seen Westerns where everyone has a gun and I don't want to be in an ultra-violent society, but as we see with states that allow CCWs, or permits that allow people to carry concealed weapons, this ultra-violent society doesn't exist.
A number of states issue CCWs to anyone with a clean background check (California law enforcement issues CCWs on a discretionary basis.) While the debate rages about how effective CCWs are in lowering total crime, people with CCWs don't make life more dangerous. Over one million CCWs were issued in Florida in an 18-year period, and only 2,888 were revoked due to crime after licensure.
Guns are used in self-defense thousands of times each year, and unlike the police, we can be everywhere for free.
I'm liberal, I'm abortion rights, I support social security, and I want affordable health coverage for everyone.
We should absolutely pursue social means of reducing crime.
But we should not naively assume that crime and murder will stop. As our two fellow students just experienced, we shouldn't have to stare down the barrel of a gun, hoping for aid that doesn't come in time.
Anand is a student in the David Geffen School of Medicine's combined MD/PhD program.