Graduate student invited to White House for gun control activism

By Hannah Geerlings

Oct 25, 2016

Peabody graduate student Allison Plattsmier joined the number of people passing through White House security on Oct. 7 as she met with three senior White House officials to discuss gun control. She was invited to the White House due to her involvement with the DoSomething.org campaign, Guns Out.

Plattsmier became involved with gun control initiatives in response to safety issues around campus and calls for campus carry legislation. Since July 1, full-time employees at public universities in Tennessee have been allowed to carry a gun on campus, provided they notify the law enforcement agency responsible for the campus. Although Vanderbilt does not not need to comply with this law because it is a private institution, Plattsmier wanted to ensure Vanderbilt administration would not enact policies in a similar vein. After joining a Vanderbilt listserv, she began to receive e-mails about sexual assaults and armed robberies on campus and became concerned about safety at Vanderbilt, and how allowing guns on campus might worsen campus security.

“If campus carry legislation were to pass, it would only increase these problems,” Plattsmier said. “We could potentially see an increase in armed sexual assaults and crimes of passion. School should be a safe place for people to come and learn about their passion. Adding more guns to the situation will only make students more scared and it could really hinder their performance.”

Allison Plattsmier strikes the pose used in the "Guns Out" social media campaign in front of the White House — Allison Plattsmier strikes the pose used in the “Guns Out” social media campaign in front of the White House

In response, Plattsmier decided to take action in the form of a social media campaign to draw attention to the issue of campus carry legislation. She was involved with a petition against extending campus carry laws to Vanderbilt, and she delivered the list of names of the 81 people involved with the petition to Chancellor Zeppos. She took this initiative on Vanderbilt’s campus as part of the “Guns Out” campaign through DoSomething.org. The DoSomething organization aims to encourage activism among young people by giving them a platform to lead campaigns for causes they care about.

Plattsmier stressed the importance of gun control in this election.

“We should not live in a society where gun violence is commonplace and we are too afraid to do anything about it for fear of infringing on the Second Amendment,” she said. “There must be compromise and there must be a way to ensure that violent criminals, people with a history of violence, cannot obtain a weapon by any means. Whether this is by implementing smart technology or stricter requirements in order to purchase a gun, there must be a middle-ground.”

Plattsmier’s involvement in this campaign led to her being chosen as one of 11 student activists to travel to the White House, along with three representatives from DoSomething. They met in the Roosevelt Room to discuss campus carry legislation with Deputy Assistant to the President and Director of the Office of Public Engagement Paulette Aniskoff, Senior Associate Director in the White House Office of Public Engagement and Senior Policy Advisor Bess Evans and Senior Associate Director of Public Engagement and Senior Policy Advisor Kyle Lierman.

“I learned so much about the ability of youth to organize,” Plattsmier said of her visit. “I believe so many youth feel that their voice doesn’t matter and they can’t make impactful change but our group has eliminated that misconception. I also realized that there is so much more I could be doing with regards to this issue and I was inspired by all of the work that is being done around the nation.”

Moving forward, Plattsmier already has plans for continued involvement on campus initiatives about this issue. She has been appointed to the Community-Oriented Results and Expectations committee, a group that will make recommendations to the Vanderbilt University Police Department (VUPD) about how best to promote safety and security on campus. She has also worked with Dean Bandas and the VUPD to provide greater education about campus safety resources, including a law enforcement appreciation event at the end of October.

“I hoped that by making students feel more safe by educating them about the resources available to them, we could curtail the argument that we need more guns to ensure our safety,” Plattsmier said.

About the Contributor

Hannah Geerlings, Author

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DanH

8 years ago

Guns on campus would lead to an escalation in violent crime.

Since the fall semester of 2006, Utah state law has allowed licensed individuals to carry concealed handguns on the campuses of Utah’s nine degree-offering public colleges (20 campuses) and one public technical college (10 campuses). Concealed carry has been allowed on the two campuses of Colorado State University (Fort Collins, CO, and Pueblo, CO) since 2003 and at 14 Colorado community colleges (38 campuses) since the fall semester of 2010. After SCC won a lawsuit against the University of Colorado system, the remaining public colleges (21 campuses) in Colorado—including those in the CU system—changed their policies (as of the fall semester of 2012) to allow campus carry.

As of July 1, 2011, state law requires all Mississippi public colleges (42 campuses) to allow campus carry by holders of a Mississippi license with an enhanced training endorsement. As of July 1, 2014, state law requires all Idaho public colleges (30 campuses) to allow campus carry by holders of an ‘enhanced’ Idaho license.

Counting Blue Ridge Community College (Weyers Cave, VA), which allowed campus carry from 1995 to 2012, that’s more than 150 U.S. college campuses allowing concealed carry for a combined total of almost 1,500 semesters (spring/fall) over the past twenty years. Not one of these campuses has seen a single resulting act of violence (including threats) or a single resulting suicide attempt.

Likewise, no state has seen a resulting increase in gun violence as a result of legalizing concealed carry (all 50 states now allow some form of concealed carry), despite the fact that licensed citizens regularly carry concealed handguns in places like office buildings, movie theaters, grocery stores, shopping malls, restaurants, churches, and banks. Virtually every peer-reviewed study on the subject, including studies by the National Academy of Sciences* and the Harvard Injury Control Research Center**, has concluded that there is no evidence that licensed concealed carry leads to an increase in either violent crime or gun deaths.

According to 2002-2006 statistics*** from the Texas Department of Public Safety, Texas concealed handgun license holders were five and a half times less likely than members of Texas’s general population to commit manslaughter and four times less likely to commit murder.

*“Firearms and Violence: A Critical Review,” National Research Council/National Academy of Sciences, 2005

**“Evaluation of State-level Firearms Policies,” Harvard Injury Control Research Center, 2006

*** https://www.txdps.state.tx.us/rsd/chl/reports/convrates.htm

If only there were actual data for a length of time, say 15+ years, where firearms were allowed on all college campuses within a state, for instance Utah, including in classrooms, day rooms, dorms and everywhere else on campus. Then we could know whether this student had a clue what she was talking about. Oh wait a minute, here’s something:

http://idahoreporter.com/33557/concealed-carry-caused-much-problem-utah-campuses/
Officials at several universities, including the University of Utah, Utah Valley University, Dixie
State College and Utah State University told IdahoReporter.com that though carrying guns on
campus has been legal for nearly a decade, they haven’t seen evidence that their schools are
less safe.
“We haven’t had much problem with it,” said Steven Mecham, head of the Utah State University
Department of Public Safety. “It’s just not been an issue.”
Reached via email, University of Utah spokeswoman Maria O’Mara told IdahoReporter.com, “We
have had no incidents on campus regarding this law.”

Or perhaps 12+ years of history at a school. Hold on, here we go:
When the Concealed Carry Act became law on July 1, 2003, Colorado State University (30,000 students; main campus in Fort Collins) promptly complied. In 12 years of licensed carry at CSU, there have never been any problems caused by licensed carriers.

Plattsmier “began to receive e-mails about sexual assaults and armed robberies on campus and became concerned about safety at Vanderbilt, and how allowing guns on campus might worsen campus security.” Pure brilliance! Those who are already willing to violate the laws against sexual assault and the laws against armed robbery will surely follow a Vanderbilt policy forbidding firearms being brought onto campus. Thank goodness there are genius do-gooders like Plattsmier to protect us from the law-abiding citizens who will actually comply with a dull-witted policy.