Seems that people with severe mental illness are able to easily purchase guns in this country. Seems like people (whether actually mentally ill or not) who are upset and angry and want to hurt someone also can purchase a gun easily.

Often we hear that gun advocates think that more guns is the solution. This seems to revolve on a world view where most all of us have our hands on our guns, all of us with guns are ready to take appropriate defensive action, all of us with guns can read a scene perfectly and all of us will come to a correct decision at all times and every time about how to react.

Hypothesize many many people walking and driving around every day carrying their gun with them. Suppose (just for supposes sake) that half the people wandering around have a gun within reach. Think about what is required here. No one with a gun should be angry. No one carrying a gun should have hormones raging out of control. No one carrying a gun has mental illness. No one carrying a gun had too little sleep last night. No one carrying a gun has depression, schizophrenia, mania or delusions. No one carrying a gun is temporarily irrational. Nothing bad happens to anyone carrying a gun that gets them mentally out of joint: a bump in the crowd, loud truck sounds, a boss with an unreasonable demand just before quitting time, missing the green light, a mentally ill homeless person smelling bad standing on the street corner asking for handouts.

Have you ever done something stupid that you later regretted, even though you didn't suffer consequences? Would having access to a gun made that situation better? Think of all the stupid things everyone else has ever done. Ever seen someone in a fender bender get out of their car and start screaming at the other person, no matter who was at fault?

Those of us in academia worry a lot about our students, both generally and specifically. Every now and again, someone with access to a gun or guns comes to campus or to the area near campus with intent, sometimes to shoot a specific person such as an adviser, colleague, competitor or department chair. Sometimes they come to campus or the area near campus with the intent to kill just any random person they can find.

Having a lot of people wandering around with guns, I now have to worry about the sanity and training and general level-headedness of each and every one of them. And we can't tolerate a situation where any one of these gun toting people anywhere in the country are temporarily off-balance, temporarily ill-tempered, temporarily irritated, or temporarily over-stressed.

In academia, we do put people under stress. There's paperwork and bureaucracy, bad food and traffic. We give tests. Sometimes hard ones. We have deadlines. We demand a lot from our students. We teach, and we expect them to learn. We deliver bad news: you didn't get the grade you hoped for, or the grade you thought you deserved or thought you needed. You didn't get admitted to the school, the major, the program, graduate school. All this puts stress on an individual. Some people cope fine, some learn coping mechanisms, some cope sufficiently, some grow as a person and rise to the occasion. Little of this is done without stress.

What about the stresses of interpersonal relationships? Students at college are meeting many new people, from many different walks of life and this can be a fresh challenge. Students are away from their comfort zone for the first, or if in grad school, second time; many students travel and some travel great distances to attend college. One develops boy/girl friends, close friends and people you can't stand, though they share a bathroom with you. Sometimes friendships fall apart, sometimes they go lax. A support group can grow and it can shrink suddenly at holiday time or at the end of the school year. People get isolated, sometimes for long periods of calendar time, some for shorter periods. All of us are isolated for hours in a given day.

Some students press themselves very hard. Some students expect more from themselves than they are able to deliver. Some have expectations out of sync with their abilities and interests. And just about everyone learns how to adjust to reality when reality bites back. People naturally get stressed in life and in academia. And this pushes some folks a bit far, and for a while they can break, until they mend and come back, hopefully stronger, ready to try new things. Or they change their goals and their objectives, and move to a different sphere in their lives.

And people less capable of handling limits, instructions, social interactions, deadlines are more likely to be stressed by these situations.

And into this vital, vibrant personal and academic stew, full of growth and challenge, despair, growth and success, you want to mix lethal weapons too?

I suspect that people who want freely available lethal gun weapons are also those who seem to think that illness stops at the neck, that mental illness doesn't exist, or doesn't happen. Mental illness is something that can strike most anybody. It may not strike you. But you'll want to be insured for it, just in case. Someone can be healthy, and mentally well balanced one day and go buy a gun. And pass any check on mental illness. And that person, at that time, I'm not worried about them going out and shooting someone. But that person can live for another 50 years with that gun. And in all that time, you want to guarantee me that they will never be stressed? Never depressed or despondent? Never make a stupid decision? Never be trod upon by life? By life, by a boss, by a spouse, by bureaucracy, by a neighbor, by politics, by money worries? By kids or parents? Never get in a bad way? Never suicidal, never angry, never unhappy, never mad, never irate? Never mentally ill? Never get Alzheimer's?

You want to assure me that this healthy, mentally stable person will never mis-use that gun for the rest of their life?

And their spouse, their kids, their parents, and their kid's friends will never mis-use that gun for the rest of their lives as well? And everyone that might accidentally or purposefully gain access to that gun?

What training is required to properly use a gun? Cleaning, handling, safe storage, target practice, accuracy, reading a scene, what else? Do you want to assure me that everyone who might ever come into contact with that gun will have the proper training to use that gun? That they remember their training? That they own a gun safe? That their weapons are stored in that gun safe? That the combo to the safe isn't written on a piece of paper in the kitchen drawer with the spare car keys?

Now multiply this by the estimated 100,000,000 people in the United States who own a gun. I don't think people understand what happens when you multiply a small problem, a small probability of a bad outcome by 100 million.

You want to guarantee me that all 100,000,000 people are not having such a bad day that they won't mis-use that gun? You want to guarantee me that all 100,000,000 people know how to use a gun properly, that they'll safely store it away from their kids and any other kids? You want to guarantee me that all 100,000,000 people won't have their house burgled and the gun stolen where it disappears into the underground economy? Not one person in those 100,000,000 won't get furious at someone or something in the next week?

You want to guarantee me that all 100,000,000 people won't commit suicide, tomorrow, this year, sometime in the next fifty years? In any given day, 58 of those 100,000,000 nice US citizens commit suicide using a gun. About 30 people use a gun to kill someone else each day. In the US.

So, can you guarantee me that out of those 100 million people, that all 100 million of them are going to behave properly? Right now, about 88 of them per day on average are killing themselves or someone else. But that adds up to quite a lot of dead Americans by December 31st.

Have a nice day. And please don't shoot me.