Matt Valentine teaches writing and photography at the University of Texas at Austin. He has written about gun violence policy for the Atlantic and Salon.

Last Thursday afternoon in Austin—in the shadow of the clock tower from which a sniper shot four dozen people in 1966—students, faculty and staff gathered to demonstrate their opposition to a newly passed law that will allow the licensed carry of concealed handguns in college classrooms. A smaller group of counter-protesters was there, too, waving signs proclaiming “self defense = human right” and “feeling safe means being armed.” The confrontation was sometimes tense, but not humorless—one topless woman hoisted a sign that read, “These 38s won’t kill students!”

As the rally ended and the crowds dispersed, students checked their smartphones to see what they had missed on social media. That’s when they learned about the gunman who had shot 16 people in Oregon, killing nine before taking his own life.


Almost immediately, gun rights advocates pointed to the Umpqua Community College massacre as an illustration of why campus carry is the antidote to school shootings.

It’s an intuitive and appealing idea—that a good guy with a gun will stop a bad guy with a gun. We can imagine it. We see it in movies. At least 80 million Americans have gone into the gun store, laid money on the counter, and purchased that fantasy. And yet it rarely plays out as envisioned. Is it because there aren’t enough guns? Is it because the guns aren’t allowed where they are needed? Or is there something else wrong with our aspirations to heroism?

Speaking Friday on CNN Newsroom with Carol Costello, perennial gun rights advocate John Lott said, “My solution for these mass shootings is to look at the fact that every single time, these attacks occur where guns are banned. Every single time.”

That’s neither true in general nor true in this instance. The FBI tells us that active-shooter scenarios occur in all sorts of environments where guns are allowed—homes, businesses, outdoor spaces. (In fact, there was another mass shooting the same day as the Oregon massacre, leaving three dead and one severely wounded in a home in North Florida.) And Umpqua Community College itself wasn’t a gun-free zone. Oregon is one of seven states that allow guns on college campuses—the consequence of a 2011 court decision that overturned a longstanding ban. In 2012, the state board of education introduced several limitations on campus carry, but those were not widely enforced.

School policy at UCC does ban students from carrying guns into buildings except as “authorized by law,” but at least one student interpreted his concealed handgun license as legal authorization.

John Parker Jr., an Umpqua student and Air Force veteran, told multiple media outlets that he was armed and on campus at the time of the attack last week. Parker and other student veterans (perhaps also armed) thought about intervening. “Luckily we made the choice not to get involved,” Parker told MSNBC. “We were quite a distance away from the actual building where it was happening, which could have opened us up to being potential targets ourselves.”

Parker’s story changed when he spoke to Fox News' Sean Hannity. Instead of saying he “made the choice” not to get involved, Parker said school staff prevented him from helping. Breitbart and other right-wing outlets are making the case that, if only there had been more armed students on campus, one of them might have been able to make a difference. Ideally, there would be so many guns on campus (one in every classroom? one for every student?) that gunmen wouldn’t even attempt a school shooting.

Parker is just one of many armed civilians who have been present or proximal to a mass shooting but was unable to stop it. The canard of the armed civilian mass-shooting hero is perpetuated by exaggerations and half-truths.

There’s the story of Joel Myrick, an assistant principal who “stopped” a shooting at Pearl High School—but only after it was already over and the shooter was leaving.

There’s the story of James Strand, the armed banquet-hall proprietor who “stopped” a shooting at a school dance he was hosting—but only after the student gunman had exhausted all of his ammunition.

There’s Nick Meli, a shopper who drew his weapon in self-defense during an attack at Clackamas Mall—but Meli’s story has changed repeatedly, and local police say that his role in causing the shooter’s suicide is “inconclusive” and “speculation.”

There’s Mark Kram, who shot a gunman fleeing on a bicycle from the scene of a shooting. Kram also ran down the gunman with a car.

There’s Joe Zamudio, who came running to help when he heard the gunfire that injured Gabby Giffords and killed six others in Tucson. But by the time Zamudio was on the scene, unarmed civilians had already tackled and disarmed the perpetrator. Zamudio later said that, in his confusion, he was within seconds of shooting the wrong person.

There’s Joseph Robert Wilcox, who drew his concealed handgun in a Las Vegas Walmart to confront gunmen who had executed police officers nearby. Wilcox was himself killed by one of the two assailants, both of whom then engaged police in a firefight.

And then there are the fifth wheels—armed civilians who have confronted mass shooters simultaneously with police, such as Allen Crum, who accompanied three law enforcement officers onto the observation deck of the UT Main Building to end the 1966 sniper attack.

That doesn’t mean there aren’t also instances of legitimate civilian gun use. The NRA points to phone surveys from the 1990s that suggest Americans might use their guns defensively millions of times every year, though even the most charitable efforts to actually document such incidents come up with fewer than 2,000 per year. We’re told that defensive gun use is difficult to document, because guns are such an effective deterrent that—without firing a shot—the mere presence of a weapon can prevent a crime.

I asked Dr. Peter Langman, a clinical psychologist and author of the book School Shooters: Understanding High School, College, and Adult Perpetrators, whether the presence of guns is a factor rampage shooters consider when they plan their attacks.

“I don’t think it is. Many of these shooters intend to die, either by their own hand or by suicide by cop. There was an armed guard at Columbine. There were armed campus police at Virginia Tech. The presence of armed security does not seem to be a deterrent,” Langman said. “Because they’re not trying to get away with it. They’re going in essentially on a suicide mission.”

Langman points out another reason shooters might attack places like schools, theaters and churches. It’s not the absence of guns, but rather the abundance of victims. “If you’re going to do an act like this, you need a certain number of people in one space.”

The same forces that are advocating campus carry want guns in every movie theater, every church, every park, every grocery store, every zoo. In Texas, if a restaurant or retail store (other than a bar or liquor store) wants to ban guns on private property, they are required by law to post a sign citing the entire text of Texas Penal Code 30.06, in English and Spanish, with one-inch-high letters. The sign itself is a huge eyesore no business would want blemishing its walls. (And the code “30.06” is a wink at gun enthusiasts, who will recognize “30-06” as a familiar cartridge caliber for hunting and old military rifles.) Other states have introduced a new “enhanced” concealed carry permit that allows bearers to bring their guns into places where they are usually banned (such as courthouses and polling places) and to ignore “no guns” signage. This is the direction gun laws have been trending in many American states—toward guns everywhere, with impunity.

And who knows? Maybe it will work. Just because no armed civilian has ever actually stopped a school shooting doesn’t mean it isn’t possible. If you put enough guns in the hands of enough students and professors and teachers and administrators and groundskeepers and janitors, one of them is bound to bag a bad guy eventually. Here’s the problem, though: You’re more likely to get shot by an ordinary gun owner who loses his temper than by a mass murderer. And when you arm everybody, you surround yourself with a lot more ordinary gun owners, each in possession of an immediately accessible weapon and a full range of human emotions.

Last week, the FBI released “Crime in the U.S., 2014,” a report that includes (among other stats) all incidents of gun violence known to law enforcement (except in Florida and Alabama, states that chose not to share that particular information). On “Expanded Homicide Data Table 11, Murder Circumstances by Weapon Type” (downloadable here), we see that the most common known circumstance for gun homicide is “arguments.” The number of people shot to death last year in arguments not during the commission of a felony (1,759) dwarfs the number shot to death in gang violence (667) and the number shot to death in drug trafficking (298)—combined. These are arguments over things like radio-controlled-car races, candy, inheritance of a tractor and road rage. What do you suppose will happen when we add to that milieu armed confrontations over grades, hazing and college breakups?

The Oregon shootings do not illustrate the need for campus carry. If the tragedy in Roseburg demonstrates anything, it is that U.S. gun culture has jumped the shark. Every successive detail that emerges about this incident is bonkers:

The local sheriff in Roseburg, who is overseeing the investigation of the UCC shooting, sent Joe Biden a letter after Sandy Hook saying he wouldn’t enforce any “unconstitutional” new gun laws. (He got his wish—none were enacted.) Sheriff John Hanlin also posted a video on Facebook that called the Newtown shootings a hoax. (In a sick irony, he is now contending with conspiracy theorists that call his own local tragedy a hoax.) The Oregon killer’s dad expressed shock that his son owned 13 firearms, even though the killer’s mom had stockpiled weapons and was an open carry enthusiast. The hospital that treated the Umpqua victims received an unexpected gift from Louisiana—ten pizzas ordered by a hospital in Lafayette, where victims of another mass shooting had been treated over the summer. This is apparently a new tradition among American hospitals, welcoming each other to the mass shooting club. And remember the (unarmed) American heroes who tackled the terrorist gunman on a French train this summer? One of them was due to start classes last week at Umpqua Community College.

In his 11th speech responding to a mass shooting, even as he said “we’re going to have to change our laws,” President Barack Obama seemed resigned to the fact that this Congress isn’t going to do anything about guns. So, what’s left? Do we shrug off this latest tragedy, as Jeb Bush did, saying “stuff happens?”

Writing for Mic.com, Mathew Rodriguez has helpfully offered “6 Surprising Ways to Curb Gun Violence That Have Nothing to Do With Gun Control.” His solutions include prison reform, addressing structural racism and correcting income inequality. Those are colossal ambitions, and yet they are somehow more plausible than a universal background check requirement or a magazine capacity restriction passing the 114th Congress.

While we pursue long-term social reforms, people are dying, and for the families directly affected by gun violence, this is unacceptable. “There are families attached to every one of these numbers, and it breaks peoples’ hearts for the rest of their lives,” said Tom Teves, whose son Alex was one of 12 people killed in the 2012 theater shooting in Aurora, Colorado. “There’s now ten families, that for the rest of their lives, they’re going to wake up at four in the morning like I did this morning, and the first thing I thought was: Alex is still dead,” Teves said. “People don’t realize that grief causes physical pain, and I can honestly understand how people die of a broken heart.”

Tom and his wife Caren have developed one strategy to reduce mass shootings that is immediately actionable. “These mass killers crave notoriety. They are counting on it and they are using it and they’re getting it,” Caren Teves said. “What I’m hoping happens—and it will happen, and I thoroughly believe this—if they stop getting what motivates them, they will stop. We need to say you will not receive fame in this way anymore, and it will be reduced.” The No Notoriety campaign challenges the media, in particular, to refrain from unnecessarily repeating the name of perpetrators when reporting on mass shootings, and to refrain from using photographs of the killers unless they are still at large.

Caren Teves says of course this tactic alone won’t save every victim of gun violence, but “it’s something we can do now.”

Is it the only thing we can do now? Democratic Sens. Richard Blumenthal and Chris Murphy of Connecticut announced a new bill Friday, aiming to close one of several loopholes in our background check system. The proposed legislation would prevent a gun sale from proceeding in circumstances in which a background check is incomplete. (Under current law, if background checks are not completed within 72 hours, the dealer may legally make the transaction anyway.) This bill wouldn’t have prevented the Oregon shooter from acquiring his weapons, but it might have impeded the man who killed nine people at a Charleston, South Carolina, church last summer, or the 2,500 other prohibited buyers who obtained firearms through this loophole last year. On the other hand, it could inconvenience a small percentage of legal gun buyers. Legislators will weigh those relative merits this fall.

Meanwhile, across the country, gun stores are preparing for the spike in sales that always follows a high-profile massacre.