On October 23, Seattle Central Community College (SCCC) campus
security received a tip from a concerned student that a 23-year-old
student—whom we will not name—was carrying a gun on campus. The next day, at noon, campus security and
Seattle police met the man in the hallway—with “guns drawn,”
according to one student—and searched him. Officers found a
loaded gun in his waistband and two more firearms and ammunition in his
backpack. He was carrying three Sig Sauer hand guns according to the
SPD—a 9 mm, a .40 caliber, and a .45. The man—described in
the police report as “extremely nervous” and “shaking”—was
arrested for having a “dangerous weapon” on campus. At the precinct,
officers interviewed the man who, according to the report, “cried and
shook uncontrollably.”
The school suspended the man for one year for violating campus
weapons policies, but because he possessed a concealed-weapons permit,
what he did was not technically a crime. The man’s weapons were taken
as evidence, but he is not being charged.
In light of last April’s shootings at Virginia Tech and the
University of Washington, the appearance of weapons on campus is a
cause for alarm. Several of the man’s classmates have expressed concern
about his stability and related a series of bizarre in-class
incidents.
“He’d bring his pit bull into class,” says one former classmate who
asked not to be named. “The teacher never said anything, which
surprised me. It’s obviously not a service dog.” Several classmates
claim the man—who appears on his MySpace page with what appears
to be a black eye and swollen lip, next to the manifesto-like quote
“The fruit of my apathy has left me objectively numb”—constantly
slept in class, and was even booted by an instructor. “He was
sleeping—and snoring rather loudly—and the teacher
finally… asked him to leave.” The next day, the student says the
teacher asked the class to write letters supporting her decision to
boot the man. “We really didn’t want him back in our class,” says the
student. “He [came] back anyway.”
One of the man’s former classmates, Alisa Mackay—who had no
problem being identified—says she had class with him last spring,
and also expressed concern about his demeanor. “He did not seem like a
stable person to me,” Mackay says. “He always seemed really blurry and
out of it. He’d constantly mumble everything and fall asleep in class.”
Perhaps the most troubling statement about the man comes from the
police report. “[He] is afraid that his enemies are out to cause him
harm,” the report says,
adding that he “suffers from an anxiety
disorder, which he takes medication for.”
There isn’t much the school can do about similar incidents in the
future. The school has cameras and a security officer, but SCCC
spokeswoman Laura Mansfield says the school primarily relies on
students to be its “eyes and ears.” Indeed, while a student reported
the guns to school security, the rest of the student body wasn’t
notified of the incident until a mass e-mail was sent out two days
after the man’s arrest, and a day after the school had notified the
faculty. “Our students can be difficult to contact. We don’t have group
e-mail lists,” Mansfield says.
While the school does have a weapons policy in place—that “the
possession of firearms on campus is illegal,” although Mansfield says
punishment is discretionary—there’s no way to prevent guns from
coming onto campus. Metal detectors aren’t an option and, Mansfield
says, “Part of the difficulty is that this young man had a valid permit
to carry a concealed weapon. We are somewhat constrained by state
law.”
While it’s illegal to bring a gun into a courthouse or a bar,
there’s no law banning them on college campuses. Mansfield says that
whenever there has been an incident like this on campus, schools push
the state school board to work with the legislature to ban weapons on
campus. Nevertheless, Mansfield says, “strong lobbying forces” kill
antigun legislation.
“Over the last 30 years, the National Rifle Association has created
a body of political opinion that is reflexive to any control on guns,”
says State Senator Adam Kline (D-37). Kline has sponsored two bills to
curb access to guns, but, he says, even “fairly moderate” measures tend
to die in committee. Kline is pragmatic about the situation. “I have to
ask myself: Do I want to fight that battle, or do I want to work on
stuff that I think I can win on?” he says. “It may be chickenhearted
for legislators
to give up on this battle,
but you just can’t
win.”
When asked about the sensibility of banning guns from courtrooms and
bars, but not colleges, Kline took a shot at progun legislators. “This
is not a matter of sense; this is a matter of legislation,” he said.
“Legislators don’t need to make sense.” 
