So first let me tell you a story about something that happened on campus last week.

My friends and I, being the classy college students we are, had a wine night last Saturday night. You know the typical eat dinner, sit around and talk and listen to music kind of night. Right around 2 a.m. we decided to call it a night. My friend and I do not live on campus so we started to head down the stairwell and out to our cars. When we hit about 5 steps from the door to exit the stairwell we heard the screams. These screams were not your typically drunk girl coming in for the night screams, these were fearful screams. A kind of scream I have never heard before, and have been replaying in my head ever since. A second later we heard "Stop! Don't! Stop!" and not even a half a second later came the gun shot, which we later found out went right through the door we were about to open. So out of pure shock we immediately turned around and ran back to our friends apartment and called 911.

This brings up the controversial question lingering around the web right now, should conceal carry be allowed on college campuses?

I know everyones immediate thought is no, why would we want more guns on campus? And I totally understand that side of the argument but I want to discuss the side that takes a different approach at the issue.

Most reasonable people who purchase a gun either already know how to properly use it or intend on taking classes to learn. Don't get me wrong there are bad people out there and there are people who use guns for the wrong purposes. But I can't help but think of all the different things that could have happened that night and how differently the situation could have been. What if he had entered the stairwell? What if we would have left two minutes earlier? What if he would have kept shooting? All things that you can't prevent, but can only protect yourself against.

Lets say worst case scenario he would have came running into the stairwell, what would we have done? There is no where to run besides up the stairs, no where to hide, and nothing to protect ourselves with. If we would have been armed we at least would have stood a chance.

With all the recent violence and increase of shootings in schools you truly never know when something bad is going to happen. All you can do is prepare by educating yourself and being ready if needed. You know that saying "better late than never" well its also better to be prepared than gunned down.

Every time I think about the conceal carry issues being raised right now I also ask people, would you rather have people in the room with you have a gun and ready to intervene or call 911 and wait 15-20 minutes for them to get to you. I'm sure we have all seen the videos on FaceBook of people doing harm by robbing a store or a person and little do they know Joe in the back corner has a gun and they run or get shot, no harm done (besides the bad guy getting shot). That could be the reality of schools if we let it. You never know when someone is going to lose it and come in with a gun so why not be prepared for when that does happen.