Opinion: Good guys without guns

On Wednesday, I along with many Ohio University students woke up to emails, text messages and dozens of tweets all sounding the alarm that an armed fugitive was at large in the city. The individual, described by OUPD as an African-American male, 6'1" - 6'2" in height, wearing a blue hoodie and jeans and carrying a semi-automatic handgun, committed a robbery on Station Street and then fled toward West Green.Coincidentally, the school closure gave me enough time to watch a live stream of the Senate gun control hearings on Capitol Hill.I was well prepared for this surprise day of rest; monitoring Twitter updates, listening to The Athens Messenger’s online police scanner, and clutching my Nerf gun with laser sight attachment, I proceeded to keep my friends and family abreast of the situation. All the while, I watched as senators, activists, cops and the National Rifle Association’s Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre sparred and batted around ideas on a proposed ban of military style assault weapons, introduced by Sen. Dianne Feinstein.Obviously, the weapon used in this robbery, as in most robberies, was not an assault rifle. Such a ban would not have prevented this incident from taking place. I, however, am not disheartened by the facts of what happened on our campus yesterday. In fact, I am quite content.Immediately after the robbery, students were alerted to the danger. There was little confusion or panic and false rumors were quickly dispelled by authorities. Law enforcement was deployed to search for the suspect. Every action taken by the university was as orderly as possible.If there is one hero of this “crisis,” it’s OU Vice President Ryan Lombardi, whose Twitter feed first alerted students that the school was closed and who continued to issue constant updates on the situation throughout the day. It’s a brand of communication that students have come to expect from Lombardi, especially when information from other sources is less forthcoming, and it’s one of the reasons why he is held in such high regard by students. OU students can be thankful for administrators like Lombardi, as well as President Roderick McDavis, who did not hesitate to put student safety first, despite the logistical challenges of closing the university.In short, Ohio University handled the situation in a civilized fashion. Curiously enough, this is not what the NRA would have us do.As the crisis unfolded here at OU, on Capitol Hill NRA chief Wayne LaPierre was declaring, “The innocents are being preyed upon. Innocents all over the country want to be able to defend themselves." LaPierre, you see, would’ve preferred if the person who was robbed on Station Street had been armed and had fired back. He would have preferred that students and faculty members had dropped everything upon learning the news, grabbed their AR-15s and gone out to hunt the suspect. Because, as Mr. LaPierre is so fond of saying, “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.”We have plenty of good guys at Ohio University, many of them without guns. We have good guys like Ryan Lombardi and Roderick McDavis and the other administrators and faculty who took up Twitter instead of arms, who communicated instead of locked and loaded, who approached the situation with calmness and poise instead of guns a-blazin’. And we also have plenty of good guys with guns, like the officers of the Ohio University Police Department and Athens Police Department who spent all day patrolling the streets and keeping students and citizens safe. And we have plenty of good guys and girls who did as they were told; students who stayed home and kept each other safe and calm, and even those who chose to go uptown and take advantage of the so-called “Fugitive Fest.” There were no armed posses or student vigilantes roaming the streets and greens.On Wednesday, no student of Ohio University or citizen of Athens was in need of a firearm. We kept calm and carried on. It’s unfortunate that those at the gun control hearings on Capitol Hill were holed up in the Senate chambers, or else they might have caught a glimpse of what civilization looks like.