by Gabrielle L. Gonzalez
In recent months, the issue of sexual assault on college campuses has been at the forefront of national attention. Many states, including New York and California, have responded by enacting affirmative consent statutes, increasing funding for sexual assault education and training programs on campus, improving campus security, tracking sexual assault perpetrators, and providing incentives for victims to report instances of campus sexual assault to law enforcement.
However, Florida’s gun-rights advocates have clung onto the media frenzy and come up with their own ideas for combating the campus sexual assault problem. Last week, Florida lawmakers introduced a bill that would allow students to carry concealed firearms on public college campuses, effectively lifting the gun ban that is currently in place. Proponents of the bill argue that arming female college students with guns will reduce the number of sexual assaults occurring on college campuses because victims will ultimately have a last “fighting chance to fend off attackers”—e.g. a chance to shoot their attacker at point blank—which will deter offenders from committing the act in the first place.
The issue with this solution is the reliance on a misguided conception of how most victims react when confronted with sexual assault. The proposed law presumes that if a victim could carry a gun on campus, they would be able to effectively use it to protect themselves against an attacker at the time of the assault. But, the most reliable social science research indicates that this isn’t the case at all.
First, the majority of sexual assaults on college campuses do not entail strangers jumping out of bushes in the middle of the night. Studies indicate that approximately eighty-two percent of sexual assaults are committed by someone known to the victim. In these acquaintance rape situations, a gun would not be effective because victims would likely have a difficult time pulling a trigger at point blank on someone they personally know and associate with. Second, as many as fifty percent of sexual assault victims experience tonic immobility. Tonic immobility is a biological, hormone-induced response to a threatening situation which causes a temporary state of paralysis. In this frozen state, there would be no way for the victim to reach for a gun, use a gun, or fend off the attacker in any other way for that matter. Third, sexual assaults on college campuses tend to involve young adults experimenting with alcohol, many for the first time. Alcohol alone significantly inhibits thinking ability and judgment, and could result in a deadly combination if a victim has access to a gun while in this state.
Based on the way victims typically react to these experiences, an attempt at solving campus sexual assault by arming victims with guns is guaranteed not to work. It seems that advocates of the campus carry laws are simply exploiting the subject of campus sexual assault, a current hot-button issue without a good solution, in order to gain support for their unrelated pro-gun agenda. If the goal is really to pass legislation aimed at reducing sexual assaults on campus, Florida’s legislators should revisit the drawing board and take a more comprehensive approach that includes promoting sexual assault awareness on campus, university-wide victim resources, and a stricter affirmative consent standard like that of New York and California.
Gabrielle L. Gonzalez is an Articles/Comments Editor at the FIU Law Review. Ms. Gonzalez can be reached at ggonz067@fiu.edu.