Frustrated by attacks on their campus, a couple of University of Washington students decided to take matters into their own hands and created a vigilante group to protect areas around the campus where attacks have occurred over the past year.  The group is led by Luis Garcia (left) and Stanley Luong (right) who both were victims of assault themselves on the campus. They put up a page on the social media site Facebook to recruit members, but it was quickly pulled down by the social media company.

They both got concealed license permits and bought handguns and now essentially walk the campus every night as “bait” for would-be criminals.  According to the UW Daily Newspaper, there have been ten assaults and robberies in the campus area in just two months, so Luong and Garcia are correct in identifying the problem.  The only issue is that of legality.  It is definitely illegal to carry a concealed handgun on college campuses in Washington.  So given that there is a problem and the students can’t legally protect themselves with their 2nd amendment right to bear arms, what is the solution?

It would be ideal for the University of Washington to step in here and beef up the security patrols and/or the local police.  While the students are doing what comes fairly natural to them, in fact, they are putting themselves in grave danger.  Some may consider this to be courageous, unfortunately it is probably more just dangerous.  They aren’t really just putting themselves in harm’s way.  They may potentially cause a situation to escalate more than necessary and there are lots of possible ramifications of that.

We hope that the law enforcement officials in the area will step in and take care of this situation before it gets further out of hand.  While in some cases vigilantes are necessary, it doesn’t seem like a college campus should be one of those cases.

You can see a video by their local news station here.

Delicious Digg This Facebook Reddit Stumble This Post