At the University of Kentucky there is a ban on weapons; this ban is extended to adults who legally have the right to posses guns elsewhere in the city. This includes those who have gone through proper state qualifications to obtain their carry and conceal permit. Due to this ban the only armed individuals on campus are police and law enforcement. Political theorist John Locke and John Stuart Milles who influenced the American Founders would find this gun ban on campus to be an inappropriate infringement on the liberty of adult students.
We must first look at John Locke’s political philosophy that he wrote in the Second Treatise of Government. Locke discusses two states, a state of nature and a state of war. The first state he begins with the state of nature. Locke writes, that humans first existed in “a state of…show more content… The “common judge” being the only people aloud to have weapons within the perimeter of campus. Taking away these rights would be an infringement on liberty based on Locke’s principles. When a shooter walks into a room full of students there is no time or option to appeal to the common judge for protection. Locke clearly states, “force without right upon a [your] person makes a state of war both where there is, and is not, a common judge”. This principle, allows for people to defend themselves in a state of war where there is no common judge, such as the classroom a shooter walks into. Banning adult students from guns puts them in a vulnerable state to not be able to protect themselves in a timely manor, “could not have time to appeal to the law to secure [your life], and when it was gone it was too late to appeal. The law could not restore life to [your] dead carcass. The loss was irreparable; which to prevent the law of Nature gave [you] a right to destroy him who had put himself into a state of war with [you] and threatened [your] destruction” (Locke