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Westwood has not been a welcoming place these days. In the Village, business owners are asking for more police protection from loiterers and potential thieves. On campus, a dead body has been found, a sexual assault has occurred, and, most recently, two students in the Saxon Residential Suites were robbed at gunpoint by two as yet unidentified assailants. The only viable answer is to give students the option of protecting themselves.

It is surprising that there is so little crime at UCLA and in Westwood. After all, the only constant law enforcement we have are those annoying parking ticket people with the occasional university police car. The community service officers, too, pose no threat to crime with their cans of mace.

Given the little protection students are afforded, coupled with dorm rooms full of valuable possessions, UCLA students are ripe to be robbed. A couple of call boxes and desk employees asking for BruinCards in the evening are not enough to prevent would-be thieves from being lured by dorm rooms with televisions, stereos, video game systems and computers.

The question remains as to how UCLA should handle the increasing incidences of crime. Some have suggested that a security force of guards be hired to watch the dorms and suites. Another suggestion is setting up emergency phones in the dorms. But these suggestions, while pushing in the correct direction, fail when costs come into play. The University of California is already faced with budget cuts and increased student fees due to the worst governor in U.S. history. And simply raising student costs to cover the new security additions risks putting an unfair burden on lower income students and taxpayers whose money goes to federal and state student aid.

Only by giving students back their constitutional right to protection and gun ownership can we be sure that crime will drastically decrease. Obviously, criminals care about their own lives, which is why they engage in crime to better themselves at the expense of others. The best deterrent to violent criminals is to even the odds by giving the student population a way to fight back.

By doing this, we re-establish the basic civil rights that are lost when a student must come to a place where there is no efficient means of protection. There is very little security, and the majority of the time, the police appear after a violent crime has been committed. Also, this option does not cost the school or the taxpayer one penny. It is a decision left solely to individuals who, by virtue of their own private ownership, ensure that the rest of the students are protected by the risk any criminal must take in attacking an armed population.

Advocates of gun control (a.k.a. people control) would argue that an armed student body would actually increase the danger. There is ample proof to back up this claim. On October 28, 2002, a nursing student killed three professors with a gun during a midterm exam at the University of Arizona. And the nation will never forget the 96-minute shootout from the tower of the University of Texas by a former Marine, Charles Whitman. Only little more than a year ago, a man went on a shooting spree at Appalachian Law School in Virginia.

However, the aforementioned incidences would not have been as gruesome if other students were armed. It is easy to imagine what would have happened had one student in the exam at the University of Arizona been carrying a weapon. Surely, two professors would still be alive, and the assailant would have gone to jail instead of turning the gun on himself.

Nothing can be gained from stealing the right to self protection from responsible citizens. It only leaves everyone open to be victims of crime. The best deterrent for violent crime is a responsible, armed student body.

Schwartz is a fourth-year psychology student. E-mail him at jschwartz@media.ucla.edu.