Usually I don’t bother with comic books due to an overriding suspicion that everyone associated with comic books is a gigantic nerd, but now that Captain America packs heat I have to delve into the gag-inducing world of tighty-whiteys and moldy retainers to stand against guns. The new Captain America — who made his debut in January after the old Captain got a cap busted in his fictional ass — assumes the position of superhero with some added help. Now instead of fighting for good with all-American muscle, a flimsy shield and a sex-slave mask, Captain American is rollin’ hot with a cool 9 mm.

Superheroes fly or shoot web out of their forearms or don purple short-shorts and smash people or do just about anything other than shoot people. Shooting people is in no way super. Comic book readers all over America are overturning coffee tables in their mother’s basements in rage; they are interrupting sixteen-hour World of Warcraft sessions to rant about Captain Copout on some of the least-read message boards in the universe.

Despite its embarrassing lameness, this Captain America saga has some relevance to Cornell as the Student Assembly is considering a resolution that would allow licensed gun owners to carry their arms on campus. The passage of this resolution would effectively transform the student body into the new Captain America — armed and paranoid and ready to pump some nutty grad student full of lead in the name of justice.

In a recent Sun report, S.A. director of elections, Sun columnist and cowboy hat enthusiast Mark Coombs ’08 said, “he hoped the resolution would be approached ‘intellectually and seriously.’” My initial reaction to this plan was that it’s probably the dumbest plan ever. But perhaps my intuition that more people will get shot if there are more guns, that maybe zero guns on campus is better than a few hundred, is rooted in prejudice. I’ve never even shot a gun that didn’t fire foam discs. I was raised by anti-gun parents who took me to the Million Mom March and obviously my first impression represents an anti-gun position. How can I envision a world where everyone is happy and safe and packing heat if I’ve been brainwashed by California liberals to be anti-gun?

So to honor Coombs, who I respect and who seems far too hilarious to be a gun nut, I’ll approach this resolution intellectually and seriously.

Does this resolution make our campus safer? If I were to consider this question intellectually the answer would have to be both yes and no. The relative safety of a gun-filled campus is dependent entirely on circumstance. It seems the campus would be markedly safer in the event of an attempted massacre in the mold of Virginia Tech or Northern Illinois. The murderous psychopath would be gunned down after getting off just a handful of rounds, thus saving lives. Even widespread gun-holding couldn’t prevent the attack. Keep in mind that these killers often take their own lives. They aren’t trying to get away with murder; they are trying to commit murder-suicide. It’s not like they are going to be deterred by the proposition that someone else could do the final deed for them. Still, concealed carry would limit the body count assuming the students returning fire had good aim.

But this seems to be the only circumstance in which this resolution would make the campus safer. For all those days when psycho-killers aren’t enacting a planned, suicidal massacre the campus would be littered with dozens of unnecessary guns. A peaceful place with dozens of loaded guns is less safe than a peaceful place with zero guns. No matter your position in the gun debate, whether you’re as conservative as that smutty coke-whore Ann Coulter or as liberal as the overweight hippies at the Million Mom March, you have to agree with that.

This argument seems to be one of risk-reward. Does the risk of having dozens of live guns on campus, and the massive fear and paranoia of unarmed students that goes along with that, outweigh the reward of shrinking the pile of body bags to a size that’s hardly newsworthy?

The answer to this question must be that the risk isn’t worth the reward. A campus with guns is a dangerous campus at every moment of every day of every year. A campus without guns is a safer campus with the lone exception of a Virginia Tech situation — a situation that has never happened on this campus and is remarkably rare.

This resolution certainly won’t pass, but its presentation as a solution to on-campus gun violence says something about our society. It represents a society that’s too proud to accept the reality that on-campus violence is something we are either going to have to live with or sacrifice our liberty, safety and peace of mind to contain. We are naïve in our thinking; we are the panicking obsessive compulsive who tears down the house because there’s a coffee stain on the rug; we are the delusional snickering president who decides the cure for a hopeless dying war is more war. We are Captain America 2.0 — lame and self-conscious in a goofy red, white and blue suit, clutching our gun tight and panting the heavy pants of a paranoid not-so-super hero.

Tony Manfred is a freshman in the College of Arts and Sciences. He can be contacted at tmanfred@cornellsun.com. The Absurdity Exhibiton appears alternate Mondays.