States Reject Measures Allowing Guns on Campus

Last November, Building Operating Management ran a cover story about proposals to let college students carry concealed weapons on campus. At that time, only one state — Utah — required colleges and universities to allow concealed weapons on campus. But several state legislatures were considering bills to impose the same requirement on colleges and universities in their jurisdictions. And some of those states might have seemed especially promising to proponents of the idea — Tennessee, Louisiana and Texas.

But none of those states voted to approve the measure, reports the Wall Street Journal.

The idea of allowing concealed weapons on campus arose following the killings at Virginia Tech. The premise is that armed students or faculty would have a chance to stop a shooter.

Opponents of the measure fear that students with guns would only make matters worse. For example, in a shooting, if a police officer were to see a student with a gun, the officer wouldn’t immediately know if the student was the shooter or not. Should the officer fire, and risk injuring the wrong person, or wait, and risk being shot?

The latter argument is prevailing, reports the Journal. Bills to allow concealed carry on campus died in Tennessee and Texas, while a measure in Louisiana was voted down 86-18. The Journal reports that concealed carry measures have failed 34 times without a victory since the Virginia Tech killings and says that “states may be nearing something resembling a national consensus: Guns don’t belong in a college classroom.”