Advocates for permitting more guns on campus carried by non law-enforcement often make the argument that doing so will make colleges and universities safer, but an analysis of the most common serious crimes on campus suggests this really isn’t the case. Sex offenses, most often perpetrated by an acquaintance rather than a stranger, and alcohol or other drug abuse crimes happen with far greater frequency than other crimes. These are the most significant day-to-day campus crime challenges.
Institutions of higher education reported a total of 6,794 sex offenses “on campus” in 2014 under the federal Jeanne Clery Act compared to 16 homicides. A recent U.S. Department of Justice report, the Campus Climate Survey Validation Study, indicates that strangers commit fewer than 10% of undergraduate female rapes. The overwhelming majority of on campus crimes, a total of 300,931, are alcohol and other drug violations. These are scenarios where access to a gun is not only unlikely to be a solution, but would likely make it more dangerous.
89 percent of campus police chiefs agree the best way to address gun violence is to prevent the use of guns, while only 5 percent think that allowing students to carry would prevent any shootings according to the Journal of American College Health.
So far only a small minority of states require colleges and universities to allow permit holders to carry on campus – 2 provide for carry throughout campus and 6 provide for carry with limitations. Georgia’s Governor vetoed campus “concealed carry” legislation earlier this year while Texas is in the middle of implementing campus rules to address firearms on their campuses.
While the U.S. Supreme Court has held that the 2nd Amendment protects an individual’s right to posses a firearm, in District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008), the Court, in a majority opinion by Justice Antonin Scalia held that “nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings.” Longstanding rules prohibiting concealed and other forms of firearm carrying on campus remain permissible, and eliminating them is not the solution to campus crime.