VA's Campus Gun Laws Punish Adults

Students carry many necessities with them to class each day, toting backpacks filled with everything from textbooks to virtual over-the-counter drug stores stocked with every pain reliever and stay-awake medication known to man. Most students look for ways to reduce the number of items they must carry across campus, but a determined group of college students in Virginia are making national headlines not for what they carry in their backpacks but for what they want to carry under the concealment of clothing: handguns.

The debate over a student’s legal right to carry concealed handguns on college campuses did not begin with the tragic Virginia Tech shooting spree in April, but that event more than any other has provided the impetus students needed to push this issue to the forefront of public awareness. While officials at various levels and parents of Virginia Tech students immediately engaged in the blame game over actions that might have minimized the death toll from Seung-hui Cho’s rampage, students at George Mason University organized Students for Concealed Carry on Campus and have worked to overturn the Virginia law that allows colleges to dictate whether students, faculty, or staff members with valid concealed-carry permits from carrying their firearms on campus.

Emotional levels skyrocket when conversations turn to guns on school campuses, and the debate over this issue in Virginia has been quite spirited. The initial reaction by schools nationwide has been to oppose any measures permitting concealed weapons on campuses, and Virginia’s colleges have, with the backing of Governor Timothy Kaine (D), reaffirmed their desire to retain authority to ban handguns from Virginia campuses. As this debate will likely escalate and venture into Supreme Court case territory, an analysis of the arguments on both sides should prove useful.

State and university administration arguments against allowing concealed handguns on campuses revolve around one central concern: safety. These concerns encompass a host of already dangerous and irresponsible behaviors by college students that administrators foresee as becoming even more potentially lethal with the introduction of concealed handguns to the mix: parties, alcohol, drugs, DUI, student fights or altercations, domestic disputes, grudges over grading issues, accidental discharges, and others.

From a law enforcement perspective, these are all valid concerns, but there is a significant flaw in the logic behind the safety concern, and that is the fact that at most universities and colleges, the majority of students live in off-campus housing, where by state law they are permitted to carry their concealed handguns to all of these types of activities. Very few students actually engage in the type of behaviors listed above while on campus because most campuses have behavioral restrictions and students seek to avoid running afoul of them. Thus, enforcing campus bans on handguns does nothing to prevent students from involving themselves in potentially dangerous behaviors while enrolled as students but performing them off campus.

I found the official position of The International Association of Campus Law Enforcement Administrators, which represents campus public-safety officials, very questionable from a 2nd Amendment viewpoint. The association claimed that:

…the presence of students carrying concealed weapons "has the potential to dramatically increase violence on our college and university campuses."

Allowing concealed weapons brings the potential for accidental gun discharge or misuse of firearms at parties, including those where alcohol or drugs are used, and the possibility for guns to be used to settle students' disputes, the group said.

That argument deserves careful scrutiny. In most states, campus police are POST certified police officers with full police powers in a limited jurisdictional area, within a university’s geographical boundaries. They naturally like to know who within their jurisdiction is known to possess weapons. Yet when those officers go home, off campus, and go out to dinner or to the store, they do not know who else in these establishments might be legally carrying a concealed weapon. If these campus police officers feel that the very presence of students carrying concealed weapons “has the potential to dramatically increase violence on our college and university campuses,” what is the basis of that conclusion or belief?

Do those same officers feel that the presence of concealed weapons among private citizens off campus dramatically increases violence among the general population? If a 21 year-old Virginia man who is not a college student obtains required training and a concealed-carry permit and carries his concealed handgun to the local mall, does this association feel that he “dramatically increases” the potential for violence in that mall? If so, the association may be the only law enforcement organization I am aware of that is uniformly opposed to the 2nd Amendment right to bear arms.

All of the risks that guns on campus would present as cited above by this association would be present in any population that permits concealed weapons, but what the association cannot or will not explain is why it believes college students who must be 21 years-old to obtain such a permit are considered potentially dangerous, while the 21 year-old non-college student can carry his gun onto any college campus simply because he is considered a citizen and not a student. That is the crux of the Virginia law. It does not provide equal treatment between students who meet all the criteria for a concealed weapons permit and those who meet the same criteria but are non-students. In essence, Virginia students are singled out for restrictions on handguns simply because they are enrolled in school, which should be considered a sign of their desire to be responsible rather than a label that marks them as too immature or potentially dangerous to safely carry their concealed handguns.

I understand the position of the International Association of Campus Law Enforcement Administrators. Law enforcement always, from a tactical perspective, wants to know who is carrying weapons in their jurisdiction, because that knowledge could prevent a tragic accidental shooting due to mistaken identity and is considered essential to officer safety. Yet it is not the law-abiding, permit holding, concealed carry-trained citizen or student that is likely to present a threat to police officers. Crime statistics do not support any argument that legally owned firearms increase crime. On the contrary, most crimes are committed using unlicensed and illegally acquired handguns, because using “anonymous” weapons reduces the risk of being caught later.

In the case of the Virginia Tech shootings, it is quite possible that students carrying concealed weapons might have killed Seung-hui Cho and reduced the number of his eventual victims. It is also possible that SWAT teams responding to the scene might have shot those students brandishing firearms. The key issue here, though, is not what might have happened in that one incident. The issue is much larger. The central point of this debate over campus firearms is the legal reasoning involved in allowing non-students to carry concealed weapons on campus, which Virginia state law currently permits, while denying students who hold the same concealed weapons permit from carrying their firearms on those same campuses.

Emotional appeals against permitting legal handguns on campuses seem to be the political weapons of choice for educators and Virginia Democrats. Dismissing the legal arguments raised by Students for Concealed Carry on Campus, Virginia Tech spokesman Larry Hincker clouded the issue with appeals to sentiment rather than logic:

We don't believe that guns have any place in the classroom," Mr. Hincker said. "We've experienced far more of guns in the classroom than any university should have to endure."

What Hincker refuses to address is that guns in the classroom was not what caused the Virginia Tech tragedy. The tragedy was that Seung-hui-Cho’s were the only guns present on that terrible April morning. Twenty-one year old students can vote; they can drive; they can drink legally; they can own handguns and qualify for concealed carry permits. They are, under the laws of all states, adults. Virginia’s legislators have only two legal options available to resolve this debate over the right to carry handguns on college campuses: Either the law needs to be changed to forbid anyone but campus police to possess firearms on campuses, or the law needs to be changed to give adult students the same right to carry firearms on campuses that non-students currently enjoy. Educators and Democratic legislators find both options unpalatable, as one would certainly be challenged constitutionally, and the other would increase the number of guns present on campuses. There is nothing more fearsome to these groups than lawsuits and an armed populace.

As these entities and campus law enforcement administrators have demonstrated through their statements, they do not trust 21 year-old college students to be responsible with their legal right to carry handguns on or off campus, but they do trust 21 year-olds who chose not to attend college to be responsible while carrying their firearms on campus. The disparity is stunning, but is overshadowed by emotional pleas from Virginia Tech administrators, who insist that guns, and not a mentally ill individual, were responsible for the tragedy on that campus. As a result, they hold hostage the right of adult students at all Virginia universities and colleges to be treated the same as non-student adults when it comes to firearms.


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Seung-hui Cho, Virginia Tech, School Shootings, Concealed Carry, Virginia, Students for Concealed Carry on Campus, International Association of Campus Law Enforcement Administrators, 2nd Amendment, Gun Control