Many U.S. colleges allow students to carry guns on campus — and that number may grow.
Georgia recently passed legislation that allows — with restrictions — guns on public college campuses. Nearly a dozen states have similar laws.
In a spring 2017 U.S. News survey, 103 colleges and universities reported that they allow students to carry firearms in some capacity. Forty have concealed carry policies, meaning eligible students can possess handguns across most of campus if the weapons are hidden from view. The other schools have more restrictive policies.
When military mom Torie Pendleton learned about Liberty University‘s concealed carry policy while her oldest daughter was a freshman at the Virginia school, she was surprised, but it made her feel safer — in part given recent high-profile mass shootings on college campuses.
But not everyone feels the same sense of security with these policies. “I certainly feel more uncomfortable with the knowledge that there could be weapons on campus,” says Mady Womack, a senior at the University of Kansas.
[Research campus politics to find the right fit.]
As a prospective student, Womack says she wasn’t aware that schools could permit guns on campus. But this year, a Kansas state law went into effect that allows most adults age 21 and older to carry concealed weapons on public college campuses without a license.
Students and families exploring colleges can take these four steps to learn more about campus carry policies.
1. Research policies: Generally, adults must be at least 21 years old and have a concealed carry permit to possess guns at institutions that allow them, says Thomas Harnisch, director of state relations and policy analysis at the American Association of State Colleges and Universities. But he notes that the specifics of policies vary greatly.
At Georgia State University, for example, licensed adults are only allowed to carry concealed handguns and they are restricted in where on campus they may bring the weapons, says Joseph Spillane, the university’s chief of police.
In Tennessee, only full-time faculty and staff — not students — with a concealed carry permit are allowed to possess handguns on public college campuses.
Families can easily find a school’s campus carry policy on its website, says Ken Koch, chief of police at the University of Colorado–Boulder, which also allows concealed carry. But Harnisch notes that policies could change while students are attending a university.
[Learn how to research campus safety.]
2. Ask questions: Don’t be afraid to contact prospective schools and ask about their concealed carry policies. Georgia State’s chief of police says he regularly takes calls from families and encourages these questions.
Pendleton, the Liberty University mom, recommends asking whether concealed carry is allowed, how the school monitors the policy, whether individuals carrying weapons must be trained and where guns can be stored on campus, among other things.
Lindsey Nichols, a 19-year-old sophomore at CU–Boulder who is comfortable with the school’s concealed carry policy, adds that prospective students should ask whether the campus firearm policy differs from local laws and about the surrounding community’s attitudes toward guns.
Families may also want to ask questions about campus safety more generally, Spillane says.
[Consider asking these 10 questions about campus safety.]
3. Review the facts: Koch says it’s important for families to understand the facts on this issue when exploring colleges. While schools may have concealed carry policies, this doesn’t mean the institutions have experienced gun-related incidents.
College campuses are generally very safe places, say Gary Kleck, professor of criminology and criminal justice at Florida State University and a gun control expert. However, it’s almost impossible to know whether colleges with these policies are safer, because that would require making assertions about crimes that did not occur, he says.
A 2016 report from the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health found campuses that allow guns are likely to have more shootings, homicides and suicides. The report also found these policies are unlikely to reduce mass shootings on campus.
Kleck says parents may be reassured to know that generally these policies only allow licensed adults who have gone through criminal records checks and safety trainings to carry guns. He says the biggest misconception about these policies is that they will allow underage or even drunk students to have a gun.
4. Consider your values: Families need to decide what’s important to them, says Koch.
“On the one hand, being able to carry concealed lets you sleep well at night because your son or daughter has that self-defense capability — for some folks that’s a positive,” he says. “For other folks, the mere thought of a fellow student in my son or daughter’s classroom having a gun on their person is too frightening to overcome.”
Getting educated on the facts is key, he says. Families can start their research by reviewing the table below. This is not a comprehensive list of all schools that allow guns on campus; rather these are schools that reported to U.S. News in a 2017 survey of undergraduate programs at more than 1,800 colleges and universities that they allow concealed carry.
* RNP denotes an institution that is ranked in the bottom one-fourth of its ranking category. U.S. News calculates a rank for the school but has decided not to publish it.
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What Parents, Students Need to Know About Campus Carry Policies originally appeared on usnews.com
