Columbine, Virginia Tech, Sandy Hook and countless other schools have been the site of school shootings and mass murder. The current epidemic of school shootings in the United States has been rising since the 1990’s with a sharp increase since 2010. There are many proposed solutions ranging from gun control to mental healthcare improvements, but none of these plans have been fully put into action or legislation. One strategy that eight states have implemented so far is campus carry, or the legalization of license holding adults to carry concealed weapons on college campuses. Concealed carry rights have been tremendously expanded in the past two decades and now the current push is to allow firearms in previously labeled “gun-free” zones. To stop or mitigate mass murder in school shootings campus carry should be implemented nationwide in the United States. 

The current carry laws in the United States have been progressively becoming more relaxed and the number of people carrying has risen rapidly. At one point forty states had laws prohibiting concealed carry of firearms in public areas and today that number is down to eight (Cox). The rights to carry concealed firearms in public places came from the rights to self-protection under the Heller decision in the Supreme Court. When the growth of concealed carry began, critics claimed that the loosening of gun laws would create a spike in crime and gun related crimes, however that was not the case. Just between 2007 and 2014, when the number of adults in the United States with permits nearly tripled, the murder rate fell 25% while the violent crime rate also fell by 25% (Lott, B). Much like the fight to legalize concealed carry in public places the movement to gain concealed carry rights on college campuses is garnering traction. 

The movement to carry in public emerged for several reasons, but is primarily centered around self-defense. In the Heller decision handgun rights were secured because the court ruled that Americans, “overwhelmingly choose [handguns] for the lawful purpose of self-defense” (Supreme Court). To be able to successfully protect oneself they cannot rely on a police officer to help them in a time of danger, in the words of John, a firearms instructor, “the likelihood of a police officer being nearby when you need one is virtually zero” (Stroud). Plenty of people have become the victims of murder, robbery, sexual assault or any other number of violent crimes because of the thought that ‘it’ll never happen to me.’ To adequately protect oneself from crime it comes down to the individual, criminals get to set the time and place, everything else the victim can do will be a reaction. Over 12 million people today in the U.S. choose to carry a firearm because they believe it’s the most effective way to protect themselves. The way John puts it, “you need a fire extinguisher to put out a fire, you need a seatbelt to keep you from flying out of your car in a wreck… when somebody tries to kill you, you need a gun” (Stroud). 

 The reasoning in wanting to carry firearms on college campuses is quite similar to the reasoning of wanting to carry in other public places. The major difference between a college campus and a public place like a shopping center is that college campuses are gun free zones. Gun free zones first became law in 1990 after a nineteen-year-old schizophrenic shot 11 adults and children in North Carolina. The federal law, the Gun-Free School Zone Act was implemented to prevent school shootings. However, this act was not effective, mass shootings have risen since the implementation of the gun-free zone act. In the 1990’s there were eighteen mass shootings, in the 2000’s twenty-one shootings, and from just 2010-2014 there were twenty-three (Nedzel). The current system to go along with the gun free zones and signs is known as ‘run, hide, fight.’ In an active shooter situation, the students and faculty are supposed to run away if possible, if they cannot run then to hide and if they cannot hide then to fight. In recent years fighting the shooter, specifically by tackling them, has stopped three of the last twenty-three mass shootings (Nedzel). Having to fight an armed gunmen while unarmed is unlikely to be successful and should not be relied on to stop mass murderers. The issue with this system, which is centered around waiting for the police, is that active shooters can commit mass murder in such a short amount of time, if a shooter only shoots 40 rounds a minute and it takes the police 5 minutes to arrive 200 rounds could have been fired in the time it took the police to arrive. As a common adage in the gun community goes, ‘when the seconds count, the police are only minutes away.’  

Another limitation with the current system is that there is generally one security guard or officer in an area. A single security guard is not effective against a school shooter since they will most likely be the first target. If there is only one security guard, the shooter will remain unopposed after attacking the sole guard and continue without resistance. Having multiple armed security guards would be effective but costly, with already limited budgets the chances of being able to employ multiple security guards is unlikely. Being surrounded by police officers all the time is not feasible nor a world anyone wants to live in, that is why the average citizen should be given the choice to defend themselves on college campuses.  

Since there is no effective way to protect every student and staff member at school, adults over the age of 21 with a concealed handgun permit should be allowed to carry concealed pistols on college campuses. If even a small fraction of students carried firearms it would serve as a deterrent to school shooters. A sizable percentage of shooters want to go into an area in which there will be no opposition, kill a bunch of people, and then finally kill themselves. The media then essentially gives these murders national fame, which motivates deranged individuals to go out in a blaze of gunfire. While the media is partly to blame, you cannot legislate what the press can and cannot say as that would be a violation of the 1st amendment. If the shooters knew that they would likely run into opposition in the form of armed students or staff members it would be a strong deterrent and likely decrease the number of mass shootings. As seen in gun stores or police stations, shootings hardly ever occur since nearly everyone is armed. Having all students and staff members unarmed is not an effective way to deter school shooters, instead it does quite the opposite, it attracts deranged individuals who want to achieve national fame by killing innocent people with no opposition. 

One of the common arguments against campus carry is the notion that the average person will not be able to effectively stop a school shooter. The problem with this idea relies in a false belief about a police officer’s ability to stop a threat. The average police officer only shoots in training twice a year (Grossi). The training standards are exceptionally low and relaxed for police officers. Police officers do not shoot nearly as much as most people would believe yet they are trusted to carry within gun free zones such as schools. If the concealed carrier shot just 3 times a year they would have more training than the average police officer, making their shooting ability on par if not better than a police officers’. The kinds of people who will go through the trouble of carrying a concealed firearm often have a passion for firearms and self-defense. In 24 states the applicant must take a live fire training test as well as attend class room instruction to obtain a concealed carry permit (Mascia). This ensures that the concealed carriers have the ability to manipulate a weapon safely and instills a degree of marksmanship in the applicants. Concealed carriers often take extra classes in self-defense since it is not something the average carrier takes lightly. Unlike what most people assume, the average concealed carrier would be effective at stopping most threat, or certainly more effective than an unarmed person. 

There are countless records of shootings and other violent crimes where an armed citizen has intervened and ended the fight. A common myth that’s perpetuated by opponents of concealed carry is that ‘no mass shooting has ever been stopped by a good guy with a gun.’ This notion doesn’t account for the fact that several would be mass shootings were stopped by concealed carriers, but since they were stopped before they became mass shootings they hardly gained any attention. In a South Carolina bar in June of 2016 a man opened fire in a nightclub and shot 3 people before being shot and subdued by a person carrying a legally concealed weapon (Deputies). Unlike in the Orlando nightclub Pulse, this bar did allow patrons to carry concealed weapons. Instead of ending in the deaths of 49 innocent people, this would be mass-murder ended in 4 counts of attempted murder and everyone went home to their families. John Lott has compiled a list on the crime prevention research center’s website of well over 30 would be mass shootings that were stopped by a legally armed citizen. These types of incidents do not receive anywhere near the same amount of media coverage, which gives the impression that they do not occur, but even a simple Google search will bring up countless articles of legally armed citizens stopping violent crimes.

As just previously mentioned concealed carriers have stopped many crimes in the United States, but what kinds of people carry? According to the Crime Prevention Research Center people who carry concealed weapons are extremely law abiding, and considerably more likely to obey the law than the average citizen. Concealed carriers are not just more likely to obey the law than other citizens, they are more likely to obey the law than the police. The crime rate of full time police officers is 102 per 100,000, while the crime rate of concealed carriers is 16.8 per 100,000 (Lott). This shows that concealed carriers are more than 6 times less likely to commit a crime than a police officer. The statistic for police crimes could be reasonably higher as police officers are more likely to turn a blind eye towards other police officers. This statistic shows that concealed carriers are qualified and reasonable people, not just gun nuts who want to kill people. 

People envision the stereotypical person that that would carry a concealed weapon, white and male, while this is a large percentage of concealed carriers, the demographic is rapidly changing. Since 2007 the number of concealed handgun permits went from 4.6 million to 12.8 million in 2015. During that time the number of women with permits increase 270% and the number of men with permits increased 156%. The rate of concealed handgun permits for African Americans has been growing twice as fast as whites, with black females obtaining 3.44 times more permits than white females. As mentioned earlier, during this rise in the number of people owning concealed carry permits the crime rate also fell by 25%. The correlation between concealed carry permits rising and the murder rate falling does not prove causation, but at the very least it demonstrates that the increase in permits did not result in an increase in crime. The rapidly rising number of people with concealed handgun permits represents the larger movement of changing perceptions on guns and self-protection. People, especially minorities and women, are realizing that to take self-defense into their own hands they need to have a concealed handgun. 

College campuses, such as the University of South Carolina often have crime ridden areas that students must walk through to get home after class. If campus carry was allowed then students would not have to walk through these dangerous areas unprotected, they could have a concealed firearm on them. This is one of the main reasons the rates of minorities and women obtaining concealed handgun permits are so high and important, instead of being a potential victim of sexual assault, robbery, or other violent crimes these citizens are acting to protect themselves. Alongside the potential to deter mass shootings, students and faculty in universities should have the right to defend themselves coming home from class. Unlike the politicians who make laws saying you do not need a gun to protect yourself, the average person does not live in a gated community with an armed security detail. 

A solution that is often talked about after a mass shooting is gun control. Proponents believe that creating stricter laws on gun control will decrease the number of shootings. The idea itself makes sense, if there are not any guns how could anyone shoot anyone. The issue is that legislating guns and imposing harsh bans only affects those who follow the laws. As a study by James La Valle shows, states that have imposed strict gun control have seen no difference in crime rates whereas states that have enacted ‘right to carry’ laws (laws that make it easier to obtain a concealed handgun license) have seen a small drop in crime (La Valle). Outlawing guns has never been proven to be effective as the Paris shootings in 2015 have shown, over 130 people were killed by firearms that were illegal to own. 

The anti-gun community often bases their arguments around personal preferences and biases instead of facts and statistics. One such example would be an article titled “The Many Costs of Campus Carry” in The New Yorker. The article critiques Texas’ implementation of campus carry laws by claiming that free speech has been eradicated by allowing students to carry concealed firearms into classrooms. The entire argument is based around the idea that a sane college student will be enraged by a grade or “a lecture on black queer sexuality,” and go on a shooting spree because they have a gun on them. This argument is centered around fear mongering and the authors personal anti-gun feelings. It was illegal to wave a gun around or commit murder because of a bad grade before the campus carry laws, and it is still illegal after. It is not fair to assume that just because responsible adult college students are allowed to carry, that suddenly there will be a lot more shootings. The fact that there haven’t been a shooting or gun brandishing in Texas, or any other state with campus carry, over grades or free speech says it all. 

Despite the opposition of Campus Carry it has been implemented in several states. Arkansas, Colorado, Idaho, Kansas, Mississippi, Oregon, Utah, Tennessee, Wisconsin and Texas are the only current states with campus carry laws (Colleges). To help the transition to campus carry there are several common-sense rules to help keep the colleges safe. In an interview at UT Austin with Dr. Bob Harkins, the VP of Campus Security, he lists some of the rules out such as not being allowed to carry in a gym or in science labs (Saab). On UT Austin’s website, there is an entire list of rules and regulations Some more regulations include prohibiting open carry, carry while intoxicated, and it also mentions that staff members and teachers are not allowed to ban concealed weapons from their classrooms (Harkins). With these regulations, campus carry has been implemented relatively smoothly in Texas and could be implemented around the United States. 

Campus carry is a strategy that should be considered to help prevent school shootings as well as providing a means of self-protection to students and staff members. Armed citizens have been proven time and time again to be able to effectively stop active shooters and they also serve as a deterrence. Since there are no other affordable or effective strategies to help end the epidemic that is school shootings, campus carry is the most ideal choice. As a closing note the President, our celebrities, our politicians, banks, court rooms and everything we value as a society is protected by armed individuals, but schools and college campuses are protected by a sign that reads “No Guns.”  
