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Universities Report No Increase in Violence After Legalization of Campus Carry

Universities Report No Increase in Violence After Legalization of Campus Carry

“All of the schools that responded confirmed that they have seen no uptick in violence”

You may recall that many opponents of campus carry predicted the exact opposite of this.

The College Fix reports:

Following legalized campus carry, universities report no increase in violence on their campuses

Though popular belief holds that more guns on college campuses will lead to an uptick in gun violence, several universities have reported no such increase even after their states legalized the carrying of concealed weapons on school grounds.

According to the website of Armed Campuses, a pro-gun-control initiative that tracks firearm policies at universities across the country, seven state legislatures have broadly permitted concealed carry on public university grounds. Five more have instituted limited campus carry regimes. Ten states prohibit campus carry altogether, while the remainder either allow the university to set the policy or else mandate that the guns must be left in locked cars.

The College Fix reached out to multiple public universities in states where campus carry is legal. All of the schools that responded confirmed that they have seen no uptick in violence since their respective policies were put in place.

Emporia State University is located in Emporia, Kansas. Armed Campuses states that, in that state, “any individual 21 years or older who is otherwise legally allowed to possess a concealed handgun may do so in any public facility, or on any public grounds unless proper security measures are in place.”

Reached via email, Emporia State campus spokeswoman Gwen Larson told The College Fix that the school has observed no change in gun violence since that rule was instituted. “Emporia State did not have gun violence before the law changed, and there has been no violence since the law changed,” she wrote.

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Comments

I’m surprised. I would expect an increase in violence from crazed hoplophobic students and faculty.

I would expect a decrease in violence. Mass shooters and muggers are attracted to gun-free zones just like flies are attracted to manure. Criminals want to go where they know their intended victims can’t shoot back.

    Milhouse in reply to OldProf2. | December 8, 2019 at 9:22 am

    Mass shooters are so rare they’re statistically equal to zero. One can’t say very much about them with any confidence, because the sample size is so small. And there certainly aren’t enough of them that their avoiding a place would reduce its overall level of violence. Common or garden muggers on university campuses, at least in places where carry laws have now been relaxed, are probably similarly rare; I would have expected any slight dip from those being discouraged to be more than outweighed by new violence from hoplophobic students and professors.

      DaveGinOly in reply to Milhouse. | December 14, 2019 at 7:16 pm

      “Mass shooters are so rare they’re statistically equal to zero.”
      This is true of all murderers who use firearms in their crimes. Homicides with firearms are committed by one percent of one percent of US firearms owners. A statistician would say, “Statistically, American firearms owners pose zero threat to the people of the communities in which they live.”

      Unfortunately, we never get to read headlines proclaiming, “Yesterday 100 Million American Gun Owners Killed Nobody.”

When this first came out, I tried to explain that this would be the net effect to a couple of horrified friends who are professors at a local college. I asked them if they thought that the people who would shoot somebody on a college campus were the kind of people who give a damn about gun-carry rules….