A few hundred yards from where I'm writing this column, just across the river in Vermont, 16-year-olds are allowed to purchase and carry a loaded handgun without needing anyone's permission. Here in New Hampshire, an 18-year-old can openly carry a pistol without a concealed carry permit. Dartmouth's campus, with its strict ban on privately-owned handguns, stands out amidst these "wild" lands of gun-toting teenagers.
Before you start worrying about your next trip into downtown Hanover, however, consider that in 2009 there was just one handgun murder in New Hampshire and zero in Vermont. New Hampshire, which last year was named the safest state by the Congressional Quarterly for the third year running, has had great success with permissive firearms policies. When concealed carry is allowed even in such places as the New Hampshire Capitol building, it's worth considering whether there's really a legitimate reason for Dartmouth to have more stringent restrictions than state law. Already, 71 college campuses in the United States allow concealed carry. Texas is poised to add to that list 38 public universities attended by more than 500,000 students.
If letting people pack heat makes you nervous, adding handguns to the already volatile stew of drugs, alcohol and hormones on college campuses probably sounds extremely unwise. We don't want stressed-out students to "snap" and go on killing sprees or have drunk, irresponsible young people getting in shoot-outs over a lost pong game. Permits do not allow people to carry concealed handguns while under the influence, however, and those universities allowing firearms on campus simply haven't seen the bloodbaths many have predicted. Indeed, not one has seen a single firearm crime or accident since enacting concealed carry.
Licensed individuals tend to be extremely law-abiding. From Jan. 2008 through May 2010, for example, just three of the approximately 729,000 people in Florida with the right to carry had their permits revoked for firearms-related violations. There is also no compelling evidence that younger adults exercise concealed carry rights irresponsibly. Navy veteran Steven Barber who was expelled from the University of Virginia's campus at Wise in 2008 after turning in a disturbing writing assignment that led administrators to search his car, where they found three guns noted the irony in the fact that, "The military trusted me to guard a billion-dollar warship with an automatic machine gun but I can't bring a little pistol to class."
There's a knee-jerk tendency to call for more stringent regulations after massacres in gun-free zones like Virginia Tech and Columbine High School. However, a person intent on killing is going to find a way of getting a firearm even if it means going through the black market. Breaking gun laws is a relative nonissue for someone contemplating mass murder. Gun control provides criminals with easy targets by disarming law-abiding Americans who use guns in self-defense more than two million times a year. While guns make it easier for crimes to be committed, they also enable people to defend themselves.
In fact, gun-free zones practically advertise their susceptibility to prolonged, execution-like massacres because of their lack of any armed adults capable of stopping an attack in progress. Licensed adults carrying handguns could completely change the dynamic of potential slaughters. Attacks like those at Mississippi's Pearl High School in 1997, Virginia's Appalachian Law School in 2002 and Colorado's New Life Church in 2007 were stopped by law-abiding citizens who didn't even have to fire their concealed weapons.
Gun bans have actually been found to have the opposite of their intended effect on crime. At the time of Chicago's 1982 handgun ban, the city's murder rates were on par with the national norm. Ten years later, they exceeded the average by 32 percent. The murder rate in Washington D.C. dropped by 25 percent in the year following the 2008 strike-down of the city's gun ban.
While we don't want civilian vigilantes, the reality is that professional law enforcement can't always be at the scene of the crime. A wealth of data indicates the benefits of allowing people to defend themselves, while doubts about the responsibility of permit-holders have repeatedly shown themselves to be unfounded. There is no compelling evidence that institutions of higher education need to infringe on the right of the people to keep and bear arms quite to the contrary, guns save lives.
