Campus carry

Would eliminating gun-free zones make college safer?

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Brent Eisberner generally feels safe on the UW-Madison campus. But the possibility of an attack is always on the law student’s mind. A former Marine Corps captain and concealed carry instructor, Eisberner selects his seats in classrooms and lecture halls based on what position would best allow him to react to an active shooter.

“I always have a plan,” he says. “I’m not sure if it’s the military training or just the reality of today’s world, but wherever I go I have a plan should something occur.”

Still, he says he’d feel a lot safer if concealed weapons were allowed inside university buildings.

Wisconsin’s 2011 concealed carry law allows permit-holding residents age 21 and older to carry a hidden weapon almost anywhere in the state, including the grounds of public universities and colleges. An exemption in the statute permits schools to prohibit firearms inside campus buildings.

But as mass shootings continue to occur with alarming frequency on college campuses, gun rights advocates across the country are proposing to eliminate such gun-free zones at public institutions of higher education. And Wisconsin has jumped on the bandwagon. State Rep. Jesse Kremer (R-Kewaskum) and Sen. Devin LeMahieu (R-Oostburg) introduced a bill on Oct. 12 that would preclude public colleges and universities from banning concealed weapons anywhere on campus. The proposal came less than two weeks after a mass shooting on a campus in Oregon.

“Allowing our public campuses to ban concealed weapons in buildings puts our students at greater risk of becoming victims of crime,” Kremer said in a press release. “It is our hope that with this legislation, we can see a decrease in violent crime on and around our public campuses.”

In response, three Madison Democrats — Terese Berceau, Melissa Sargent and Chris Taylor — have introduced a bill that would make carrying a weapon on campus a Class I felony. The “College Campus Dangerous Weapons Ban” has little chance of advancing in the Republican-controlled Legislature, but Taylor says she believes the majority of Wisconsin residents support gun safety laws.

“If guns reduced crime, the U.S. would have the lowest homicide rate in the industrialized world,” Taylor says. “People want us to do more in promoting gun safety measures — not less.”

Reaction from campus officials and students to the bill has been swift and largely negative. The UW-Madison student government, the University of Wisconsin Police Department, the UW System Chancellors and UW System President Ray Cross have all voiced public opposition.

But some on campus, including Eisberner, have welcomed the proposal. He believes that the ability for colleges and universities to ban guns in campus buildings “effectively disarms students,” putting them at risk in the event of an attack.

Further, supporters of campus carry laws contend that gun-free zones make colleges and universities “soft targets” — places that are vulnerable to acts of violence because individuals are not permitted to arm themselves for self-defense.

“This law benefits everybody,” says Afton Olson, the Wisconsin director for the national group Students for Concealed Carry. “It puts in the mind of [a potential shooter] that they could be stopped by anybody.”

Wisconsin members of Students for Concealed Carry worked with Kremer and LeMahieu to draft the campus carry bill, which was in the works before the Oregon shooting occurred. The group argues that the proposed legislation would put the state’s public colleges and universities on even footing with other public facilities, which already allow concealed weapons.

Olson, who learned firearm handling from his father and completed three and a half years in the Army National Guard, compares a concealed weapon to a fire extinguisher — a tool to be used in case of emergency.

He also points out that Wisconsin’s concealed carry law already requires permit holders to be 21 or older, meaning that only a small percentage of college students would be eligible and most would not likely to be living in school dormitories.

“I think [the bill] is very fair,” Olson says. “It respects the Wisconsin laws, but it also respects the rights of students.”

The bill’s future is unclear, however, Assembly Speaker Robin Vos told the Associated Press he doesn’t plan on bringing it up for a vote, though he supports campus carry. But he added that he is open to discussing the proposal.

In June, texas became the most recent state to adopt campus carry. Idaho passed a similar law in 2014, as did Kansas and Arkansas in 2013 and Mississippi in 2011. Utah became the first state to legalize campus carry in 2004, though the University of Utah continued banning guns until 2006. In all, there are eight states —  including Colorado, Oregon and Wisconsin — that have passed campus carry in some form.

Lawmakers in Michigan, Ohio and Florida are also debating campus carry bills.

Over the last four years, anywhere from 12 to 20 states have introduced legislation to allow concealed weapons on campus in some form, says Suzanne Hultzin, a policy specialist with the National Conference for State Legislatures who tracks the issue of guns on campus. Each year, one or two states have approved legislation.

The campus laws take many forms — some uniformly ban universities from prohibiting concealed weapons, others allow guns on campus but allow universities to maintain weapons bans in places like dormitories and sports stadiums. But it’s not always clear who has the power to dictate policy — campus officials, or state legislators.

“It gets more tricky the more you dive into some of these statutes,” Hultzin says.

In two recent cases, state supreme court rulings have struck down longstanding university system policies that banned guns on campus. The courts in Colorado and Oregon ruled that only the state legislature had the statutory authority to regulate firearms, meaning that university officials had overstepped their authority in issuing weapons bans.

Nineteen states ban concealed weapons on campus, and 23 states leave the decision up to individual colleges and universities.

As campus carry advocates push their agenda in statehouses across the country, there have been some counter-efforts to strengthen existing gun regulations. Since 2013 five states have introduced bills to ban concealed weapons on campuses. All were unsuccessful until this October, when California approved a ban. 

Hultzin says the issue of guns on campus is one of the most contentious policies being debated at the state level. Those strongly in favor of campus carry tend to be “students for gun rights” groups, and those opposed tend to be university faculty, deans, chancellors and presidents.

In Texas, where campus carry goes into effect in August 2016, the issue has prompted significant outcry in the academic community. Student activists at the University of Texas at Austin organized a widely publicized “#CocksNotGlocks protest, urging students to carry sex toys instead of weapons to highlight the juxtaposition of the law allowing guns and a section of the Texas Penal Code that prohibits the display of obscene materials, such as dildos.

A prominent UT-Austin emeritus professor publicly resigned in protest of the legislation, saying it would increase the risk of a shooting by a disgruntled student. “Applying this law broadly,” Daniel S. Hamermesh wrote in a letter to university administrators, “will detract from both faculty well-being and from the national and international reputation of this university.”

Faculty at UW-Madison are equally troubled by the prospect of guns in school buildings, says Kevin Helmkamp, UW-Madison associate dean of students. He has heard from colleagues who say they are pondering a move if campus carry goes into effect.

“Obviously that’s a huge step for people to take,” Helmkamp says. “But people have made similar comments to me in regards to this legislation.”

Donald Downs, a UW-Madison professor emeritus of political science, is a strong supporter of  concealed carry and the right to bear arms. But he also says those opposed to campus carry have “valid concerns” about the bill’s impact on campus safety and academic freedom.

“Universities are special places — places of free inquiry and wide-open discussion,” says Downs, who is known for his First Amendment work. He worries that students carrying weapons in class could have a “chilling effect” on scholarly debate. “If that’s so, I don’t want them.”

Ann Althouse, a UW-Madison law professor who writes a popular conservative blog, has authored numerous posts over the years about gun control, concealed carry and weapons on campus.

In one, Althouse, who did not respond to a request for comment, expressed disdain for President Barack Obama’s 2013 gun control proposals and the surrounding liberal rhetoric.

But in a more recent post, she allows that professors may be justified in feeling anxious about “students who impulsively become violent and, because they have a gun with them, do far more damage than if they were unarmed.”

She argues that carrying a concealed weapon is voluntary behavior and points out that schools impose limitations on behavior in classroom settings all the time — student dress codes or rules about talking, for instance. She wrote: “It’s not the case that teachers must learn to tolerate students exercising their personal freedoms in the classroom.”

The college democrats of UW-Madison recently hosted a forum on Wisconsin’s proposed campus carry legislation — an issue that UW-Madison sophomore August McGinnity-Wake calls the “newest hot button” on campus.

“Pretty much everyone we’ve talked to is opposed to [campus carry],” he says.

One such student is Eliana Locke, a UW-Madison freshman.

Locke was a high school senior in Baltimore when a classmate was arrested with a stolen gun, homemade bombs and a plan to commit a school shooting. Though Baltimore is notorious for violent crime, Locke grew up in an affluent suburb and had little exposure to gun violence.

She remembers receiving an email alert from school officials assuring students that “everything was okay” on campus — but the message came before she and her classmates were even aware that a shooting plot had been uncovered.

“[The plot] came out later in the day — we were all obviously terrified,” she says. “Our school really didn’t handle it well.”

The police intervened before the student could act, but the incident was deeply disturbing, says Locke.

“It became so real to me,” she says. “I realized how much of an issue [gun violence] was.”

Since then, Locke has become a passionate supporter of strengthening gun regulations and improving mental health care in order to prevent violence. The arrested student, she says, had been a victim of bullying.

“He obviously needed help,” she says.

Locke feels safe at UW-Madison. But the idea of allowing concealed weapons inside campus buildings brings up the same fear she felt last year in Baltimore.

“We are a safe campus. We don’t need civilians carrying guns,” Locke says. “I wouldn’t feel safe going into a lecture knowing that someone has a gun in their backpack.”

Law enforcement officials are also wary. Jim Palmer, executive director of the Wisconsin Professional Police Association, says that public opinion on the issue of gun violence is too complicated to be addressed with narrowly focused solutions.

“It’s disappointing in the wake of these high-profile tragedies that interest groups and lawmakers — frankly on both sides of the aisle — rush to promote a single-issue initiative,” he says. He favors a “cumulative, broad-based approach” — one that focuses on gun control, mental health treatment and awareness about violence against women and social justice issues.

The police association has not taken a formal position on the “campus carry” legislation, but Palmer expressed disappointment that lawmakers did not reach out to his organization for input before introducing the bill.

The University of Wisconsin Police Department released a statement Oct. 13 opposing the bill. Department spokesman Marc Lovicott said in an email that lawmakers did not contact his department for input either. “That was disappointing for us,” Lovicott says. 

But on both sides of the issue, people seem to agree on one thing: Gun violence in the U.S. — and particularly on college campuses — has reached a point of crisis.

There have been nearly two dozen incidents in 2015 alone, according to Everytown for Research Support Fund, a group that tracks school shootings. An Oct. 1 rampage at Umpqua Community College in Oregon was the third-deadliest in U.S. history, leaving 10 dead, including the shooter. The violence continued the following week, with two separate campus shootings occurring within hours of each other on Oct. 9, leaving two dead in Texas and Arizona.

The era of college mass shootings began in 2007, when a gunman killed 32 people and later committed suicide at Virginia Tech.

Often called “the 9/11 of higher education,” that deadly rampage forced schools to confront the devastation that gun violence can have on campus communities and spurred them to enact policies to prevent and prepare for similar tragedies.

Numerous task force reports authored in the wake of Virginia Tech recommended that schools focus on identifying warning signs from potentially troubled students and intervening before a situation escalates to violence. Like many schools across the nation, UW-Madison established a multidisciplinary Threat Assessment Team late in 2007, which has since performed hundreds of interventions.

“It is a lot easier to interact with a student who is struggling before they [act out],” says Helmkamp, the former co-chairman of the threat team. “The goal is to prevent the action and not just be picking up the pieces.”

It’s difficult to measure the effectiveness of the threat team, says Chris Cole, UWPD’s director of threat intervention services. That’s because the team’s success is based on what doesn’t happen.

But Cole, who came to UWPD after more than 30 years in the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Marine Corps, says the threat team has “absolutely had a positive impact” on campus.

In the last two years alone, the threat team has responded to more than 120 cases. And UW-Madison is safe — individuals are less likely to be victims of violent crime on campus than they are in the rest of Wisconsin, according to 2014 FBI Uniform Crime Reporting data.

Since 2010, there have been no murders on campus, according to university police crime data. There have been seven weapons arrests on campus since then, 11 arrests for aggravated assault and 85 arrests for rape or “forcible sex offenses.”

Gene Deisinger, former deputy chief of police and director of threat management services for Virginia Tech, is a nationally known higher education consultant and author of Handbook for Campus Threat Assessment & Management Teams. He’s trained numerous colleges and universities across the nation on how to prevent mass shootings, but he doesn’t consider campus carry a viable solution.

“Of all the things a community could focus on,” he says, “[campus carry] would not be my priority.”

Instead, he promotes a holistic approach — one focused on improving campus communication, conflict resolution, delivery of mental health services and training for mental health providers.

“When we foster a climate of engagement and a sense of personal responsibility,” he says, “it’s simply harder for a threat to continue to evolve.”