“For me, this is a cost savings for taxpayers,” said Jen Day Shaw, associate vice president and dean of students at the University of Florida and chair of the Campus Safety Knowledge Community, a forum for members of Naspa: Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education. When police departments “have the ability to get equipment that will help them do their jobs at a greatly reduced price,” Ms. Shaw said, “it is a benefit for the whole campus.”

“It is a force multiplier for us,” said David Perry, chief of police at Florida State University and president of the International Association of Campus Law Enforcement Administrators. “Typically, we are not staffed at optimum levels. We are not given budgets comparable to some large cities and municipalities, so we need to find ways to make it reach.”

Indeed, many police departments use the 1033 program to acquire basic supplies along with tactical equipment. “Aside from body armor and weapons,” Mr. Perry said, “there is furniture, hand sanitizers, bandages. There are all types of equipment, materials, and supplies we need to support our overall mission.”

At Central Florida, Chief Beary said, M-16 rifles are stored in vehicles for emergencies, like the one his officers responded to at midnight on March 18, 2013. Answering a call for a pulled fire alarm, officers eventually raided the dormitory room of James Seevakumaran, 30, and found a handgun, an assault rifle, more than 1,000 rounds of ammunition, and four homemade bombs. Mr. Seevakumaran was also in the room, dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. The police said the would-be gunman had intended to drive students into the hall with the fire alarm, where he would be waiting with his weapons.

“What was once the unthinkable has become the inevitable,” Mr. Beary said. “These bad guys have plans and are heavily armed, and law enforcement needs to be able to keep up with them. In order to do that, police officers need to be highly trained, well equipped and ready to respond to any scenario.”

Michael Qualls, an associate professor of criminal justice at Fort Valley State University, in Georgia, agrees. A retired Army officer, Mr. Qualls worked for several campus police departments before he began teaching. “If we continue on with the 1033 program, as those items become obsolete at the military level and if they become available, why not get ’em?” Mr. Qualls said. “It’s better to be prepared than not prepared.”

But seeing that much firepower on college campuses is worrisome to some observers like Peter Kraska, a professor at Eastern Kentucky University’s School of Justice Studies. Mr. Kraska has studied police militarization since the late 1980s.