American universities are places of art and music, gleaming labs and fine old buildings, famous libraries and fancy football stadiums, old traditions and new thinking, beauty, youth and brains – about everything you could want. Except guns. Apparently, there just aren't enough guns in those ivy-covered halls.

Never fear: second amendment fundamentalists mean to correct what they see as the sad paucity of weapons on campus. In Florida, a gaggle of true believers calling themselves Florida Carry busies itself arguing that institutions of higher learning have no right to ban guns on their taxpayer-funded property. I mean, why wouldn't you want to pack heat in a class like Organic Chemistry II? Florida Carry's attack is gradual: last year they prevailed in a suit to let students at the University of North Florida stash guns in their cars; this year, they're aiming to force the University of Florida to allow its 50,000 students to keep guns in their dormitories.

Genius! Imagine: students living six to a hutch, hopped up on Red Bull, vodka, stress, lust, Adderall, Spicy Chipotle BBQ Doritos, MIA and Grand Theft Auto 5. Now add a few .38s and maybe a deer rifle or two. The stakes in those passionate late-night debates over the origin of the universe suddenly get a lot higher.

Of course, Florida is no stranger to gun controversies. George Zimmerman killed Trayvon Martin for walking while hoodied. Just the other day, one guy killed another guy in a movie theatre, apparently for texting during Lone Survivor. But Florida is not alone in this crazy quest to expand gun violence. Lawmakers in North Carolina recently relaxed rules about carrying a gun at public universities. Six states (Utah, Colorado, Kansas, Mississippi, Oregon, and Wisconsin) now allow concealed weapons at their public colleges.

The zealots of the NRA, and their even nuttier cousins (Gun Owners of America, Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership, Women Warriors PAC), think that the second amendment is all that stands between us and tyranny. They're still predicting that Barack Obama is "coming for your guns" – though he doesn't seem in much of a hurry – and see colleges as a new front in their quest to put a trigger behind every American finger, right to tote a gun trumps all other rights. One conservative pundit, who is also a professor of criminology, thinks concealed carry on campus is for wusses. He advocates for "open possession of firearms", arguing that higher education's drive to curb racism and sexism is more damaging: "Speech codes are a far greater threat to free speech than handguns."

The Pennsylvania Board of Governors, which oversees that 14 of that state's pubic universities, plans to decide later this year on allowing guns at universities. In Georgia, legislators would like to see everybody armed, whether sitting in class reading Emily Dickinson or parked in a pew singing "O Sacred Head Now Wounded". Nevermind that polls show 72% of Georgians prefer church to be bullet-free, while 78% say allowing guns on campus is a really stupid idea.

It would be funny if it weren't so dangerous. I grew up in a house full of guns. I'm a professor at a university in the "Deep South". Guns are part of our culture. But I don't want to be teaching a class on homosocial triangles in the novels of William Faulkner, while also wondering if maybe that surly kid in the corner has a Colt in his backpack. I don't want to hear one promising student shot another promising student over who saw that hot Tri-Delt first. I don't want to see one of my colleagues hurt by a student who freaks out when she fails her final exam.

I don't want to be as paranoid as those fetishisers of the second amendment who believe if you don't have a gun, you will be a victim of people who do have guns. They claim if those kindergarten teachers at Sandy Hook Elementary School had only been armed, they could have taken the shooter down, and that if a critical mass of Virginia Tech faculty and students back in 2007 had Glocks in their waistbands or folding stock AK 47s in their desks, lives would have been saved.

This makes perfect sense – if you think that real life is indistinguishable from a video game. Barrel-polishers have a vision of the world as infinitely hazardous, pulsing with mortal threats to 1. America; 2. freedom; 3. themselves and their families. The solution is for everyone to have a gun and to use it with the flawless accuracy of those square-jawed, super-fit characters we see on our screens.

But that ain't real life. In real life, we are overweight, nearsighted, uncoordinated creatures who would shoot the wrong people. Even David Frum, a Reagan-loving, McCain-voting, Republican cautions: "a gun in the house is not a guarantee of personal security – it is instead a standing invitation to family tragedy. The cold dead hands from which they pry the gun are very unlikely to be the hands of a heroic minuteman defending home and hearth against intruders. They are much more likely to be the hands of a troubled adolescent or a clumsy child."