Campus-carry gun laws won't make colleges safer: Our view Professionals who know weapons best say it's a bad idea.

The Editorial Board | USA Today

Retired admiral William McRaven is no stranger to weapons nor enemy of the Second Amendment. In fact, McRaven was the U.S. special operations commander who directed the raid that killed Osama bin Laden. Today, he's the chancellor of the nine-school University of Texas System — and a strong opponent of letting college students carry concealed handguns on public university campuses.

"The presence of concealed weapons will make a campus a less safe environment," McRaven wrote to the Texas Legislature. Besides accidents and suicides, McRaven said, he's worried that the system will have a harder time recruiting people from outside the state put off by the proliferation of guns on campus.

And did the legislature listen to this voice of experience and reason? Of course not. Prodded by the gun lobby, legislators passed a campus-carry bill last month. Gov. Greg Abbott is expected to sign it any day now. Texas would become the ninth state to allow concealed weapons on public post-secondary campuses, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. (Arkansas allows only faculty to carry.)

Beginning in August 2016, students at least 21 with Texas concealed-carry permits will be able to bring their handguns with them into campus buildings. The bill doesn't cover private colleges, and public college administrators can keep some, though not all, parts of campus off-limits to firearms.

The debate over guns on campus isn't about whether a capable person with a weapon might be able to stop a senseless tragedy. Yes, it's conceivable that a student or teacher with a firearm might have prevented deranged student Seung Hui Cho from killing 32 people and wounding 17 at Virginia Tech in 2007.

But it's a question of trade-offs. The odds are small that a capable, cool-headed person with a gun would be at the scene of a shooting, or be able to react quickly enough to stop it. Jared Loughner, the deeply disturbed student who shot Arizona congresswoman Gabby Giffords and killed six people in Tucson in 2011, fired 32 shots in 15 seconds. And after unarmed people knocked the shooter down and took his gun, a man with a concealed weapon almost shot one of the good Samaritans.

Weigh the tiny chance of stopping a shooting against the day-in, day-out risk of more and more students carrying weapons. More guns could change the atmosphere in classrooms and dorms. The possibility of accidental shootings and suicides goes up. Fights fueled by rage or alcohol can turn deadly.

While the gun lobby promotes its firearms-everywhere agenda, professionals who know weapons best think it's a bad idea to let everyone carry all the time. That's why the U.S. military bars most troops from carrying weapons on their bases outside combat zones. And these are servicemembers with far more training than the four hours it takes to get a Texas concealed-carry permit.

Gun advocates claim campuses are unsafe, but statistics show that college students are much likelier to be crime victims when they leave school than when they're on campus. As horrific as campus shootings are, they're extremely rare. They can be reduced by identifying disturbed students, getting them into treatment, stopping them from buying guns and keeping professional campus security forces at the ready.

There are better ways to keep students safe than asking them to settle things at gunpoint.

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