Guns on campus a bad idea

By The Gazette Editorial Board

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A new University of Iowa student group wants leaders to lift a campus ban on handguns. Bad idea.

Students for Concealed Carry on Campus argues that people with licenses to carry the weapons in the state should be allowed to carry at state universities, too.

They're part of a national movement - Iowa State University also has a chapter. They plan to stage a silent protest sometime next month in the hopes of swaying UI leaders to their cause.

We've long advocated for the right to keep and bear arms. But while we have no problem with properly licensed and trained adults carrying handguns in public, we disagree that the state's universities should open their doors to weapons.

Concealed Carry on Campus says allowing licensed people to carry on campus would increase personal safety at the UI. But we see no compelling evidence that public safety is at greater risk on the UI or any state campus because students or others can't carry guns.

University communities are, by and large, safe and well-policed. Despite a long-standing ban on carrying guns on the campuses of Iowa's three Regents universities, violent incidents have been rare.

So rare, in fact, that campus police only in 2007 began carrying firearms on routine patrol.

Even that change wasn't prompted by a local incident or need - it was part of a review of safety procedures prompted by the Virginia Tech campus shootings.

Certainly, violence is possible - Iowa City always will remember the November 1991 incident in which UI doctoral graduate Gang Lu shot and killed five people and gravely injured a sixth.

Gun-carry advocates are fond of arguing that the UI gun ban didn't prevent that tragedy.

But we're not convinced that lifting the ban would have yielded any different result. The chance that a licensed carrier would be at such a scene at exactly the right time, ready to respond, is slim at best. And we worry about the potential for accidents posed by the inexperience or immaturity of many students, and the chaotic, crowded nature of campus life.

Prohibiting handguns on campus is not an unusual restriction or an undue limit on the right to carry a gun. As in the case of many city halls and county courthouses, public universities have the authority to determine whether or not to allow guns on their property and grounds.

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