Concealed weapons on college campuses

Crimes against disarmed college students are not hypothetical. Amanda Collins, a concealed-weapons permit holder, was unarmed when she was raped by James Biela in a parking garage at the University of Nevada, Reno in 2007.

She gave emotional testimony to the 2011 Legislature, seeking a change in college and university victim disarmament policies. Ms. Collins testified she could have defended herself if she’d been allowed to carry the weapon for which she’d acquired a permit.

The Nevada law that prohibits weapons on state college campuses lists several exemptions, including one for “peace officers.” But most state colleges ignore the peace officer exemption. Off-duty public safety officers have been surprised to learn that if they take night classes at a state college, the ban applies to them and their off-duty weapons.

“This law is so prohibitive that without written permission I cannot leave my weapon secured in my vehicle in the parking lot of the campus, which leaves me defenseless on my way to and from school,” prison guard and College of Southern Nevada student Patrick Mendez told the Board of Regents last spring.

Regents have not been much help. District 12 Regent Andrea Anderson told the Nevada Journal last year, “My personal belief is the less guns on campus, the better.”

But that’s not true.

Depraved persons who want to commit mass murder typically choose locations where they know all their victims will be disarmed, such as schools and churches. Last summer, James Holmes drove past several larger Denver-area movie theaters that were playing “The Dark Knight Rises” closer to his home in order to attack the only cineplex where signs announced self-defense guns were banned. The signs obviously did nothing to stop Holmes, who killed 12 people.

Yet shootings at places such as the high school in Pearl, Miss. (1997), the Appalachian School of Law (2002) and the New Life Church in Colorado Springs (2007) were cut short — the number of victims held much lower — precisely because one or more law-abiding armed citizens were present to either shoot or hold the crazed assailant at gunpoint until police could arrive.

Now comes Nevada Assemblywoman Michele Fiore, R-Las Vegas, who on Monday introduced a bill authorizing students and others with concealed-carry permits to bring their guns onto the campuses of the Nevada System of Higher Education. Assembly Bill 143 includes a prohibition on carrying weapons into events held at stadiums or arenas with a seating capacity of 1,000 or more — where armed security is usually present, already.

“In the state of Nevada, there hasn’t been a person that holds a concealed weapons permit that has participated in any unnecessary discharges of their firearms,” Ms. Fiore told the Review-Journal.

Yet of nine people who applied to have a weapon on a Nevada campus in 2011, only one was granted, she said.

Former state Sen. John Lee, D-North Las Vegas, brought a similar bill to the Legislature in 2011. It passed the Senate but was bottled up in the Assembly Judiciary Committee.

Sen. Lee sponsored the bill on behalf of Ms. Collins, the UNR student. Ms. Fiore said Ms. Collins is expected to testify on behalf of her bill this session.

This is not a question of blocking private property owners from barring guns from their premises, if they choose. Especially on government property, the constitutional right to bear arms is the highest law of the land.

Contacted Tuesday, Ms. Fiore agreed her bill should be amended to clarify that sworn peace officers are allowed to bring their off-duty weapons on campus — no specific authorization necessary. These men and women certainly have the training to be trusted with a firearm. Otherwise, campuses wouldn’t have their own small armed police forces, who can’t possibly be in every classroom, all the time.

AB 143 won’t necessarily put a gun in every classroom. But the goal here is to deprive would-be assailants of the comfortable assumption that every classroom is full of people unable to defend themselves. Ms. Fiore’s bill is a modest and sensible step in that direction.