The leadership running Indiana government routinely rejects attempts by federal officials and agencies to impose rules on Hoosiers. States know best how to govern themselves, the Indiana leaders contend.
Yet a proposed piece of legislation brewing in the Indiana General Assembly shows some legislators in conflict with that home-rule concept by attempting to impose state control over local decisions.
A state representative from Kokomo, Republican Heath VanNatter, plans to co-author a bill that would allow students to carry firearms onto college campuses. Such legislation has been tried previously. Fortunately, opposition by university administrators and campus law enforcement leaders persuaded lawmakers to scrap those past bills. The Legislature commences its 2015 session this week with a new, similar push on its agenda.
Currently, Indiana and 22 other states let universities and colleges decide whether to ban firearms on their campuses. Almost all of the schools choose to maintain such bans. Only one state in the U.S. denies colleges and universities the authority to ban the carrying of licensed handguns on campus — Utah. Some legislators want Indiana to join that short list.
Supporters of the guns-on-campus movement reason that armed students could have intervened and mitigated the loss of life in tragic campus shootings at Virginia Tech, Northern Illinois and elsewhere. Last October, the Students for Concealed Carry on Campus group at Indiana State University, asked the school’s Student Government Association to support their quest to undo the university’s prohibition of guns on campus. An ISU student had been shot and wounded in a campus stairwell.
In response to that shooting, the group pitched a plan that would require students and campus employees to be licensed and complete a firearms safety course to carry a firearm on school grounds. The Students for Concealed Carry on Campus has the backing of the National Rifle Association, according to a December report by CNHI’s Maureen Hayden.
The proposed state law would be similar, its proponents in the Statehouse say.
On campuses, though, security officials emphatically insist that such a law would complicate a university’s ability to protect its students and staff. “I’m certain allowing possession of firearms would make it more difficult,” said Joe Newport, director of public safety and police chief at ISU. He disagreed with the argument that armed students would deter gun violence, and explained that guns and college campuses are a bad mix, with drinking and horseplay by young people, and the potential for firearm thefts.
“The everyday risks far outweigh the chance of someone being in the right spot to safely stop an active threat,” Newport said.
The people closest to the situation understand it best — far better than lawmakers gathered in Indianapolis, getting coached and coaxed by lobbyists. Indiana should leave the decision whether to allow guns on college campuses to the leaders of those campuses.