Would Allowing Students to Carry Weapons Make College Campuses Safer?

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Mental health issues and the risks of suicides among college students is another prime reason to prohibit or limit access to guns by college students. Researchers have found that youths aged 18-25 experience the highest rate of mental health problems. According to the American College Health Association’s National College Health Assessment, between 9 and 11% of college students seriously considered suicide in the last school year. Even more alarming, every year about 1,100 college students commit suicide and another 24,000 attempt to do so. Introducing firearms into this psychological cauldron could dramatically increase the danger to students. If a gun is used in a suicide attempt, more than 90% of the time the attempt will be fatal. By comparison, suicide attempts made by overdosing on drugs are fatal only 3% of the time. Thus, while suicides involving firearms account for only 5% of the suicide attempts in America, they accounted for more than half of the 32,439 fatalities. Needless to say, increasing firearms availability for college students could lead to a significant increase in the number of fatalities among the 24,000 suicide attempts survived by students each year. After all, the presence of a gun in the home increases the risk of suicide fivefold.

Colleges and universities have devoted considerable resources to address mental health problems and suicide risks on campus. One thing they have not done, however, is attempt to expel all the students that pose mental health or suicide risks. Nor should they. A college may face legal problems if it discriminates against certain students based on a perception that they are prone to depression or violence. Moreover, many scholars believe it is not possible to reliably identify who will go on a rampage, thus suggesting there is no way for a college or university to distinguish in advance between gun-toters who pose extraordinary risks, and those who may not. According to Dr. James Alan Fox, Dean of the College of Criminal Justice at Northeastern University and one of America’s leading criminologists: It’s not a matter of identifying problem cases and dealing with them. It’s a matter of changing the way things are done.... You can’t just grease the squeaky wheel. You’ve got to grease the whole machine.

Accordingly, the only safe and nondiscriminatory way to reduce the risks of gun violence on college campuses is to keep them gun-free.