Armed but not Dangerous? Arizona Allows Guns very near Campus

Arizona has among the most liberal gun laws in the United States.  One that directly impacts the University of Arizona (and ASU) is A.R.S. Section 12-781, which took effect on September 30, and prohibits "a property owner, tenant, public or private employer or business entity" from banning the possession of firearms locked and out of sight in cars.  The University of Arizona strictly prohibits all firearms, even though in Arizona in general it is legal to carry a handgun openly without a permit, and concealed carry permits are easy to get (something like 3% of the adult population has one).  The University is particularly concerned about weapons because in 2002, three nursing professors were murdered by a student who then killed himself.  After September 30, there could be scores or hundreds of guns on campus in parked cars, which some fear could precipitate another mass shooting or other gun incidents. My prediction is that the new law will have no impact on safety at the University.

Allowing guns on campus will not likely make the campus materially safer.  Some argue that if students and faculty were armed, they could prevent crimes such as mass shootings.  But it seems unlikely that  gun owners will regularly be in the right place at the right time and do the right thing in an extremely unusual event like a mass shooting.  Our gun-free campus already has lower crime rates than Tucson as a whole were guns are largely permitted.  With 3 sexual assaults, 5 robberies and 8 aggravated assaults on campus in all of 2008, it would have been quite a coincidence for even one crime to have been stopped by an armed passer-by.

I also doubt that allowing guns on campus will make the campus more dangerous.  Someone bent on crime, or who is legally prohibited from possessing a gun at all would not have obeyed  the prohibition on guns in parked cars, so the only new guns allowed on campus will be owned owned by law abiding people.  However, it is not so simple to say that gun laws don't work because criminals don't obey them: In a regime where guns are prohibited, gun possessors are ipso facto criminals and thus merit a swift response.  If police detected a gun as it was being transported to the scene of a planned crime, they could intervene and prevent it.  The problem is that such intervention is a very low likelihood event.  A shooter who sees the police might well change plans, or in any event keep the weapon concealed.  So the signal "Gun = Criminal" is lost, but it was not a particularly valuable signal because criminals know to keep their guns out of sight.

If allowing guns on campus is unlikely to either facilitate or prevent premeditated crime, it could make it possible for otherwise law-abiding people to commit a crime on the spur of the moment.  Theoretically, an argument about course scheduling or a grade could now turn into a shooting incident.  But this is also unlikely.  I presume this from the fact that there are more shouting matches than there are assaults, more assaults than aggravated assaults, more aggravated assaults than homicides.  Even among those who lose their cool, even among those who commit crimes, there is often some measure of control.  The impulse to run to the parking lot to get a gun to settle an argument is the same as the one to run to the copy room to get a pair of scissors. Fortunately, this sort of thing is rare. I certainly hope it stays that way.