On Thursday, the bid to remove gun-free zones from public college campuses in New Hampshire stalled in the state Legislature, with the Senate blocking a conference committee from renegotiating the measure with House leaders. Even with the setback, supporters insist the campaign is far from over.
“We intend to pursue this through a legal challenge,” said state Representative Sam Farrington (R–Rochester), the sponsor of the bill, which would have also permitted students to carry nonlethal devices such as pepper spray and mace. Farrington, who earned his degree from the University of New Hampshire (UNH) just last weekend, indicated that any challenge would rely on New Hampshire’s pre-emption statute, which bars any political subdivision aside from the state Legislature from regulating firearms. He contends that restrictions on campus gun access imposed by unelected administrators at public universities fall under that umbrella.
UNH maintains that its rules were adopted under authority granted by the Legislature to the Board of Trustees and campus presidents to govern university property.
For the moment, New Hampshire remains one of 37 states where college campuses are designated gun-free zones. This category includes Rhode Island and Virginia, where Brown University and Old Dominion University—respectively—experienced fatal shootings during the current academic year. In fact, the Crime Prevention Research Center notes that more than 80 percent of mass public shootings since 1998 have occurred in places where firearms are prohibited. (Other estimates, applying different definitions for “gun-free zone” and “mass shooting,” yield lower figures: around 48 percent, or even 10 percent.)
Thus, although Farrington framed his bill as a defense of students’ Second Amendment rights, he also emphasizes safety. “At UNH, for example, doors and buildings are left wide open. Anyone can walk in at any time,” he argues.
“Gun-free zones,” Farrington told Reason, “leave victims defenseless and exposed.”
High-quality research on the topic remains limited, but the sole study meeting the RAND Corporation’s criteria for its Gun Policy Research Review concluded that campus carry laws were not significantly linked to violent or property crime on campuses between 2005 and 2014, indicating they did not appreciably increase safety nor did they worsen it. The analysis did reveal that campuses located in states permitting unpermitted concealed carry—like New Hampshire—had lower property crime rates, suggesting a potential positive correlation between firearm access and campus safety in some contexts.
While universities often point to their campus security teams or collaborations with local law enforcement as evidence of their commitment to student safety, Farrington remains skeptical. “You can’t rely on government police officers to defend you,” he says, referencing the 2005 Castle Rock v. Gonzales decision in which the Supreme Court held that law enforcement cannot be held liable for failing or refusing to protect citizens from threats they did not create. “You need to take it upon yourself, and that’s why this right matters so much,” Farrington adds.
In the wake of this year’s campus shootings, more students across the country are voicing similar skepticism. A notable wave of opinion pieces appeared shortly after the Brown incident in the Yale Daily News, criticizing Yale’s security approach.
One student highlighted that campus security officers—who outnumber the Yale Police Department by 140 to 93—are unarmed. In an emergency, they are instructed only to direct people to shelter in place before summoning officers who are equipped to handle threats. The student suggested that Yale, a gun-free campus, should arm its security personnel with some form of incapacitating gear, or at least expand its armed police presence.
Of course, mass shootings are far rarer than everyday robberies and assaults. Yet, even then, many campus security solutions seem ill-suited to protect students. In another op-ed, Yale student and active-duty U.S. Marine Timothy Riemann noted that Yale’s campus-wide safety alerts—covering all muggings, robberies, or shots fired on campus—consistently omit the perpetrator’s race, supplying “deliberately incomplete information” to students who may be at risk.
“To me,” Riemann wrote, “it signals that the University values the potentially or theoretically harmful impact of including race as an identifying trait over the tangible safety of its own students, faculty, and staff.”
Yet, in the months since these criticisms surfaced, Yale has shown no plans to alter its approach, leaving its security framework in lockstep with many universities nationwide. Depending on the outcome of Farrington’s legal action, changes could come for students enrolled in public colleges in New Hampshire. For now, however, they—and students across the country—face the reality of trusting a campus security paradigm that many view as flawed.
