Editorial: More guns on campus?

Saturday, May 5, 2007 | 6:59 a.m.

With just a few exceptions, people with concealed firearms permits are allowed by state law to carry their guns into public buildings.

The Nevada System of Higher Education is included among the exceptions.

To ensure greater safety on the campuses, the law forbids anyone except police officers, school security guards and those who have written permission from the campus president to carry a gun onto the grounds of a college or university.

An idea by Stavros Anthony, a Metro Police captain who is also a university system regent, would keep the law unchanged but nevertheless expand the number of people allowed on campuses with guns.

As a response to last month's tragedy on the Virginia Tech campus, in which a mentally ill student shot and killed 32 students and faculty members and injured 25 others, Anthony wants Nevada's higher education employees to have the option of becoming certified reserve police officers.

After completing six months of training - which Anthony says is so exacting that about nine of every 10 enrollees drop out - they would have authorization to be armed as they went about their campus jobs.

This would increase the chances of having a trained police officer in a position to respond if a shooting erupted on campus, Anthony told the Sun.

In our view, it would also increase the chances for a gun-related incident. K-12 schools, where state law also restricts the presence of guns, and college campuses statistically are among the safest places a person can be - precisely because gun-carrying is extremely limited.

Tragic shootings on campuses, despite the warranted publicity they receive, are nevertheless rare. We believe it is an overreaction to suggest that campus employees begin arming themselves in response to those rare instances.

If this idea became a national trend, with thousands of campus employees across the country coming to work carrying weapons, we believe the reverse of what Anthony wants would happen - shooting incidents would increase.

Anthony said he will present his idea at next month's Board of Regents meeting. We hope the regents opt instead to conduct security reviews at Nevada's campuses.

If the findings point to a general sense that security needs improvement, we believe there is a better alternative than giving campus employees a few months of training and hoping they will respond effectively in the event of a crisis, and that is budgeting for additional full-time campus police officers.