The issue of securing a gun in a dorm
Starting from the outmost layer of security and going inward:
1:
lack of anonymity Despite your best efforts to conceal, your roommate is likely to know, and depending on that person, several other people up to the entire hall know. This makes your room a target for break in.
2:
access to room Depending on the university, besides you and your roommate, the Resident Advisors, janitorial staff, and maintenance staff have access to the room. Additionally, your roommate my have guests while you are away. Also worthy of note is that many dorm rooms lack so much as a deadbolt to secure the door.
3.
inability to hide A dorm room of roughly 12ftx12ftx8ft doesn't have many options to hide something - and fewer places to secure something.
4.
cost prohibitive to secure something few storage devices secure things adequately for this sort of environment. A lock/lockbox can be defeated easily when you're out (not even to class, say when you shower). Even an expensive RSC only is rated to hold out for 5mins against a
screwdriver and hammer. (see this thread, post #2 for a photo of an RSC defeated in less than that
http://thehighroad.org/showthread.php?t=220278&highlight=axe ) For those that think that the noise would be noticed - dorms are loud, and I have personally seen people using a
power saws on a regular basis (some people like building their own furniture, and as long as it wasn't quiet hours, you couldn't do much.) and have been introduced to a genre of music called "power noise/industrial" which has many of the same sounds.
Now, how to deal with all of this,
without an armory:
1+2: requires someone to get a single room to themselves - avoids publicity and traffic. This also means that concealed would be required of students who live in dorms - no open carry.
3+4: could be dealt with if the university installed (since they wouldn't want people with a variety of containers making many holes in the room) handgun-sized (for cost reasons) RSCs in the rooms (bolted to floor/wall). This would have to be
all the singe-rooms, otherwise it would quickly become known who had the "gun" rooms. This comes back to DixieTexian's point of discriminating against those with long-arms, and why the university would pay for this.
How to deal with all of this,
with an armory:
this would probably be the cheaper option for the university, setting up a repository for firearms that are not being carried (or kept within arm's reach). Having it at the campus police station solves issue of hours and having a trusted staff, but makes it harder for those who want to carry. However, that is likely the route a university would take for cost reasons.
Random other idea I had, that requires some student-networking:
Carry buddies:
set up a residential community (aka all in the same dorm/hall - and everyone in the hall must be a participant to live there) for those who wish to carry
essentially all the time. Then if you needed to go somewhere (shower, or place that your CCW/CHL permit does not allow in your state) you would be required to drop off your gun with someone
who will be with the gun the entire time. This way, there are no unattended guns, which prevents the theft problems (you'd have to trust at least one other carrier for this to work), without the inconvenience of going elsewhere for off-person storage. Cons for this are that it loses the anonymity factor - if you're in the "Carry Community" people will know you're armed. On the plus side, it would be amazingly easy to get together groups for range trips
For off-campus students, I don't see any need for special university accommodations, if you take, say, a swimming class, you'd need to store it beforehand.
These are just some ideas I came up with, and probably need some ironing out for Prince Yamato's goal of having a skeleton policy that could be presented to a university.
