People are thinking of this all wrong. If they are allowed to carry there is not suddenly going to be a bunch of armed college students.
They still have to be over 21 to get a carry permit under state law anyway.
Every person over 21 is not going to go through the steps and hassle of getting a permit to carry. On the contrary only those who feel it is important would.
So the only real question is whether college should have more restrictions than the rest of the state for people that go through the exact same steps and pay the exact same fees for a privelidge( don't have to pay for or ask permission for rights) to carry.
Hard decision to make here, as much as I like the idea of carring a firearm for personal protection it would also be nice to know that you can go to a place where there are no firearms whatsoever.
Umm yeah that is the whole anti logic. If you can simply wish them to not exist where you do not want them by outlawing them in those locations they will not be there.
Reality however is that people still have them illegaly.
If you make checkpoints and search everyone not only is it going to be expensive, but will indocrinate that whole generation that they have no real rights, should accept no right to privacy, and the government and those in in place to "protect them" can do anything in the name of safety. When such a generation grew up you would find yourself in a very unfree society that people allowed thier overseers near unlimited authority.
Yet a well armed gunman would still just march right through that checkpoint, or use a back entrance, climb a wall, cut through a fence etc, and shoot people and guards on the "gun free" campus. All you would have succeeded in doing by sacrificing so much freedom is insuring minimal opposition.
I am a strong capable man. If I could cause guns to cease to exist right now I would be better of in this world. Women, the handicaped, older people, and others would be worse off, but I would be better off, until I get older or become handicap myself.
Reality is that propelling a projectile by a simple propellant is not something you can uninvent. People can and do make thier own propellants, thier own ammunition, and can make a firearm out of everday items. Villagers in remote parts of Asia use pipes and bolts with the head cut off, hooked up to tripwires to mortaly wound elephants. Basicly makeshift firearms by uneducated people with few resources that can kill an elephant.
In fact it might be more dangerous if you could remove firearms from existing places. Imagine crazed people strapping explosives to themselves or packing thier vehicles and blowing them up because they couldn't get a firearm instead for thier spree. Rather than practicing to shoot like Cho, they research the best way to generate the deadliest blast wave.
I would rather face gunmen while having a gun myself than suicide bombers with nothing.
If guns did not exist the void for angry deranged but calculating people would be filled through another means. Explosives, poisons (what if everyone who ate at the cafeteria for lunch died), etc
A gun in the hands of a shooter is actualy one of the better choices to face.
More people die in a normal daily car combing in parts of the middle east than have died in the largest mass shootings.
More children died in such an incident in our own country than in any of our shootings so far (done by a school board member.)