With more states opting not to restrict legal concealed carry on college campuses (or to lighten current restrictions), educators who fear an increased presence of firearms in the classroom are scrambling to obstruct the movement. Now four national groups—the American Association of University Professors, the American Federation of Teachers, the Association of American Colleges and Universities, and the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges—have banded together to present a unified front against further campus-carry legislation.
“College campuses are marketplaces of ideas, and a rigorous academic exchange of ideas may be chilled by the presence of weapons,” the groups wrote in a joint statement reported by Fox News. Of course, students who carry guns to class with bad intentions will not be deterred by laws to begin with—and as we have seen, academic discourse is much more “chilled” when a shooter has free reign of a campus full of defenseless people.
