We Work to Protect
America’s Colleges and Universities
The mission of The Campaign to Keep Guns Off Campus is to support safe educational spaces nationwide by opposing the presence of concealed firearms in all levels of education. We foster collaborative networks through community engagement to amplify local voices that stimulate state-level action, ultimately impacting gun violence prevention nationwide. Through comprehensive advocacy, education, and legal action, we strive to promote effective measures that keep guns off campus and safeguard the educational experience for all.
The Campaign works with colleges and universities across the country to oppose legislative policies that would force institutions of higher learning to allow loaded, concealed guns on campuses. Since 2008, The Campaign to Keep Guns off Campus has helped stop guns on campus legislation in 18 states, and is the only national organization of its kind tasked to protect higher educational institutions and the communities they serve.
Following the mass shootings at Virginia Tech in 2007 (32 students and faculty killed and 15 wounded) and Northern Illinois University in 2008 (5 students killed and 16 wounded), the gun lobby embarked on an opportunistically motivated campaign within state legislatures around the country pushing legislation that would prohibit colleges and universities from adopting/maintaining policies that regulate firearms on campus.
The gun lobby’s proposed legislation would preempt an academic institution’s current policies restricting firearms on campus and allow students to possess and carry concealed handguns – in classrooms, at sporting events, and other school activities – and to keep guns in their dormitory rooms. The gun lobby’s legislation would not stop college shootings: allowing guns on campus could, in fact, make mass shootings even worse.
See list of states where legislation has been introduced, defeated or signed into law in our STATE LEGISLATION section.
For the last fifteen years, The Campaign to Keep Guns Off Campus has urged colleges and universities across the country to band together to oppose the gun lobby’s agenda to push guns into college campuses by signing onto a resolution that opposes legislation that would mandate that colleges and universities allow students to carry concealed handguns on campus. The list of colleges and universities signing the resolution will be provided to lawmakers in states where legislation is pending as a way of showing the educational community’s opposition to such legislation.
As of February 1, 2024 the American Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU), over 420 individual colleges and universities in 42 states and an additional 48 college presidents have signed the resolution. Click here to view list.
