Concealed Carrying on Campus in the Post–Virginia Tech Era: Dimensions of State Regulation and Differences in Contexts of Influence Within Them

• Date: 01 February 2022
• Author: Bonnie S. Fisher,John J. Sloan
• DOI: 10.1177/08874034211028276
• Published date: 01 February 2022
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/08874034211028276

Criminal Justice Policy Review

2022, Vol. 33(1) 45 –73

© The Author(s) 2021

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DOI: 10.1177/08874034211028276

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Article

Concealed Carrying on

Campus in the Post–Virginia

Tech Era: Dimensions of State

Regulation and Differences in

Contexts of Influence Within

Them

John J. Sloan, III1 and Bonnie S. Fisher2

Abstract

Debates over concealed carrying of guns on campus (CCOC) usually classify states

as either “allowing” or “prohibiting” CCOC, thus ignoring research revealing state

firearm regulatory frameworks are more nuanced. This study examined whether

such subtleties existed in state CCOC regulatory frameworks by analyzing states’

2018 CCOC regulatory provisions. Results showed that states used a multi-

categorical restrictiveness-by-institutional discretion framework to regulate CCOC.

In addition, indicators of intrastate contexts of influence (firearms, political, and

religious) on regulatory policy differed across categories of restrictiveness and

institutional discretion. Analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) revealed significant

differences in indicators of states’ political contexts, and post hoc comparisons of

paired marginal means revealed significant differences in political indicators between

states prohibiting CCOC and those allowing or those with mixed restrictiveness,

and between states according schools full discretion and those according schools

no discretion. Implications of the results are discussed for state-level research on

firearms regulation and the ongoing CCOC debate.

Keywords

concealed carrying, college campuses, state gun policy, guns on campus, contexts of

influence

1The University of Alabama at Birmingham, USA

2University of Cincinnati, OH, USA

Corresponding Author:

John J. Sloan, III, The University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, AL 36561, USA.

Email: prof@uab.edu

1028276CJPXXX10.1177/08874034211028276Criminal Justice Policy ReviewSloan and Fisher

research-article2021

46 Criminal Justice Policy Review 33(1)

Mass shootings at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in 2007 and

Northern Illinois University in 2008 served as a catalyst for an increasingly heated

debate over concealed carrying of firearms on public college and university campuses

(Arrigo & Acheson, 2016). Supporters of concealed carrying of guns on campus

(CCOC) argue a “good-guy-with-a-gun-can-stop-a-bad-guy-with-a-gun” (Tropp,

2016) and/or citizens have an “inalienable” or “God given” right to possess a gun for

self-defense while on campus (Parry, 2019). Opponents argue CCOC leads to increased

violence on campus, including student suicides, assaults, and threats (see Webster

et al., 2016), and/or guns on campus dampen the free exercise of speech and the ability

to protest (Debrabander, 2016). Polarizing this debate are two landmark U.S. Supreme

Court decisions—District of Columbia v. Heller (2008) (554 U.S. 570) and McDonald

v. City of Chicago (2010)—that together recognized an individual’s right to possess a

firearm for legal purposes and incorporated this right to the states through the 14th

Amendment.

When coupled with multiple contexts of influence (Hearn et al., 2017), including

intrastate regulation of guns and levels of gun ownership, internal state politics, and

the prevalence of Evangelical Protestantism in a state, the debate over guns on campus

remains a salient issue for criminal justice policy because CCOC relates directly to

safety issues for the campus community and involves states regulating behavior osten-

sibly controlled by the 2nd Amendment and some state constitutions (see Spitzer,

2018). CCOC also relates to higher education policy as evidenced by “persistent intro-

duction of pro-CCOC bills in state legislatures” (Johnson & Zhang, 2020, p. 123),

which could affect the CCOC policies postsecondary institutions are allowed to imple-

ment and enforce. Despite the complexity of the CCOC issue, both sides of the debate

often simplify the issue for their base by arguing that states either “allow” or “pro-

hibit” CCOC. Doing so ignores the reality of state-level gun regulations rarely being

so cut-and-dry. Rather, state-level gun regulations often constitute a hodgepodge of

sometimes conflicting provisions that are open to interpretation and include various

dimensions of regulation legislatively intended to facilitate (impede) the production,

sale, possession, or use of firearms and ammunition (Cook & Goss, 2020; Siegel et al.,

2017; Spitzer, 2018). This hodgepodge of regulations often results in the same circum-

stances surrounding buying, selling, possessing, or using a firearm, which is responded

to differently across the states, including those in the same geographic region or even

adjacent to one another (Siegel et al., 2017). Obiter dictum in the U.S. Supreme Court’s

majority opinion in Heller rendered little help in sorting out the constitutionality of

this regulatory patchwork when Justice Scalia wrote “nothing in our opinion should be

taken to cast doubt on . . . laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places

such as schools and government buildings.”

Absent from the ongoing debate over CCOC are answers to several questions that

no published study has addressed, as follows. First, how have states regulated CCOC?

Second, do differences in intrastate contexts of influence (Hearn et al., 2017) on state

regulatory policy adoption, such as CCOC, exist? Finally, what are the implications of

differences in state regulation of CCOC and contexts of influence not only for the

CCOC debate, but also for future research on state-level firearms regulation more