At age 19, Alexander Fenton can legally vote, fight in a war and carry a gun.
When he steps onto the campus of UNH, where he studies business, the latter goes out the window. The college prohibits the possession and use of firearms.
Fenton doesn’t think that’s fair — and a proposed law could change it.
“College students in New Hampshire are legal adults,” Fenton told a legislative committee on Wednesday. “We vote, we sign contracts, we serve in the military, yet the moment we step onto campus, we lose a constitutional right that every other adult in this state enjoys.”
Rep. Sam Farrington, a fellow UNH student who lives in Rochester, put forth a so-called “campus carry” bill with the support of top-ranking House Republicans. It would prevent publicly funded colleges from restricting the lawful possession or use of weapons, including firearms and non-lethal tools like tasers and pepper spray.
Farrington said his right, and the rights of others, to carry a gun shouldn’t be restricted just because he’s a college student. He also pitched guns as a way for good people to fight back in the case of a mass shooting.
“So-called gun-free zones are not violence-free zones. We know that,” Farrington said while presenting the bill to the House Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committee. “They are defenseless zones, where potential victims are left without any hope of putting up a fight against the bad guy.”
About a dozen states allow campus carry — New Hampshire is one of many that leaves those policies up to each college. With New Hampshire’s status as a constitutional carry state, where residents have the freedom to carry guns without a permit, some felt that right shouldn’t be stripped when stepping onto a college campus and that having a gun would make them feel safer.
For others, students’ maturity levels and mental health were a concern. The idea of their peers carrying guns in the close quarters of a classroom or dormitory sparks fear, not relief.
Beni Griffin, a freshman at UNH, said guns add another layer of stress and risk to an already unfamiliar environment.
“Many students do not feel empowered by campus carry,” Griffin said. “Knowing that the person sitting next to you in class or down the hall in your residence hall could be armed does not create a sense of freedom. It creates fear and division.”
UNH Police Chief Steve Lee said having firearms on campus would detract from overall safety — not just by making fights or altercations more dangerous, but by causing confusion during a campus-wide safety threat. If police are getting reports of other people with guns — even if they have the best of intentions — they’d be spread thin.
“It’s imperative that we are able to control that space very quickly and not have our resources divided unnecessarily,” Lee said.
Patrick Slover, another college student, said he agreed.
“If there’s a mass shooter, if there’s someone trying to play hero with a weapon, that is another shooter in the area,” Slover said. “Police have a much tougher time de-escalating the situation and taking down the real threat, in my opinion.”
Lee said he also worries about access to firearms on campus when suicide is the second leading cause of death for college students. Students’ mental health has increasingly become a point of concern for colleges across the country.
Michael Appleton, a U.S. Marine Corps veteran and student at the New Hampshire Technical Institute in Concord, said he didn’t appreciate the characterization that he heard from some who spoke before him.
The way that some people spoke about college students’ maturity and mental health shocked him, Appleton said — the idea that “everyone is so suicidally incompetent that they cannot be trusted to exercise any of their rights.”
“If I had come up here and made that similar testimony and said, ‘We should restrict voting so college students can’t vote because they just can’t be trusted; they’re not mature; they’re not responsible; they’re suicidal,’ that would just be laughed out of the room because that’s ridiculous,” Appleton said.
Next up: The House Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committee must make a recommendation on HB 1793 by early March.