Dr. John Lott has a new op-ed in the Union Leader with New Hampshire state Representative Samuel Farrington (R), who is the primary sponsor of the Campus Carry bill that will be voted on this coming week in the state Senate Judiciary Committee.
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News media coverage rarely mentions it, but mass public shooters have repeatedly explained in their manifestos that they seek to attack “gun-free zones.” As the New Hampshire State Senate Judiciary Committee considers eliminating gun-free zones at public universities, much of the debate focuses on what might go wrong if people are allowed to carry. Opponents are repeating the same warnings made when the state adopted right-to-carry, later expanded it, and enacted Constitutional Carry. Each time, critics predicted disaster—and each time, they were wrong.
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The campus-carry debate rests on fear, but other states already have these laws, so we don’t have to guess about their effects.
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Last fall, the Annunciation Catholic School shooter in Minneapolis spelled it out in his manifesto: “I recently heard a rumor that James Holmes, the Aurora theater shooter, may have chosen venues that were ‘gun-free zones.’ I would probably aim the same way…Holmes wanted to make sure his victims would be unarmed. That’s why I and many others like schools so much.”
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These attackers may be crazy, but they are not stupid. They plan their deaths to maximize attention, and they know that killing more victims brings more coverage. That’s why they choose places where victims are left defenseless.
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It’s no accident that 93% of mass public shootings occur in gun free zones in which civilians aren’t allowed to carry firearms. The Nashville Covenant School shooter admitted she avoided another site because it had too much security. “There was another location that was mentioned, but because of a threat assessment by the suspect of too much security, they decided not to,” Nashville Police Chief John Drake explained. No one at Covenant carried a gun to fight back.
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In 2022, ten people were murdered in a Buffalo grocery store. The attacker made the same calculation, writing in his manifesto: “Areas where CCW permits are outlawed or prohibited may be good areas of attack.” Many other killers have written nearly identical words.
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So why not station more police officers at schools? Sheriff Kurt Hoffman of Sarasota County, Fla., explained why that approach falls short: “A deputy in uniform has an extremely difficult job in stopping these attacks. These terrorists have huge strategic advantages in determining the time and place of attacks. They can wait for a deputy to leave the area, or pick an undefended location… My deputies know that we cannot be everywhere.”
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We can look to other states to dismiss the unfounded opposition to HB1793. Eleven states currently prohibit public universities from being “gun-free zones”, and we now have decades of data.
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People worry about students getting drunk and shooting others, but no one can point to a single example of that happening. They worry about a permit holder getting mad at a professor or another student and shoot others or discourage academic discourse, but again, they can’t point to any example of that happening. We also hear from them that New Hampshire would become a “wild west shootout”, but yet again, critics can’t back up that claim.
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Concerns about suicides come up as well, but here too, critics raise the possibility without identifying a single documented case where it has happened by a permit holder on a college campus.
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Some want to ban permitted concealed handguns from dorms, but Utah, which has allowed guns in dorms since 2004, hasn’t seen a problem.
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Perhaps the most popular argument made by those who oppose HB1793 is that college students are too immature and not fully developed, so they could never be trusted with firearms. A study by the Crime Prevention Research Center shows college-age permit holders in Michigan, Nevada, and Texas are at least as responsible as older permit holders. Gun control advocates keep trying to take advantage of the public’s fear of the unknown, but they have consistently been proven wrong with concealed carry. This time is no different.
Samuel Farrington and John R. Lott, Jr., “‘Gun-free’ Campuses are a Peril,” Union Leader (Manchester, New Hampshire), April 26, 2026.
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