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It’s 2020, and spring has arrived at MU.

The glow of a 70-degree day whisks flip-flop-strutting students out of their dorms and onto the quad. Future engineers, actors and HR-reps alike toss frisbees and lie on the lush grass, notebooks open but smartphone scrolling instead; better to absorb Vitamin D than knowledge today.

In a blissful stroll down the sidewalk, you fire off an artful Snapchat of the idyllic lawn and look up to see a man out of place. He’s tall, maybe 6-foot-2, wearing combat boots and a denim jean jacket; blue jeans round out the “Canadian tuxedo.” His outfit sticks out — most of your other male classmates wear pastel polos and boat shoes — but that’s not what grabs your attention: From about 30 yards away, you notice a shadowy bulge just above his right hip.

Mirrored aviator shades hide his eyes (and intentions, you think), and when you pass him on the pavement, the fiber-optic rear sights of a holstered Glock peak out from underneath his jacket.

The gun is legal. It’s been this way since you arrived on campus as a freshman in August 2019, when a law went into effect that allowed citizens with concealed-carry permits to bring their guns onto campus and into university buildings. At the time, you were still in high school in the Kansas City suburbs. You remember reading on social media that an MU law professor had sued the school for banning guns in campus buildings, helping to propel the change.1

1. In 2015, Professor Royce de R. Barondes partnered with Columbia attorney Jennifer Bukowsky to sue the UM Board of Curators and former UM System President Tim Wolfe for violating an inalienable right to bear arms. (As of May 2017, the suit is still pending.)

2. Alumna Jessica Jin started the protest after realizing that under the new law, guns were allowed on campus, but dildos were banned for obscenity.

You also remember awkwardly watching a ”Daily Show” segment with your parents about the University of Texas, where students brandished dildos to protest campus carry at their school.2 You weren’t supposed to be old enough to think that was funny, so you pretended not to get the activists’ humor.

Playing Call of Duty was the extent of your own experience with firearms. Now, as you give an awkward nod to this True Religion commando, you realize you’ve just profiled a fellow student to figure out whether he might shoot you.

The freshman class and their families knew what they were getting into — Governor Eric Greitens had signed campus carry into law for all four-year public universities in April 2018, setting the following summer as the effective date to allow schools like MU to plan.3

The policy was implemented on August 1, 2019. Three weeks later, 30,000 students and faculty entered the equation.

3. In Texas, public universities had less than 14 months to prepare for campus carry. Missouri public universities have said they would ask for 18 months in between passage and implementation.

4. The MU Office of Student Conduct bans displays of obscenity.

5. UT professor Lisa Moore has said that when campus carry was enacted in Texas, some of her students looked for seats near an exit out of fear of offending students who were carrying concealed guns.

6. The Gaines/Oldham Black Culture Center received anonymous threats the day after protests ended.

7. Campus-carry laws have allowed universities to retain some control over setting reasonable gun-free zones. The University of Missouri administration is against campus carry and would likely ban firearms in dorms. Texas A&M University, however, allows guns in student residences.

8. Arizona does not allow students or faculty to carry concealed guns on campus, but it does allow guns in locked glove compartments. At some point during the night, the shooter retrieved his pistol from his car.

9. Gary Hill, the chief of police at Lincoln University, testified at an April 10 campus-carry hearing in Jefferson City: “Victims tell me they black out, now we have another weapon presented onto the streets.”

10. Students for Concealed Carry is a real group with an MU chapter that says gun-free zones are dangerous. That claim has been challenged by research: A 2016 Johns Hopkins study found that only 12 percent of high-fatality shootings between 1966 and 2015 occured in gun-free zones.

11. Author Louis Klarevas analyzed 36 purported incidents of private citizens stopping mass shootings. In his book, Rampage Nation, Klarevas finds that all but four of the instances were misidentified as successful citizen interventions.

12. According to UT students, the protest movement died down by winter, but counter-protesters were visible on campus for much longer.

The first demonstration started outside the Student Center. At least 100 strong, the students held signs that read “MO’ guns, mo’ problems,” and “This isn’t what we meant by safe space.” Some strapped sex toys to their backpacks, a nod to UT Austin’s “Cocks Not Glocks” protest (and, as in Texas, a direct violation of university rules).4 The raucous crowd drowned out a table of khaki-clad student government representatives trying to give out Tiger Stripe ice cream as a welcome-back-to-school gift.

Professors joined the crowd — some told local media they were concerned about students being afraid to discuss topics like race, gender, and sexuality in their classrooms for fear of armed retribution.5

You navigated the scene and arrived back at your dorm room to call your parents. Word of the protests had reached your hometown, and they wanted to know that you’re okay — they remember the death threats made during race-relations protests in 2015 that forced the chancellor and UM system president to resign.6 Guns aren’t allowed in the dorms, you assure mom and dad; you remind them — with more confidence than you feel — that there has never been a mass shooting at a college that allows concealed carry.7

Parents of college students already worry about a host of other collegiate issues, including sexual assault and binge drinking. Parents also do their homework: They’ve heard about the Northern Arizona University student who retrieved a pistol from his truck and killed a fellow student during a drunken altercation.8 And even if the gun-toting student isn’t the aggressor, what happens when a drunken student loses his or her weapon?9

Meanwhile, a stalwart counterprotest arises, led by Missouri Students for Concealed Carry, a once-sleepy chapter of the nationwide advocacy group Students for Concealed Carry. The faction drew supporters from across the Midwest to back the new campus order. Their message: Criminals target gun-free zones, and armed citizens can stop mass shootings.10, 11 They’re outnumbered compared to the anti-campus-carry activists, and some might give in to social pressure to drop the argument. But the ones who remain outlast the once-vocal, gunless majority.12 By October, most of the campus-carry opposition is celebrating Homecoming, forgiving and forgetting the enemy it can’t see.

Concealed carry on campus did have some obvious aesthetic effects. Most visible were the additions of metal detectors and barricades to Memorial Stadium, which represented a compromise between the SEC and NCAA (which won’t tolerate guns at games) and the state (which required additional security for schools choosing not to allow stadiums full of frenzied college football fans).13

13. The University of Arkansas enacted this policy to balance athletics and state demands.

14. MU students report mental health service wait times of two months, and Partners in Prevention reports that 17 percent of Missouri university students have considered suicide. In 2017, the state legislature failed to pass a bill that would set standards to reduce wait times.

15. The singer Ray LaMontagne canceled his UT Austin concert for this reason.

16. Ben Trachtenberg, the chairman of MU’s Faculty Council, says a vast majority of MU professors oppose campus carry.

17. Mia Carter, a professor at UT Austin, was in France on university business when campus carry was enacted. She says French faculty prospects were appalled by the law.

Another change comes in the form of signage: posters raising awareness of suicide abound. You’ve known people who waited months for understaffed mental health services, and you’ve heard of students who died by suicide.14 Most used firearms.

The campus may have grown accustomed to concealed carry, but some outsiders can’t accept it. The singer-songwriter Ray LaMontagne cancels an on-campus concert over the policy.15 The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that academics from other institutions are cutting their ties with MU. Administrators tell local media that they’re struggling to recruit new talent, and faculty members abscond to universities where nobody’s allowed to bring guns to school.16 Exchange programs suffer.17 Rumors circulate that a recovering enrollment rate is about to plummet again.

PFFT! An errant frisbee grazes your ear at the exact moment your gun-toting classmate passes in the opposite direction. The combination of your heightened nerves and the brief sensation of an airborne object hurtling towards you induces an embarrassing full-body flinch. You look up to see the guy in the jean jacket spin around to see what’s happened — and at full gait, his abrupt turn exposes the angular black gun to the world.

“You alright?” he asks.

“Uh, yeah. Thanks,” you say, with a sheepish guilt. He is not your menace, not this time.

Dan Roe
Dan is a graduate student at the Missouri School of Journalism and the deputy editor of Vox, the student-run magazine. He ran track and field at the University of Missouri as an undergraduate and currently writes freelance health and fitness stories for Men’s Health, Outside, Runner’s World, Bicycling, VICE and others. He will become a full-time freelancer upon graduation in the fall.