One year after Virginia Tech, the recent shootings at Northern Illinois University serve as a reminder that no meaningful progress has been made to increase safety on college campuses. To date, the “solutions” presented by school officials have been nothing but a rehash of the same failed policies that were in place before the shootings.

Police training and presence has been presented as the best way to protect students in the event of a school shooting. While certainly an important measure, there are problems with this line of reasoning. The first is that public safety response time is measured in minutes, not seconds. The critical time between a 911 dispatcher receiving a call for help and the arrival of law enforcement is time during which shooters have free rein. Police response times were five and eight minutes at NIU and Virginia Tech respectively. Both shootings ended before police were able to respond.

A more significant problem is consistent court rulings that law enforcement does not have a duty to protect the individual except under very special circumstances. An examination of several precedent-setting legal cases clearly demonstrates the court’s firm stance on this issue.

In Castle Rock v. Gonzales, the United States Supreme Court in 2005 stated that, “it is perfectly clear, on the one hand, that neither the Federal Constitution itself, nor any federal statute, granted respondent or her children any individual entitlement to police protection.”

Additional cases, including South v. Maryland (1856), Warren v. District of Columbia (1981), Bowers v. DeVito (1982), and DeShaney v. Winnebago County Department of Social Services (1989), have also served to affirm the consistency of the court’s position for more than 150 years. This precedent does not only apply to municipal police. In Rhaney v. University of Maryland Eastern Shore (2005), the court in Maryland found that the school had no duty to protect its students against the violent acts of another student even if the school was aware of the student’s potential to be violent.

Opposition to carrying concealed weapons on campus is most often founded in the belief that it would increase violence. The collective incident-free experiences of Colorado State University, which allowed permit holders to carry weapons on campus for 10 semesters, Blue Ridge Community College in Virginia, which allowed licensed, concealed carry since 2003, and the nine state universities in Utah’s system, which have allowed concealed weapons since 2006, all stand to refute this notion.

This is also not supported by analysis of crime data since adoption of Maine’s current concealed carry legislation in 1985. A comparison of violent crime and murder rates for the 15 years before and after Maine’s adoption of right to carry shows an average decrease of 48 percent and 53 percent respectively, while nationwide murder fell 11 percent and violent crime increased 26 percent.

Neither is this claim supported by national crime statistics. In 2004, the National Academy of Sciences concluded that, while right to carry laws did not cause a significant decrease in crime across the nation, neither did they increase crime rates.

There are those who oppose recognizing concealed weapons permits on campus claiming that permit holders would not be equipped to handle a campus shooter. There are many examples of armed citizens stopping shooters in and out of school and saving lives. At Pearl High School in Pearl, Miss., on Oct. 1, 1997, Luke Woddham shot and killed two and wounded seven. Assistant Principal Joel Myrick ran a quarter-mile to retrieve his firearm from his car and returned to stop Woddham before he could drive away. Myrick held Woddham for four and a half minutes until police arrived; preventing him from executing his plan to drive to Pearl Middle School to continue killing.

On Jan. 16, 2002, at the Appalachian School of Law in Grundy Va., Peter Odighizuwa opened fire, killing three and wounding three more. Two students, Tracy Bridges and Mikael Gross, retrieved their firearms from their vehicles, confronted Odighizuwa and held him until police arrived.

In light of these facts, the University of Maine owes the students and faculty a full and complete explanation of the obligation to protect the individuals on campus. Furthermore, given the inability of the individual to rely on the police for protection from both a practical and legal perspective and the proven track record of armed citizens in defusing violent situations, universities face a decision: either change their policies to allow legally licensed individuals to carry concealed weapons or continue to allow their students and faculty to exist in an institutionally created state of vulnerability.

Nathaniel Richie is a junior majoring in mechanical engineering at the University of Maine.