Legislators in 10 states – Florida, Indiana, Montana, Nevada, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, and Wyoming – are considering bills that would allow students to carry concealed weapons on campus. Lawmakers claim that such legalization would help to deter sexual assault on campus.

In other states, as Inside Higher Ed reports, policymakers are considering legislation “that would require college officials to refer all reports of sexual violence to law enforcement or that would give accused students judicial rights, such as allowing a lawyer to fully participate on their behalf.” North Dakota and South Carolina may follow the footsteps of North Carolina, a state that in 2013 granted the right to legal representation to all students accused of non-academic conduct violations on public campuses.

While concealed carry legalization would not deter all sexual assaults on campus, it would empower students to take more control over their safety. And as for campus adjudication, federal bureaucratic encroachment and university policies regarding “affirmative consent” have run roughshod over students’ due process rights and granted dangerously broad authority to university administrators (who are often under the sway of anti-sexual assault crusaders biased in favor of accusers). Any move that divests colleges of their sweeping authority to handle disputes that can have permanent negative effects on both accusers and the accused and that makes campus tribunals more fair is a step in the right direction.