New Self-Defense Rules for Louisiana Colleges, Universities Aren’t Enough

When students head back to class at Louisiana’s colleges and universities in a few days, there’ll be a slight improvement for those who want to be able to protect themselves on campus. 

For the first time, students will be allowed to have chemical self-defense sprays with them. The change comes from legislation introduced by Rep. Michael Bayham, a Republican lawmaker who says lawmakers needed to “give people the ability to protect themselves when the police aren’t there.”

Bayham said he did not get the new law passed in a vacuum.

“We worked with the universities on this policy. And we made some adjustments to ensure that this was not going to be done in a way that creates more harm than good. So our goal here was to allow students the ability to protect themselves in a situation where they’ll have that right to carry something on them to stop something bad from happening,” Bayham said.

Something. Just not the most common self-defense tool. 

Even though Louisiana is a pretty pro-Second Amendment state, lawmakers have balked at adopting a campus carry law that would allow students, staff, and visitors to lawfully bear arms on campus grounds and in buildings. Rep. Danny McCormick introduced HB 99 last session, but ended up pulling the bill from consideration with the excuse that students who had previously pledged to come to the capitol and testify in support of the bill had backed out of that commitment. 

McCormick said he would be willing to file the same bill in 2027 provided that students would speak in favor of the legislation. McCormick and other supporters should be working with conservative campus organizations now to make sure that happens, because it’s ridiculous that a state that recognizes the right of 18-year-olds to carry a firearm without a government permission slip forbids them from doing so in locations where many young adults spend most of their time. 

The fact that students can now carry pepper spray and other chemical irritants is a small step in the right direction, but it doesn’t go nearly far enough. It’s ridiculous to assume that the same adult who’s responsibly carrying off campus is going to turn into an unhinged idiot once they step onto campus with a firearm. 

Critics of campus carry argue that these young adults simply aren’t trustworthy enough to exercise their Second Amendment rights on campus, claiming that they’re more likely to engage in alcohol-fueled shootings or incidents of self-harm. There are about a dozen states that have already adopted these laws, however, and none of them have witnessed the chaos and carnage that gun control advocates have predicted. The only state that’s repealed its campus carry law is Colorado, and the Democrat lawmakers who imposed the ban couldn’t point to any real issues with the law that had been in place for about 20 years. 

Opponents of campus carry also argue that adopting the law will lead to an exodus of students and staff, but there’s no evidence that’s happened either. Texas, for instance, has had its campus carry law in place since 2016 (2017 for junior colleges and community colleges), and UT-Austin had a record high enrollment last year. In fact, student enrollment across the state was at an all-time high last year, with 1.6 million students attending college or university classes. 

Do Louisiana lawmakers honestly think that Texans, Utahns, West Virginians, and the residents of other campus carry states are more responsible than their own citizens, or is there some other reason why the Republican majorities in the House and Senate have shied away from adopting a campus carry bill? 

These lawmakers recognize that campuses aren’t crime free, and people need to be able to protect themselves because police won’t always be around. Now they need to follow that position to its logical conclusion and let these same students, faculty, and visitors lawfully carry a firearm for self-defense instead of limiting them to pepper spray. 

Editor’s Note: The radical Left will stop at nothing to enact their radical gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.

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