Campaign To Keep Guns Off Campus

The overarching goal of The Campaign to Keep Guns off Campus is to prevent policy changes in states that would force colleges and universities to allow hidden, loaded firearms on campus. Funding will allow us to continue to provide educational resources, training, and state organizers to colleges, universities, and communities in a two-fold effort to both support their own policies prohibiting weapons and collectively resist coercion by legislative policy changes that would force loaded, concealed weapons on college campuses. The Campaign also opposes policies that would allow teachers, administrators and other staff to carry firearms on K-12 campuses.

The Campus Organizing and Education Program (COEP).is a core program of The Campaign's work to achieve our mission to promote the safety of students, faculty, staff and all other visitors to college, university and school campuses in the United States by helping to reduce the presence of firearms. The Campaign provides urgently needed education, research and advocacy materials, along with legal and organizing support to schools facing potential expansions of campus carry laws and policies. By working closely with our member organizations in states around the country, we strive to tailor program activities to be relevant and timely for the specific challenges they are facing, political climate, cultural values, and other contextual factors that affect the efficacy of the COEP strategy. The Campaign staff collaborates with local students, faculty, legislators, and coalition organizations to adapt activities to each campus and its circumstances. We do so by strongly advocating for all campus community stakeholders and implementing innovative legal strategies.

The Campaign to Keep Guns off Campus currently employs 4 staff people on a full-time basis while also benefitting from support from over 100 volunteers around the country. We carry out our work on the ground in as many states as we can and partner with a range of organizations who also support safe educational spaces. In addition, we maintain a robust constituent relations management system (CRM) that allows us to provide timely information to over 150,000 members while also providing them with education and advocacy tools so that they can become active in support of safe educational spaces.

Since 2009, The Campaign to Keep Guns Off Campus has helped to defeat more than 80 bills in 15 states, which in turn, has protected over 6 million students and faculty across the country. More recently, The Campaign is also opposing policies in several states that would arm teachers and school personnel in K-12 settings.

Looking ahead, we will continue our college campus organizing work and will continue to focus more on opposing the evolving policy changes in a number of states that would allow staff (non-law enforcement) to carry concealed weapons in K-12 schools.