It's understandable that the deadly shooting rampages that erupted at Virginia Tech and Northern Illinois universities in recent years would trigger thoughts of armed students taking out the perpetrators.

Those are wishful thoughts for many reasons; but that hasn't stopped gun rights advocates across the nation, including Indiana state Sen. Johnny Nugent, from promoting abolition of the general ban on gun-packing on campus by non-security personnel. Nugent says Senate Bill 12, which would abolish the authority of universities to prohibit weapons, would make campuses safer by giving everyone a chance to defend himself. The people who run universities say the opposite would happen, and we agree.

First, the threat must be put into perspective. Horrifying as the Virginia Tech and Northern Illinois events might have been, they were rare instances of major violent crime on campus. Irrational, obsessed and swift, the killers were highly unlikely to have been stopped by a shooter without special training — and virtually certain to have been undeterred by the absence of a ban on guns.

Far more likely is the prospect of tragedy resulting from random possession of firearms in a dense population of young people, where arguments, fights, alcohol, inexperience and rash judgment already make for a volatile mix. When college administrators already are losing sleep over the epidemic of binge drinking, the vision of free-flowing concealed weapons has to be the stuff of nightmares.

Even in Indiana, a favorite state of the gun lobby, firearms are forbidden in schools, airports, post offices, state and federal courthouses and sports venues. Workplaces are allowed to ban them. Evidence is lacking that safety has suffered from denial of heat to those students, employees, patrons and fans. If there were, then the people in charge of those venues, and in charge of their security, would be clamoring for the sort of legislation Nugent and his counterparts in several other states are pushing. They are not, and neither are the people who best know college campuses and their safety needs.

They would be most likely to concur with Garrett Evans, who was shot in both legs by Seung Hui Cho at Virginia Tech. "Having guns in the classroom," he told USA Today, "only makes things worse."

Let's not try to find out the hard way.

REPRINTED FROM THE INDIANAPOLIS STAR.