RICHMOND Virginia

Some U.S. college students want the right to carry guns on campus, saying they should have the ability to protect themselves in the event of a shooting like the one that left 33 people dead at Virginia Tech this spring.

Andrew Dysart, a George Mason University senior, has organized a chapter of Students for Concealed Carry on Campus, which hopes to convince state legislators to overturn a Virginia law that allows universities to prohibit students, faculty and staff members with gun permits from carrying their weapons on campus.

"There's no way to know what could have happened, but the students at Tech, they really should have had a chance," Dysart said of the April 16 shootings, in which gunman Seung-Hui Cho killed 32 people and then committed suicide. "They should have had the chance to defend themselves if it came down to that."

Virginia law allows schools to decide whether to allow students with concealed-weapons permits to carry their guns on campus. One state school, Blue Ridge Community College, does so. Schools cannot prohibit non-students or other outsiders from carrying weapons onto campuses if they have legal permits.

"In a sense (students) don't have the same rights to self-defense on campus as the general public," said Dysart, who said his four years as a U.S. Marine shaped his ideas about self-defense. "It's really lopsided the way it works."

Governor Timothy M. Kaine has said individual colleges and universities should be able to decide whether to allow students to carry guns on school grounds. He also said he would wait to see whether a panel studying the Virginia Tech shootings makes any recommendations on the issue.

Across the United States, 38 states ban weapons at schools, and 16 of those specifically ban guns on college campuses, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Other states allow schools to adopt their own gun policies.

Utah is the only state that specifically allows people to carry concealed weapons at public colleges. Legislation passed in 2004 allows concealed weapons on all state property, including colleges and universities. The University of Utah which had banned concealed weapons for decades challenged the law, but the state Supreme Court upheld it in 2006.