Nathan Hayes is protesting the gun-free campus policy this week by wearing a silk-screened handgun on his T-shirt and hanging an empty gun holster from his belt.

Hayes, a Louisville senior, is Western’s chapter leader for the national right-to-carry group Students for Concealed Carry on Campus. The SCCC promotes allowing gun owners with concealed carry licenses the ability to observe that right on university and college campuses.

States grant rights to universities and colleges to make policies banning guns from campus property, and nearly all do.

Western’s membership in this movement is lesser than membership at some other campuses.

Western’s chapter has 32 members, while some chapters have more than 200 members.

Six more chapters have been created in Kentucky since the protest last semester.

Hayes said during the first empty holster protest in October that the purpose of the protest was to spark debate and bring attention to the issue.

Since that time, membership on the SCCC’s Facebook site has risen to more than 29,000.

More than 2,000 new members joined since last week.

About 400 more have confirmed since last week that they will be wearing an empty holster on their respective campuses nationwide. That means nearly 4,000 students are participating in this week’s protest against campuses being gun-free zones.

Hayes said a few other Western students are protesting, but he’s not spoken to them directly.

According to the SCCC Web site, there are chapters at 350 campuses across the 50 states and in Washington, D.C.

Diana Kolze, chapter leader at the University of Louisville, said her chapter was created this semester before spring break.

It now has 73 members, 19 of whom are wearing the holsters in protest this week, she said.

“It rapidly grew after the first week,” Kolze said.

David Burnett, chapter leader at the University of Kentucky, said there are about 36 members in his chapter with about 12 protesting.

However, there were about 160 people at a speaking event hosted by his chapter Monday night, Burnett said.

“This semester, it’s still hard to gauge because we still have members show up that we didn’t know were there,” Burnett said.

General Counsel Deborah Wilkins said she has had a concealed carry license for about 10 years, but doesn’t agree that she should be able to carry on campus.

The advantage of a gun-free policy on campus is that it gives administrators an immediate ability to suspend a possible problem student or staff member who has a gun without having to prove intent, Wilkins said.

“Right or wrong, that’s where we are,” she said.

Wilkins said the majority of gun owners are reasonable and law-abiding, but the gun-free policy is meant to address the few who aren’t.

It is too difficult for the government to keep mentally ill people from getting guns, Wilkins said.

“(Seung-Hui) Cho, the guy from Virginia Tech, he just fell through all the cracks that would have stopped him from getting a weapon,” she said.

Jim Williams, an emergency medical technician instructor at Western, said he’s had his concealed carry license for six years and is protesting this week.

He said it’s important to be able to have his weapon with him on campus because the police can’t be everywhere.

“It’s important to note that most of these incidents that occur on campus are over in a few minutes,” Williams said. “The Virginia Tech shooting was over when he heard the police enter and identify themselves.”

Williams said he is also enrolled in an online course which had a discussion about concealed campus in a forum on Blackboard.

“I think it was 50-50,” Williams said. “A lot of people said we should be able to have concealed carry.”

Karl Laves, assistant director in the Counseling and Testing Center, said the reason concealed carry on campus is different than elsewhere in the public is that a college campus is a constant community.

“Walmart, the movie theater, Titans stadium, these are all public venues, but they’re temporary public venues,” he said.

Disagreements have the ability to grow over time in a campus community setting, Laves said.

Kolze said that a few chapter leaders in Kentucky have been trying to come together as a state chapter to plan strategies for addressing campus administrators.

“(The policy) is individually decided by each campus,” she said. “So, we go to the administration at each campus, we don’t have to go to the legislature.”

Those meetings will probably start during the summer or the fall semester, Kolze said.

Reach Holly Brown at news@chherald.com.