Washington —- The idea of giving college students the right to carry concealed weapons on campus may seem counterintuitive after last year's Virginia Tech massacre.

But the proposal is deadly serious, said young men and women from colleges across the country who attended the first Students for Concealed Carry on Campus National Conference on Friday.

Their movement was galvanized by the 2007 shootings, said Michael Guzman, president of the group and a senior at Texas State University.

The issue is not keeping guns out of the hands of college students, he said, but whether properly licensed students should be able to take their concealed weapons on campus, just as they can take them nearly everywhere else.

"There shouldn't be an imaginary boundary beyond which you can't defend yourself," said Matt Mesang, 21, a senior at Florida Atlantic University.

Billy Atwell, a 22-year-old senior at East Carolina University, said he is not against gun-free zones where they can be enforced with metal detectors, such as in airports and in public buildings, he said. But that's not the case on college campuses, he said.

"Virginia Tech was a gun-free zone," he said. "But you can't keep guns off a campus. What you have are unenforceable gun laws."

Paul Helmke, the president of the Brady Campaign, which lobbies for tougher gun control laws, also spoke to the conference, expressing opposition to the prevailing views of the 100 or so students in attendance.

Helmke said research has shown that college students are more apt to engage in risky behavior such as binge drinking and drug use than the general population. College students are also more susceptible to suicide, and allowing more guns on campus would increase the threat, he said.

Helmke said passionate academic debate could even be stifled if professors and students were wondering who was packing a pistol.

But Guzman said the movement is growing. He said Students for Concealed Carry on Campus now has members on 500 college campuses and chapters at 300.

Guzman said 11 colleges already allow students and faculty to carry concealed weapons on campus: nine public universities in Utah, Colorado State University and Blue Ridge Community College in Virginia.

Since the Virginia Tech shootings, 15 state legislatures have taken up the issue, he said. Although none has enacted laws to allow concealed weapons to be carried on campus, the "introductions were a huge win," he said.