When I went to school, a significant percentage of the students (significant being more than one in 1,000) were armed with gun or fighting knife. What saved my floor one night was aluminum baseball bats -- a band of armed robbers went to the next floor up when they walked by us as we were casually swinging them while hanging out in one room. Upstairs the robbers, at pistol-point, robbed one room and tied up the roomies in it -- afetr making them strip to scivvies. Luckily no one got shot.
IIRC, one roomie did get pistol-whipped.