To keep from reusing (again) a word, Hsoi dug up an intriguing find – David Kopel’s paper, Pretend ‘Gun-Free’ School Zones: A Deadly Legal Fiction. Said paper (downloadable at the above link) is not completed or fully-edited yet (it is due to be published in the 02DEC09 edition of the Connecticut Law Review), but I believe its current conclusion is worthy of quotation:
Sometimes, a campus gun ban may be accompanied by a sign proclaiming the area as a “Weapon-free and Violence-free School Safety Zone.” But despite what the sign proclaims, the “weapons-free” part really means “free of weapons carried by law-abiding persons.” And unfortunately, the “violence-free” declaration may be a cruel hoax. A Canadian history professor observes: “The fundamental problem with making a campus legally ‘gun-free’ is that the rule cannot be enforced unless the campus is surrounded by high walls with only a limited number of entrances, all of them guarded and equipped with metal detectors.”
Gun prohibition on campuses is a deadly policy, and the number of victims of that policy is already far too high. The case against licensed carry on campus is based on conjecture and far-fetched hypotheticals. The case in favor of licensed carry is based on the empirical experience of the places where licensed campus carry has already been implemented, and on the experience of forty states where licensed, trained adults are allowed to carry firearms for lawful protection almost everywhere except on campus.
In designing a campus carry policy, legislators and educational administrators are not required to copy the Utah example, under which any person twenty-one years or older may, after being issued a license to carry a concealed handgun, carry that handgun on any public school property, or possess it in a university dormitory. Although that policy has proven harmless in Utah, decision-makers in other states could adopt more restrictive policies, such as forbidding gun in dormitories, or allowing only teachers and professors, but not adult students, to carry. Or even, as was proposed in Nevada, allowing licensed carry only by teachers and professors who underwent the same training and background check required for police officers.
Any change would be an important step towards greater safety. Campuses should be safe zones for students and teachers—not for predators who are legally guaranteed that their victims will be defenseless.
(Emphasis added.)
It is important to note that this document is being presented as an empirical paper, not an opinion piece, and while personal perspectives do peek through in various (and typically very snarky) one-liners, they are consistently and repeatedly buttressed by the facts displayed immediately prior. Kopel goes out of his way to provide sufficient citations to back up his points (oftentimes having more space for footnotes on his pages than actual content), and examines facts, figures, precedents, laws, and historical events not only across the country, but also across the world. He even goes so far as to isolate and pick apart a variety of arguments against allowing teachers and/or students to carry firearms on campus, using specific examples, facts, and counterarguments.
The paper is a long read (weighing in at somewhere around 70 pages), but even my quick skim-through proves that a detailed reading of it and its footnotes are well worth it. Unfortunately, the people who would be best served by reading this document probably will never take the time…
I think the pro-ignorance anti-freedom bigots are more-or-less outed. Rather than being the proponents of safety and peace that they claim to be, people are starting to see them for who they are. People who want more blood and carnage, and a citizenship with less rights so they can have a subservient underclass dependent on the government for their very survival, as well as calling for expansions of government powers they never should have had in the first place!
NOT ON MY WATCH! Not even here in Massachusetts!
Actually, I was just working on a post concerning the first part of your comment… should have it up later tonight.
However, I think we both can agree on the second half – so long as we are still around, some rights are going to be protected, and by God, expanded back to where they were.
I agree banning guns on campus is impossibly stupid when the surrounding city or town allows people to carry hand guns.
The obvious solution is to adopt the same restrictions as those run by the smartest people, you know, where we send our kids to get educated so they do not grow up ignernt like our fathers.
Well, Cliff, your first sentence actually showed something approximating a glimmer of intelligence, and a common basis from which to continue the conversation – I have to admit, this is a somewhat momentous occasion. I completely agree – if the surrounding locales have decided that citizens of a certain age and law-abiding nature can carry firearms, schools have no reason to deny their faculty and students the same right.
Unfortunately, your second sentence went and shattered any hope I had regarding a re-emergence of your brain… I know nothing about your father (and, coincidentally, you know nothing about mine), but I do know this: if you are assuming that the “smartest people” are those who are teaching in colleges these days, you well and truly are a complete and inveterate idiot.