Spent a bit of time at the biology and philosophy departments at CU today, and forgot my revolver!! Hard to tell who's carryin' and who's not - actually it did not cross my mind even though the whole fracas has been in the paper quite a bit lately. This from the NYTimes sums it up pretty well, IMHO:
New Man on Campus, Armed
For more than 30 years, the University of Colorado has enforced a sensible policy banning guns from its campuses. The ban worked well until March, when the State Supreme Court agreed with a student’s complaint that it violated a state law allowing citizens with “concealed-carry” permits to carry guns in public places.
This has left the university resorting to a new twist on its in loco parentis responsibilities — designating segregated housing this fall for students with gun permits. Gun-toting students 21 or older will be assigned to special housing on the Boulder and Colorado Springs campuses, where they must have safes to store their weapons when they are not carrying them. Or they can check them with the local police, Dodge City style. They will not be able to live in dormitories with younger students, but they will be allowed to carry their weapons around to classes or anywhere else, except to certain sports and cultural events.
This is true for students at all other public campuses in the state. No one knows how many might go packing in college halls, though estimates run into the hundreds.
The new dorm arrangements would not have been necessary if the State Legislature had not caved to the gun lobby and passed the irresponsible concealed-carry law in 2003. Similar laws are now in effect in 35 states. But the law seems particularly threatening in Colorado, which has had more than its share of shooting horrors, most recently the massacre in Aurora last month where 12 were killed and 58 wounded by James Holmes, who had been a graduate student at the University of Colorado, Denver.
Colorado citizens as a whole do not seem in thrall to the gun lobby. In a state referendum in 2000, 70 percent of voters approved closing the notorious gun-show loophole that permitted unrestricted gun sales beyond the reach of state registration. Would that the Legislature had exercised the same good sense and spared the public the threat of concealed weapons.
5 comments:
Don't know who is more dangerous, the shooter or those around him packing heat. I read where the innocent bystanders shot at the Empire State Building were downed by friendly fire from the officers shooting at the suspect.
I will never understand why a person with a small revolver feels like he has to carry it every place he goes, such as the library and chem lab. As I teenager, I just took mine to record hops.
BB - excellent point. Many have noted that when folks other than the bad guy are armed, chaos can break out, even when the armed folks are trained police officers.
Phil - chuckle...
Record hops? Lol! I can hear the ladies now. "O-h-h-h, Phil-l-l, is that bulge in your pants a Model 36 .38 S&W Special?"
We always called the 'sock hops' because everyone had to take off their shoes to tread on the sacred hardwood basketball floor!
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