The Oklahoma Senate decided yesterday to shelve a bill that would have allowed concealed carry of firearms on college campuses to military veterans and those with firearms training. The bill, introduced by Republican Jason Murphey, faced strong opposition from students, faculty and administration on Oklahoma campuses, who said that it would have decreased safety rather than improved it. From the AP article:

University of Oklahoma President David Boren had argued the bill would hurt recruitment of students and faculty. It also would pose a dilemma for police trying to determine whether a person wielding a weapon was a “deranged gunman or someone who thinks he is doing good vigilante work.

I’m not an expert on police tactics, but why wouldn’t it be the same way that they determine real threats in any other situation? Thousands of law-abiding people carry concealed weapons outside of college campuses, yet the news pages aren’t splashed with stories of police accidentally gunning them down.

But I don’t imagine this would be a problem anyways, since the police habitually show up after campus shootings, just in time to clean up the bodies.

For more on the issue, check out Students for Concealed Carry on Campus. Also related are these stories about a Medford teacher who sued the school district for her right to carry. She lost but has since filed an appeal.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 1st, 2008 at 08:58 by CJ Ciaramella and is filed under Blowing Stuff Up, Campus, National. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.