“Campus gun ban at CU Boulder ignores reality”

That’s the headline the Denver Post used for my article about the University of Colorado’s gun ban, which prohibits concealed-carry permit holders from being armed on campus. It begins:

Imagine this news headline: “School shooter apologizes — not for killing — but for violating CU campus gun ban.”

Preposterous, right? Not to some members of the University of Colorado Boulder faculty.

A recent motion from the Boulder Faculty Assembly (BFA) supports a campus gun ban — as if someone intent on killing would comply with a campus gun ban, let alone regret breaking one.

One argument I’m particularly fond of is:

Here’s a challenge for the CU Regents and Boulder Faculty Assembly. They’re OK with armed campus police, but not armed citizens with the training and qualifications to have earned a concealed-carry permit. Then why not issue special campus gun permits to those who, at their own expense, undergo the same firearms training as the CU Police?

If this is not acceptable, how about more rigorous training, or limiting permits to faculty and staff? If a regent or CU faculty member opposes this, you should wonder about his actual motives for opposing concealed carry on campus.

Read the whole article: Campus gun ban at CU Boulder ignores reality.

(Graphic courtesy of Oleg Volk and A-Human-Right.com.)

Update: This was the most-viewed opinion article at the denverpost.com for the week of August 1-August 7 2010.  See the “OnLineNumbers” part of the Aug. 8 print edition here (pdf).

CU campus concealed-carry & right to self-defense

Banning seat belts in cars would be immoral. Banning guns deserves equal condemnation.  Self-defense is a fundamental human right – not granted by governments, but recognized by just law. Gun bans deny peaceful people an effective means of self-defense against violent criminals, who ignore gun bans. Just as someone who disables seat belts shares responsibility for the resulting traffic fatalities, gun ban supporters are partially responsible for victims of violent crimes.

The issue at CU is whether people with concealed-carry handgun permits can be armed on campus.  Armed with baseless prejudice against permit holders, supporters of campus gun bans imagine hypothetical horrors that might result from allowing it. But none of these have occurred on campuses, like CSU, that have allowed concealed-carry. Actual horrors — mass school shootings — have occurred only on so-called “gun-free” campuses.

Violent criminals seek unarmed victims, as Dave Kopel documents in his law review article, “Pretend ‘Gun-free’ School Zones: A Deadly Legal Fiction.” A “gun free” campus invites rapists and murderers: “Commit your crimes here – your victims won’t shoot you!”

“Dial 911 and die,” warns Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership. Police typically cannot respond in time to stop shootings, and have no legal obligation to protect us. Students owe their lives to heroic civilians such as Joel Myrick, Mikael Gross, and Tracey Bridges, who stopped school shootings with guns they retrieved from their cars.

Gun bans disarm such potential heroes and invite rapists, gay-bashers, and murderers to prey on defenseless victims.

The above was printed in the July 3 Daily Camera (Boulder, CO).

Other gun control resources:

• GunCite
• Is there a right to own a gun?, by Mike Huemer
• Dave Kopel
• ConcealedCampus.org’s rebuttal of common arguments against concealed-carry on campus

(Graphic courtesy of Oleg Volk and A-Human-Right.com.)

Rocky Mountain News on D.C. vs. Heller

The Rocky Mountain News published Ari Armstrong’s piece on the recent Supreme Court ruling that recognizes our right to defend ourselves with a firearm.  Here are the opening paragraphs:

Self-defense is a fundamental human right. Now the Supreme Court has affirmed what most Coloradans have long held and what our state’s constitution also strongly protects: the individual’s right to own a gun.

The June 26 ruling on District of Columbia v. Heller overturns Washington, D.C.’s handgun ban and requirement that guns be kept inoperable in the home. Gone is the fantasy that the Second Amendment protects only state militias.

Ari has additional comments on it at FreeColorado.com.

Rocky Mountain News posts my Guns on Campus on-line comment

I wrote:

Is it fair to report that CU student Matthew Furnish’s “crime” was possession of “deadly weapons” — especially in the caption under his photograph? (News, April 20) Might have “firearms,” used later in the article, been more neutral? How would the News report the life-saving acts of Kenneth Hammond of Ogden, Utah, or assistant principal Joel Myrick of Pearl, Mississippi? Each used a firearm — in a “gun-free zone” — to stop criminals who had opened fire in mall and a school, respectively. Would the News refer to guns as “implements of life-saving self-defense”?

Adults with permits can legally carry concealed firearms in Utah schools and universities, where there have been no mass-killings. In Utah, those sufficiently trained to have conceal-carry permits can deter and heroically stop violent criminals. At CU, they are felons. CU’s prohibition of firearms for self-defense purposes leaves students, staff, and faculty defenseless against deranged school-shooters.

The comments so far have been pretty good.