Apr

21

National Right to Carry Still Creates Illegal Gun Zones

April 21, 2007 |

Only two months ago a bill was making its rounds for a National Right to Carry Reciprocity Act. Still it would restrict legal guns on campus while permitting illegal guns on campus. Think about that one for a moment and just let it soak in.

Two months before the deadliest campus shooting in U.S. history took place at Virginia Tech, the congressman for the university’s district introduced a bill to expand the use of concealed weapons permits nationwide.

Rep. Rick Boucher, the Democratic congressman representing Blacksburg, Va., has received an A+ rating from the NRA as well as $60,000 in campaign contributions from the group during his time in Congress, according to the campaign finance Web site OpenSecrets.org.  The NRA has endorsed his concealed weapons bill, which he co-sponsored with Rep. Cliff Stearns, R-Fla.

The two lawmakers introduced The National Right-to-Carry Reciprocity Act on Feb. 6. If enacted, it would allow concealed weapons carriers licensed by their home state to carry their weapons in other states which also grant such licenses.

Yesterday, 23-year-old Virginia Tech student Seung-Hui Cho opened fire on students and faculty at the southern Virginia campus using a Glock 9 mm semiautomatic handgun and a .22 caliber pistol and then shot himself. Thirty-two victims have died from his rampage, and more than 20 are injured.

Virginia allows citizens to carry concealed weapons with a permit, but universities and schools such as Virginia Tech do not allow concealed weapons on campus. Boucher’s bill would not allow concealed weapons on school campuses.

Meanwhile the liberal mindset thinks it proves that legal guns could have caused more damage (the same science the proves global warming) than already happened. That is a hard one to figure out.

“The best science that we have says concealed carry laws do not save lives, as the proponents contend,” says Jon Vernick, co-director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research in Baltimore.

That conclusion, while controversial among gun advocates, was recently endorsed by the American Academy of Sciences, according to Mr. Vernick. And Tuesday, law-enforcement officials in Virginia were quick to voice their concern that any more guns in a situation as chaotic as Monday’s could have resulted in more harm than good.

Lets go back to January. Read this about a bill that would have permitted guns on campus. It was killed before seeing the light of day. Tragic irony in light of recent events.

A bill that would have given college students and employees the right to carry handguns on campus died with nary a shot being fired in the General Assembly.

House Bill 1572 didn’t get through the House Committee on Militia, Police and Public Safety. It died Monday in the subcommittee stage, the first of several hurdles bills must overcome before becoming laws.

The bill was proposed by Del. Todd Gilbert, R-Shenandoah County, on behalf of the Virginia Citizens Defense League. Gilbert was unavailable Monday and spokesman Gary Frink would not comment on the bill’s defeat other than to say the issue was dead for this General Assembly session.

Meanwhile legal carry conceal owners can easily be spotted and prosecuted for not killing people.

Last spring a Virginia Tech student was disciplined for bringing a handgun to class, despite having a concealed handgun permit. Some gun owners questioned the university’s authority, while the Virginia Association of Chiefs of Police came out against the presence of guns on campus.

In June, Tech’s governing board approved a violence prevention policy reiterating its ban on students or employees carrying guns and prohibiting visitors from bringing them into campus facilities.

Perhaps this nonsense will end one day and the concept of gun free zones will end. For in reality there are no gun free zones…. just legal free gun zones.


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