Guest column: Gun lobby wants to promote fear, grab headlines

Lynn Hamilton

Another litany of constitutional arguments from the gun lobby, Senate Bill 143, The “Higher Education Rights Restoration Act,” is designed to promote fear, grab headlines, undermine confidence in government institutions and public safety and boost gun sales.

This is a bill looking for a problem. Statistically, college campuses are significantly safer than their larger communities. Campuses regularly examine safety and security and have invested millions in improvement projects recommended by students and employees.

Policies vary by campus to best serve students, staff and the surrounding area. Although they make headlines, assaults on campus are rare.

Rules on many campuses already allow students living on campus to have firearms as long as they are checked into locked storage areas when not in use. Some campuses offer ROTC programs and host gun shows and educational programs about gun safety and history.

Many members of Montana’s campus communities are gun owners and collectors. Some are veterans and trained law enforcement. They enjoy the sport and recreation firearms provide.

That said, students, parents, faculty and administrators overwhelmingly oppose campus carry. They understand more than anyone how putting weapons in classrooms makes everyone less safe.

For the same reason, we generally don’t let people carry weapons into hospitals, banks government offices, theaters, bars, the Capitol building and other places where they simply don’t belong. While SB 143 allows private colleges and government entities such as cities, towns, counties and school districts to have rules that keep weapons out of public buildings, events, parks and schools, it specifically prohibits the university system from using those same restrictions.

SB 143 begins by taking away the university system’s ability to establish any rule or policy that limits firearms on campuses, forcing colleges and universities to allow conceal carry firearms in classrooms, dorms, and public spaces. It then lists limited restrictions that campuses may adopt that are so narrowly worded they, in effect, are unmanageable.

Unless the campuses take on the unworkable task of tracking every gun on campus, its owner, and their mental state, it will be impossible for campus officials to keep students safe. As a result, the Bill places everyone on a MUS campus at risk. The bill only allows a campus to punish behavior like firing a gun, brandishing a gun, or pointing a gun at another person if the campus shows — after the fact — the action wasn’t taken in self-defense. How are campus officials supposed to pick out the aggressor when a classroom erupts in gunfire, or when the only other witnesses are dead?

Montana has some of the most permissive gun laws in the country. Unless otherwise prohibited, people may open carry guns without a permit or license.

Concealed carry permit applications ask about safety training, but most of the permit information is self-reported and unverified.

Montana is a “shall issue” state, meaning that anyone who applies, meets the requirements and passes a background check will be given a permit.

Montana also offers reciprocity for people with concealed carry permits from states that may have lower standards for determining who is eligible to carry firearms. Carry Training, a website on state gun laws, advises people who want to carry concealed weapons in Montana to expedite permitting and apply for an Arizona non-resident permit. Applicants can leverage Montana’s reciprocity agreement with Arizona, where you can complete the whole process, including your 20-minute “training video,” on-line.

Local sheriffs are responsible for issuing concealed carry permits. The law assigns this duty to sheriffs because it ensures they know who in the community is carrying concealed weapons. However, the campus officials tasked with keeping students safe will be totally in the dark about who is carrying concealed weapons into classrooms across the state. Nothing in the bill solves this problem.

In numerous situations where concealed carriers have fired their weapons, the results have overwhelming resulted in accidental shooting of the wrong people. More than 40 state legislatures think guns on campus are a bad idea. Law enforcement agencies consistently oppose these bills because when everyone has a gun, they can’t identify the bad guy.

Bill sponsors aren’t concerned about your constitutional rights when they allow other institutions and governmental bodies to regulate firearms and deny MUS campuses that ability. They simply see the university system as an, easy and visible legislative target.

Senate Bill 143 sends a dangerous message to Montana students and families: ‘attend at your own risk,’ or as “Joe the Plumber” wrote after the mass shooting in Santa Barbara, California, “Your dead kids don’t trump my constitutional rights.”

It pushes Montana beyond the fringe as the only state with no campus carry limits and enrolls students and employees in a never-before-seen social experiment with a predictably unfortunate outcome. Call or write your legislator today and tell them to vote no on Senate Bill 143.

(Lynn Hamilton on Havre is a former member of the Montana Board of Regents where she chaired the Academic and Students Affairs Committee and served on the Campus Safety and Security Task Force.)