GOUtah!

To the Editor:

Virginia law allows state colleges and universities to enact their own firearms policies. Virginia Tech’s policy strictly prohibits firearms on campus, with the exception of guns possessed by authorized law-enforcement and military personnel. Everyone else, including people with concealed-firearm permits, is prohibited from possessing, carrying, or storing firearms on campus. [1] A bill aimed at enabling permit-holders to carry self-defense weapons at Virginia’s colleges and universities was introduced in the State Assembly last year but was quickly defeated. [2]

While Virginia Tech’s broad gun ban didn’t prevent Monday’s shooter from bringing firearms onto the campus, it does seem to have ensured that faculty, students, and staff were defenseless, enabling the killer to easily shoot dozens of people in at least two buildings on opposite ends of the campus.

Fortunately, Utah law prohibits state colleges and universities from banning legally-concealed self-defense weapons on campus. Thus, for example, when I visit the University of Utah I can choose not to be a potential fish in a barrel. The victims at Virginia Tech did not have that option. Astonishingly, the administrators at the U of U seem perennially determined to copy Virginia Tech’s disastrous policy. Thank goodness the Utah Legislature, the Utah Attorney General's Office, and the Utah Supreme Court are keeping them from doing so.

Thomas Jefferson, quoting the Italian philosopher Cesare Beccaria, said: "The laws that forbid the carrying of arms….disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes….Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man." [3]

Sincerely,

N. W. Clayton
Director of Communications
GOUtah! (Gun Owners of Utah)

Footnotes:

1. Virginia Tech: University Policies for Student Life, Section V.W.
2. "Gun bill gets shot down by panel", The Roanoke Tribune, 31 January 2006.
3. Cesare Beccaria: Dei delitti e delle pene, chapter 38 (1764). Translation is as quoted by Thomas Jefferson in his Commonplace Book.