CSU rescinds campus gun ban!

General General Discussion
1

some particularly good news here for colorado students. i’ll be attending CSU beginning this summer. as will my glock. :slight_smile:

http://www.denverpost.com/recommended/ci_15024173

The Colorado State University Board of Governors today rescinded a system-wide ban on concealed weapons, citing a Colorado Court of Appeals ruling that struck down a similar ban at the University of Colorado.

Today’s move indicates that any more court challenges to state law allowing concealed weapons on campus would be unwinnable, said Fort Collins attorney Terry Ryan.

“The governors finally faced up to the reality of the times,” said Ryan, who is representing the CSU chapter of Students for Concealed Carry on Campus Rocky Mountain Gun Owners. Those two groups filed suit against CSU in Larimer County District Court in April over its concealed carry ban. “To me, the Appeals Court ruling is appeal-proof.”

The CSU board today directed campus presidents to work with legal counsel to revise and implement “appropriate weapons control policies that are compliant with state law,” said CSU in a statement.

The Colorado Appeals Court ruled in April that CU had no authority to bar students or visitors from lawfully carrying guns on campus.

The appeals court also said an El Paso district judge was wrong to dismiss a challenge to the ban filed by Students for Concealed Carry on Campus and three students from CU.

The CSU ban was unanimously approved by the Board of Governors on Feb. 23. The ban essentially barred anyone from carrying a concealed weapon on campus unless they are law enforcement or authorized under special circumstances. The CSU ban was to take effect in August.

Ryan said he didn’t know how the Board of Governors’ decision would affect his group’s suit. CSU was scheduled to file an answer in district court this week.

Dudley Brown, director of the Rocky Mountain Gun Owners, said CSU had to choice but to back down. “They didn’t have a legal leg to stand on,” Brown said. “We are now going to track the policy of every secondary education campus in the state - every community college, every university, all of them - and file suit against those who attempt to violate Colorado law.”

2

Outstanding! I have informed my spawn that they can again consider CSU for their educational needs!

Buckaroo

3

I have reservations about college kids carrying. It sounds good, assuming the shooter opens up on a class of students in which one or more are armed. My concern is a hundred armed students will hear gun shots, but won’t know where they came from due to acoustics. The shooter may be in a different classroom, wing, building, etc… There won’t be any shortage of young bucks rushing out to save the day, but who says they won’t all open fire on each other? What happens when law enforcement arrives and there are hundreds of students holding guns? I can see it turning into a FUBAR situation real quick.

Don’t jump my case as I’m not saying I’m against it. I’m just thinking out loud about all the things that could go wrong. Perhaps armed students should be issued something identifiable to wear in the event of a shooting?

A college campus is different than most public places. If a shooter opens up in Walmart or a resturant, you can quickly ascertain the general area of the shooter. Not so in a college with a bunch of closed rooms. Perhaps I’m over thinking the whole issue though.

4

Yes I believe you are. Any situation involving an active shooter is going to be chaos. Having armed citizens, even young ones (you’re familiar with the legal age of entry into the military, I assume) can end an active shooter scenario with a decreased loss of innocent life.

5

Glad to hear it.

6

You are reacting emotionally to this, not rationally.

Some of your “concerns”, quite frankly, could have come out of the VPC’s website.

7

Wasn’t the case at Virginia Tech…or most active shooter situations.

It is the responsibility of anyone carrying a gun to be a professional. As always there are persons in every community that give us a black eye and I do share your concern that some knuckle dragger may go Rambo but IMO it’s a worthwhile risk over nobody being armed.

8

Fantastic news! Does me good to hear it. Now we just have one or two more universities to go…

9

FYI- CCW was allowed on campus from 2003 to present.

as far as an active shooter being met by hundreds of eager day-savers, i can think of worse scenarios. personally i have a policy of screaming “Drop your weapon!” unless the whole situation is super obvious.
waiting for the police to fix an active shooter situation is unacceptable.

10

Your what if’s are hardly realistic or plausible, and definitely could be applied by anti-gunners anywhere. They actually made me laugh.

11

the man was sharing his thoughts. you can present your opinion and argument without resorting to belittling him like that.

to lmt42 - students that go to the trouble of obtaining a carry permit are going to be ‘switched on’ to a certain degree - there’s not going to be many of them, and i have to believe they’ll act responsibly and somewhat intelligently when the situation arises.

we don’t really have a contemporary example of interdiction by armed citizens in a large scale active shooter situation to compare to yet - so your scenario may well be accurate.

i don’t personally believe it’ll go down like that, and i also think that potential scenarios should be grounds to interfere with an individual’s right to defend him/herself should the situation arise.

of course, i live in illinois, what do i know…

12

That was not belittling him.

13

While Cho was shooting up Norris Hall I was sitting in a classroom some miles away with a former FAST Marine.

Each of us individually had more training for an active shooter scenario than the entire campus police department combined. Like every other lowest common denominator concern, the “college kid” stereotype doesn’t really work.

There won’t be any shortage of young bucks rushing out to save the day, but who says they won’t all open fire on each other?

There have been dozens of active shooter incidents in this country where permits to carry existed. As yet I’m unaware of a single incident where CCW holders have gotten confused and started shooting it out with each other.

What happens when law enforcement arrives and there are hundreds of students holding guns? I can see it turning into a FUBAR situation real quick.

A. You’re overestimating how many students will be carrying
B. Again, we have lots of active shooter incidents in the US in areas with concealed carry. I’m unaware of a single instance in which the PD shoots CCW holders or vice versa.

A college campus is different than most public places. If a shooter opens up in Walmart or a resturant, you can quickly ascertain the general area of the shooter. Not so in a college with a bunch of closed rooms. Perhaps I’m over thinking the whole issue though.

Yup. You’re overthinking it.

While I can’t come up with any documentary evidence from active shooter situations to validate any of the concerns you shared, I can point out the consequences of the status quo: Dozens of dead bodies. It’s hard to imagine how things could possibly have been any worse than they were at Tech that terrible April day. A dude wandering around the building for a few minutes was able to kill at will and with complete impunity. It’s difficult to argue that some armed people among the intended victim pool would have made the situation worse.

Incident after incident has shown that the single best way to limit the body count in an active shooter situation is to get armed resistance on the shooter as quickly as humanly possible. There is no more efficient way of accomplishing that than having armed people among the intended victim pool.

14

Really? Well, if any of you guys ranking on me are LEOs I’ll gladly eat crow. Otherwise, I stand by my statements and concerns. Yes, I’m well aware that 18 year old kids enter the military, where they’re forced to be mature. Some kids are also mature beyond their years. A lot are not however. In my CHL course, a girl attended without a handgun and had never fired a gun. She rented a pistol and qualified. I’m sure most kids that carry will be measured and mature in their response to a bad situation. There will be those that won’t be measured and mature in their response though.

In the last ten years, most states have come a long way with regards to our rights to defend ourselves. It will only take one bad fk-up to bring out soccer moms and anti-gunners, screaming from the rooftops. I hope that I am being unrealistic and implausible with my little scenarios.

I’d be interested to hear the thoughts of some LEOs on the subject as they’ll be the ones responding.

15

A college campus is different than most public places. If a shooter opens up in Walmart or a resturant, you can quickly ascertain the general area of the shooter. Not so in a college with a bunch of closed rooms. Perhaps I’m over thinking the whole issue though.
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I am going to guess that he has never been on a college campus.
Colleges have restaurants/cafeterias, giant lecture halls, gyms, stores, dorms, and many other buildings. You are making it out to be a small high school.

16

Good point.

17

the crux of the issue, right here. you can play out scenarios all day and it all comes down to the simple fact that it really can’t be any worse.

18

They’ll be responding after 99% or more of the damage is done.

19

I hate to be the one to trot out this overused statement but here it is:

“When seconds count, a police officer is only minutes away.”

20

Be armed, trained and motivated or learn how to play dead better. Those are your two options, glad the students and faculty can now make a choice.