ID: Scofflaw Universities

Gun Watch ^ | 16 March, 2014 | Dean Weingarten

[marktwain]

According to magicvalley.com, Idaho colleges are actively searching for strategies to ignore and/or undermine the second amendment and the new law supporting it passed by the Idaho legislature.  From magicvalley.com:

 TWIN FALLS, Idaho • A day after the governor signed a bill allowing concealed guns on campus, school administrators are staging a rebellion.

One significant strategy seems to be to simply ignore the law:

SB 1254 takes effect July 1. The language of the law does not include any triggers, sanctions or punishments if a college or university refuses to allow guns on campus. The only recourse would be for a student to take the school to court if he or she had a conceal carry permit and was denied the right to have a gun on campus.

This is a similar situation to that found in Florida, where local governments were found to be ignoring the state preemption law forbidding them to create a patchwork of local laws infringing on second amendment rights.  Eventually the legislature put teeth into the law, allowing for punishments and recovery of costs for lawsuits to force the local entities into compliance with state law and the constitution.

Jeff Fox, President of the College of Southern Idaho, is said to claim that "enforcement" would be expensive:

Fox said enforcing the guns on campus could cost CSI $100,000 to $150,000.

It is hard to see where such expense would come from, as the schools are not required to do anything by the new law, only to not harass people who are legally carrying concealed weapons on campus.   The fact that the weapons will be concealed, and that the number of legal carriers is relatively small, would indicate that costs would approach zero.

Ohio is undergoing a similar problem with scofflaw governments that refuse to respect the right to keep and bear arms.

Florida Carry recently won a lawsuit with Eastern Florida State College over the Colleges refusal to follow the law.

If the Idaho schools poke the bear hard enough, they may find that they do not like the result.   The second amendment is widely supported in the Idaho population and the Idaho legislature.

©2014 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice is included.
Link to Gun Watch

[marktwain]

Colleges are concentrations of "progressive" power.

[rellimpank]

—following in the footsteps of “professors” in Colorado and Utah-—

[Usagi_yo]

I’m always reminded about Indian Casino’s in California when they unilaterally decided that they can create and uphold their own gambling laws on their reservation.

This ended rather quickly when the state started ‘planned’ maintenance on the only road that lead to the Casino — reducing it to a single lane of one way traffic directed by flagmen.

[MarkL]

I've said it before; "If you want to get a whole bunch of guns off the street at one time, the solution is very simple. Disarm the police."

Invariably, the Booger Eating Moron leftists, sputter incoherently, "that's not what I mean!"

The simple fact is that it's NOT the legally armed civilian that causes the problems, but the criminals. And since law abiding armed citizens, by definition, refuse to patronize businesses that are "gun free zones," the only people carrying guns there will be criminals. But that idea is just too simple for leftists to understand.

For some reason, they believe that criminals will obey laws like that, sort of like believing that a carpenter would stop using a hammer if it was outlawed.

Mark

[Billthedrill]

The language of the law does not include any triggers, sanctions or punishments if a college or university refuses to allow guns on campus.

Silliness. This is not private property, it is state property, and state laws apply. How does any university "refuse to allow" something that is specifically permitted by state law? And expect to get its funding after the next Board meeting? Especially after it gets dragged into the inevitable unlawful termination lawsuit?

"Town vs gown" issues are as old as universities, but this one is particularly stupid. It's the law. It's working fine. There is no problem here unless one is artificially created.