I do not know if one can carry legally in Utah k-12 schools, but I do know for a fact that one can carry on college campuses in that State. My daughter, FReeper PowerBaby, goes to USU. She tells me that it is quite common for students to be carrying on campus. Logan happens to be one of the safest college towns in America.
12 posted on Thu Dec 27 2012 22:27:47 GMT-0600 (Central Standard Time) by marktwain: “They can carry in Utah schools if they have CCW permits.”
Another factor is Utah will issue CCWs to out-of-state residents. I know several Missourians who have them, and with reciprocity laws, it provides a useful way for people to get permission to carry concealed without showing up on Missouri state lists of CCW permit holders. (Think of the New York newspaper and their interactive map, and you'll know why some CCW permit holders don't want to be on the registry of the state where they actually live.)
Since being involved in public life in Utah usually means being a Mormon, this is giving me some new-found respect for Mormons on at least one point.
I don't care for Mormon doctrine at all, but they seem to have things right when it comes to guns.
(And no, I'm not saying Carry_Okie’s family is Mormon; I don't know and that's not my point. My point is you usually can't get laws passed in Utah if the Mormons are opposed to them, and if the Mormons are supporting something, it's very likely to pass.)
It would be mildly embarrassing if lots of Baptists and Pentecostals teaching in public schools in Texas, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky and other Southern states have to go to Utah for special classes in a proven program for armed teachers to coordinate their response to active shooter incidents in schools, but it would be worth it if that protects the kids.
As I said over on another schools-and-guns thread:
http://freerepublic.com/focus/news/2504843/posts?page=37#37
Let's not underestimate the power of armed citizenry to respond when the police aren't yet there, or when the police have been shot as some of the first casualties in a well-planned attack. Muslim terrorists haven't yet attacked many Southern or rural targets in America, and there may be good reasons for that. Disarmed people make helpless targets, and there aren't a lot of disarmed people in the South or other parts of rural America.
My only problem with NRA official Wayne LaPierre’s now famous statement that “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun” is that some of those “guys” are female. That's especially true in schools where many and sometimes most of the staff are female. Islamic radicals seem to have a hard time understanding that just because someone wears high heels and a skirt doesn't mean they can't shoot back.
The last thing I want is to see a terrorist attack on a school on American soil, but if, God forbid, something like that does happen, I wouldn't mind at all seeing a 5'1” teacher go on the national news explaining how her years of deer hunting with dad equipped her to conceal herself and move quickly from room to room shooting the subhuman animals in the head who were trying to kill her kids.
Nobody with brain wants to be in a situation like that, but we need to start educating the American mainstream that having lots of guns in a community is a great deterrent which should be encouraged, not a danger to be feared.
Also, we need to work harder at explaining to people who support women's rights that one of the best ways for women to reduce the inherent imbalance in physical power between men and women is for the woman to be well-trained in how to shoot an attacker. A gun makes a great equalizer in gender relations, and I think a fair number of people who don't consider themselves to be conservatives on other issues can be brought around to understand the benefits of promoting gun ownership by women.