Say Anything Blog

In the wake of the massacre at Virgina Tech the University of North Dakota, understandably, instituted a new security policy that will allow students and faculty to be notified of an attack on campus through text messages, emails and phone calls.  But groups of students on campus are saying that it isn’t enough.

Here’s a television news report of the situation:

More from the Grand Forks Herald:

...Jae Baker, a senior majoring in accounting who started Females For Firearms on campus last October, criticized the new system Tuesday during a day she publicized her student group.

“I feel it’s another attempt at an illusion of proper security,” Baker said, citing the April 2007 case, in which a mad student shot to death 32 students on campus, then killed himself. Her group, assisted by Young Americans For Freedom, drew 32 chalk outlines on sidewalks across campus Tuesday to publicize the need for allowing students to bear arms.

The NotiFind system appears that it would be too little, too late, if the worst happened, Baker said. She has protested UND’s policy of banning all weapons on campus as a violation of her own right to defend herself, as well as to carry a gun.

“I can’t even have pepper spray in my purse,” she said. She knows of women who have been assaulted near campus and thinks UND needs to allow students, faculty and staff to carry weapons if they choose.

I think Baker and her group have a point.  A big reason why schools and universities are targets for crazies who want to go on a shooting spree is that they’re relatively unprotected.  It is impractical to have armed security guards cover every inch of massive university and school grounds at all hours of the day, so shooters know that if they time their attacks correctly they can rack up a big body count among a group of citizens they know won’t be able to defend themselves.

If you allow people their right to bear arms on campus that campus because less of an attractive target for a crazy.  And if said crazy does decide to try and shoot up the campus, he/she isn’t likely to be as successful.

But aside from common sense, I think some of UND’s anti-gun policies may actually be unconstitutional:

The new weapons checking policy, as of July, is extending the rule that no weapons are allowed to be kept in academic areas, offices and vehicles to include student apartments, Czapiewski said. His department has a climate-controlled storage space, with 24-hour access to students, staff and faculty, where shotguns, rifles, handguns, bows and knives can be kept. Mostly, it’s students who are hunters who use the storage space, he said, and the response has been positive, he said.

Students can’t keep firearms in their apartments?  Granted, the apartments are on campus, but the campus itself is owned by the public.  And these apartments are being rented to students as their residences.  By denying students the right to keep arms in their apartments UND is denying them the right to keep arms in their homes.

And I don’t think you can get more unconstitutional than that.

After the landmark Washington DC vs. Heller case a wise gun-rights proponent said that while the case was important, additional lawsuits would be required to ensure that the point was driven home across the nation.  I think UND, with its ban on guns in student apartments, is ripe for that.