The new campus security law that permits concealed carry on Idaho campuses passed and has been signed by Gov. Butch Otter.
There are presently five states: namely Colorado, Kansas, Mississippi, Oregon and Utah, that allow students, teachers and others to bring guns to class. Idaho and 22 other states presently leave it up to the colleges to determine who will carry on campus. Twenty-one states have enacted outright bans regarding carry on campus. The bill allows retired law enforcement officers and all people with Idaho’s enhanced concealed-carry permit to bring firearms to campus.
Applicants for the enhanced permit must be 21 or older. The legislation prohibits firearms in certain places like dormitories even with enhanced concealed-carry permits. Nevertheless, several of the trustees at North Idaho College were troubled by the proposal to provide students with the means of defending themselves. In fact, almost every administrator in Idaho opposed the legislation. They seem to think that arming students amid a “beer” culture is irresponsible.
Maybe it is time for colleges and university administrators to ask whether it is time to create new environments for higher learning by encouraging responsibility and trusting students to rise to a high level of serious endeavor by helping to make campuses secure and offering classes in gun handling!
Another concern was the need for local control with a majority of the trustees apparently voting to oppose the bill. It is worth noting that security guards at NIC are unarmed. Todd Banducci, an NIC trustee, a weapons instructor and expert military marksman, commented during a recent board meeting that he strongly supported the proposed bill along with arming campus security guards.
The majority view, however, seemed to be that arming students will be a dangerous innovation, especially when the security guards are not armed! To make it perfectly clear for the majority who voted to maintain the status quo, most law abiding folks on the NIC campus will be helpless for as long as it takes for the police to arrive if the present status quo prevails. That should mean also arming security on campus.
Unless we arm some personnel on the NIC campus, the present state of affairs leaves the NIC campus vulnerable to an active shooter attack. Utah and four other states allow carrying of firearms on campus. It’s noteworthy these states have seen very little if any increase in school shootings.
The rest of the United States has seen almost one school shooting almost every other day for weeks and school shootings have tripled. Isn’t it time to give people the opportunity to be armed during that critical gap while law enforcement is scrambling to get to the scene of an active shooting?
The proposed legislation followed fatal shootings on college campuses. A student shot and killed a teaching assistant at Purdue University in Indiana Tuesday. Another fatal shooting occurred outside a South Carolina State University dormitory several weeks ago.
Senator Curt McKenzie, an Idaho state senator who is proposing the bill, said that arming students and faculty can prevent school shootings.
The same week that the trustees met at NIC, police in Maryland were continuing to study a journal that the Columbia Mall gunman kept in which he expressed hatred for certain groups and unhappiness with his life. “Shooter’s handwritten journal offers no insight into whether he knew the victims,” police said in a tweet. Another tweet said the killer “knew he was having mental health issues.”
So What’s the Difference between an Active Shooter and Action Shooting?
Darion Aguilar, reportedly a skater and regular at the mall, shot himself in the face after killing two Zumiez employees. So what is the difference between an action shooter and an active shooter?
An active shooter is the modern parlance for a person who starts shooting at people in public places. In the case of the Maryland shopping mall, he killed his victims and injured several others with a 12-gauge shotgun.
Action shooters, on the other hand, are competitive shooters who train for speed and accuracy through practice shooting at multiple targets while on the move. Such exercises can be training drills or performed in competitive match venues like IDPA or USPSA matches. To qualify, action shooters follow strict rules of safety in highly controlled environments.
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