Friendly fire over guns on campus

Date: Aug. 25, 2008

Memo to: The 270,000 students at Georgia universities

Subject: 21 and loaded

No doubt during your wanderings you have noticed a new breeze on your campus. It is sharp and distinct and impossible to miss.

For it carries the wafting fragrance of freedom. How to recognize this breeze? First of all, it does not smell like beer.

Possibly you’ve heard some talk by out-of-state university presidents that the drinking age should be lowered to 18 to curtail binge-drinking.

Put this out of your mind.

Solid, conservative institutions such as the North Georgia Conference of the United Methodist Church and even the state University System itself will make sure that irresponsible young people are protected from themselves.

No, this particular freedom smells something like gun oil.

A certain state Senate committee began meeting this month. It has taken on the task of reviewing where those who possess concealed weapons permits are allowed to pack heat.

Booze-serving restaurants and MARTA buses were added this spring.

Georgiacarry.org and some Republican lawmakers would like to see many more locales added, including churches and state universities.

You can see where this might be headed. Concealed weapons permits are available to anyone over the age of 21 with fingerprints and a clean record. By this time next year, should the Legislature act, Big Man on Campus could have an entirely new meaning.

It is not a sure thing. Leftist institutions such as the North Georgia Conference of the United Methodist Church and even the state University System oppose changes to the current law. It’s a scandal how some people think students must be protected from themselves.

“The government put a fully automatic weapon in my hands at the age of 17,” said attorney Ed Stone with Georgiacarry.org. He would like to see college students permitted to arm themselves. Currently, it’s a felony to be caught with a firearm on a Georgia campus.

Mitch Seabaugh of Sharpsburg is chairman of the Senate firearms study committee. He’s promising nothing but a careful look.

Possibly, he said, an armed student or faculty member could have made a difference at Virginia Tech in 2007. But Seabaugh also concedes there might be “some situation where someone loses his temper and has been drinking and then uses a firearm inappropriately.”

Seabaugh also wondered out loud whether a firearm could be considered secure in a dorm room. “You have a lot of people walking in and out,” he said.

But there are other facets that need exploring, Seabaugh said. Students who hunt could be allowed to keep shotguns and rifles in their car trunks. Faculty members, rather than students, might be extended permission to carry weapons.

The Senate chairman is particularly concerned about the case of a 45-year-old permit carrier who was prosecuted for having a weapon in an on-campus hotel that serves the University of Georgia continuing education center.

How do you legally distinguish between a 21-year-old student, a 45-year-old visitor, and a 62-year-old professor? That’s what the legislative process is all about, Seabaugh said.

Maybe this’ll be a breeze. But it doesn’t sound like it.

—- jgalloway@ajc.com