In a 2014 legislative session with an abbreviated schedule and agenda, setting priorities is critical. And for some state leaders, one priority is pretty clear: By the time the General Assembly goes home, they want it to be legal for students to carry and possess firearms on college campuses.
It’s a flatout terrible idea — young kids under stress and away from home, hormones, alcohol, drugs and oh yeah, let’s throw firearms into that witches’ brew. Most of Georgia agrees that it’s a terrible idea. In a statewide AJC poll taken earlier this month, 78 percent of Georgia voters said they oppose legalizing weapon possession on college campuses. Just 20 percent say they support it.
That opposition reaches every part of the state, every demographic group and even every part of the Republican coalition. Men oppose it by a 2-to-1 ratio. Republican voters oppose it by a 3 to 1. South Georgia opposes it by more than 4 to 1.
And yet:
“This is about making sure we do everything possible to protect and expand rights of Georgians under the Second Amendment,” according to House Speaker David Ralston. “We are not going to back down on that. If a college student is otherwise by law entitled to carry a firearm, the best question is should they yield that constitutional right when they go on a college campus?”
And this, from Gov. Nathan Deal, in an interview with the Associated Press:
“When you get to the real philosophy behind all of it, the question is whether government in any form or fashion has the right to make those judgment calls, or does the Constitution speak for itself. That is where the debate is.”
Actually, no. The alleged “right” to carry guns on a college campus is not a Second Amendment issue, nor is it a constitutional issue. It simply is not. If the prohibition of guns on campus violated the Second Amendment, the NRA and its supporters would have challenged it in court and won a long time ago. They’re not exactly shy about doing that kind of thing. And if barring guns from certain places violated the Second Amendment, the state would have to dismantle the metal detectors at the state Capitol and at every courthouse in the state.
More directly, the U.S. Supreme Court, in its landmark Heller decision establishing a personal right to bear arms, took the time to make it quite clear and explicit:
"The Court's opinion should not be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings …"
So this is not a legal issue or a constitutional issue. It is, or ought to be, a common-sense issue and a political issue. But when a measure opposed by voters by almost a four-to-one ratio nonetheless becomes a priority for passage, it tells you a lot about how distorted and even perverted the gun-safety discussion has become.
Here’s another example of that distortion: In that same AJC poll, an even larger majority — 82 percent — said that those Georgians who want to carry weapons in public ought to be required to pass a gun-safety course. (Among Republicans, 84 percent support the idea.) Again, the requirement is common sense and does not infringe in any way on the Second Amendment. States such as Tennessee, Arizona and Louisiana already require such courses as a condition of a weapons license, with no constitutional problems.
Even Texas, which seems to have become the unofficial capital of conservative America, requires passage of a gun-safety course before you can legally carry a concealed weapon.
Personally, I think the single most effective gun-safety bill we could pass would be a law stating that you can’t buy ammunition without passing a gun-safety course. Good, decent, law-abiding gunowners would have no problem taking and passing such a course and acquiring the ammunition they need for hunting, shooting and self-defense. As a rule, criminals and would-be criminals aren’t inclined to take such courses, and their access to ammo would be significantly reduced.
It seems like common sense, but if you listen to some people, the Constitution rules out common sense on this issue.
