Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Basil Fishbone]

 
Fwd: State university gun bans may take fire
 From: Gary Marbut-MSSA <mssa@mtssa.org>
 To: mssa@mtssa.org
 
Dear MSSA Friends,

 From the Great Falls Tribune:

The head of a prominent gun-rights group is mulling whether to
challenge a firearms ban on Montana's public college campuses now
that the U.S. Supreme Court has given gun owners a green light to
take on local and state governments over Second Amendment
protections. Gary Marbut, president of the Montana Shooting Sports
Association, said Thursday that he will review state regulations and
laws to see whether it's worth challenging any gun restrictions.
Although he said the state is pretty good about respecting rights of
firearm owners, he said the ban on guns at public colleges stands out
as an infringement that should be removed. "The Montana Constitution
does give the Board of Regents broad power to manage the university
system, but it doesn't give them any power at all to suspend people's
constitutional rights. But they're doing it," he said. Marbut and
gun-rights advocates across the country are feeling more empowered
after recent Supreme Court rulings - one in 2008 that struck down a
handgun ban in Washington, D.C., and re-affirmed the right to keep
and bear arms; and a 5-4 decision Monday in a Chicago case that
allows gun owners to challenge local regulations as a violation of
their Second Amendment rights.Experts predict that the high court's
decision could encourage lawsuits over many regulations, such as
gun-licensing requirements and limits on firearms carried outside the home...

<http://www.greatfallstribune.com/article/20100702/NEWS01/7020317/State-university-ban-on-guns-may-take-fire>http://www.greatfallstribune.com/article/20100702/NEWS01/7020317/State-university-ban-on-guns-may-take-fire

BTW, GFT reporter Ledyard King did a very fair job with this story
and reported my comments accurately.

As an anecdotal aside, I was interviewed the same day by another
reporter for another daily Montana paper.  The reporter seemed to
need education about RKBA issues.  At one point in delivering this
education, I offered the observation that most gun control advocates
are irrational.  The reporter stopped me and challenged me to justify
that comment.  Since we were talking about guns on campus, I
responded this way to the reporter's challenge:

Suppose a madman determines to commit a Virginia Tech-style massacre
on the Montana State University campus.  Gun control advocates
believe that this madman, who has already decided to violate
humanity's most profound taboo against taking innocent life and all
the laws associated with that, and who expects to die in the process
(all mass murderers expect to die in the process) - gun control
advocates believe this madman will somehow become aware of an
unenforceable university policy against guns on campus and because of
this existing policy the madman will abandon his plans for mayhem,
mass murder and his own death simply out of respect for this
policy.  Such thinking, I told the reporter, is clearly irrational by
anyone's standard.

There was a period of silence.  Then the reporter said "Thank you for
the interview."  End of interview.

HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY!   I encourage you to be thinking about what
independence, liberty and individual freedom mean to you and to those
in your orbit.

Best wishes,

Gary Marbut, president
Montana Shooting Sports Association
http://www.mtssa.org
author, Gun Laws of Montana
http://www.mtpublish.com