A bill was introduced in the Kansas House this week that would have allowed health care facilities and college campuses to remain exempt from the 2013 concealed carry law.
As it stands today, Kansas law allows just about anyone to carry a gun anywhere.
The Register does not fuss with the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, although it should be pointed out the Founding Fathers mentioned gun ownership in the same breath as the country’s need to maintain a well-regulated militia. Also, it is noteworthy that guns of the late 1700s lacked anything near the killing power of today’s. They were smooth-bore muskets or handguns that only an expert could load quickly and fire with any kind of accuracy.
That’s why during battle soldiers were lined up, facing each other, and fired — hoping a ball found a mark.
Having said all that, the law is the law and until it is changed Kansans can remain armed at will.
ONE OF THE BILL’S supporters to exempt college campuses from open carry, Rep. Stephanie Clayton, Overland Park, told the Associated Press she and other lawmakers had heard from many constituents who wanted campus carry stopped.
On the other side of the fence, Rep. John Whitmer, conservative Republican from Wichita, said the bill was “dead on arrival.”
A four-year exemption for colleges to the 2013 law expires July 1. The alternative would have been expensive arrangements involving metal detectors and security personnel stationed at any building entrance open to the public.
Several times students, faculty and administrators have pleaded with legislators to change the law and keep college campuses gun-free because history has shown such campuses are often the scenes of violent shootings.
Whether a well-meaning person carrying a gun could have abated an incident is academic, because:
• Response by an ordinary citizen, not trained in law-enforcement or military principles and reacting to traumatic circumstances, would find it difficult to keep their wits in order to target the perpetrators.
• Officers responding to any such incident — most often very quickly — also are affected by any additional turmoil created and in many cases might not be able to determine who should be suppressed.
As Sheriff Bryan Murphy once said, when arriving on the run “you don’t have time to ask the bad guys to raise their hands.”
RATHER than being short and even a bit arrogant in responding to a measure favored by many whom it would affect, legislators such as Rep. Whitmer should look carefully at each bill offered up and give proponents and opponents a chance to testify. Doing otherwise is allowing political privilege to run counter to the very roots of democracy.
Even Gov. Sam Brownback, among pro-carry advocates, said he would be willing to give “due consideration to any bill that reaches this (his) desk.”
— Bob Johnson
