Like a B-movie zombie, campus concealed carry just won't die

One thing I’ve learned covering Wyoming politics is that no bad idea is ever allowed to fade into the sunset. Just when you think it’s finally dead, the bloody carcass springs up, bonks you on the head, and you end up writing about it for a good chunk of the next year or two.

“Concealed carry considered at the University of Wyoming” was the headline that provoked my deja vu experience. I’ve seen this movie before. It premiered at the Legislature in 2015 and the sequels just keep coming.

Virtually every educational organization in the state has lined up against bills to allow concealed carry on school and college campuses. College students, faculty, administrators, staff and board members said people carrying concealed guns aren’t welcome and would make them more afraid. They also said it’s not an issue the state government should mandate.

In 2017, in response to a similar bill, the testimony against the proposal was especially passionate. The House promptly ignored the UW community and passed it by a landslide.

Then a few days later senators entered their chamber after a GOP caucus and killed the bill without a word of debate. I really liked those guys that day.

The production has been rebooted several times, all with happy endings — the bills died. I particularly enjoyed the 2024 version, because you can’t beat it for dramatic tension.

The hard-line Freedom Caucus chucked everything it could into a House bill that would have repealed gun-free zones in public schools, the University of Wyoming, community colleges and most government meetings. It even allowed people to pack heat at the Capitol, provided the guns were concealed.

A Senate committee killed it, but the full body resurrected the measure and passed it the next day over its president’s objections.The Freedom Caucus was ecstatic, but Gov. Mark Gordon stomped all over its dream bill with a veto. 

The governor did it using classic Gordonesque double-speak. His veto letter talked about his love of the Second Amendment and professed that he’s all for ending gun-free zones, but gosh darn it, the whole idea still bothered him.

“[The bill] erodes historic local control norms by giving sole authority to the Legislature to micromanage a constitutionally protected right,” Gordon wrote.

Local control is a primary tenet of conservatism and sacred to old-school Republicans, but an annoying, needless impediment to far-right lawmakers if it threatens to slow down their steamrolling of schools, colleges and local governments.

A livid Freedom Caucus statement said Gordon parroted “laughable, confusing arguments apparently crafted for him by those who have no understanding of God-given rights.”

Gordon did something, that now strikes me as a dreadful decision: He enabled proponents to bring back this ugly debate. The governor urged UW, community colleges and school districts to “take up these difficult conversations again and establish policies that allow for the safe carry of concealed weapons within their facilities.”

So now, UW has a new handy-dandy online form for the university’s community and the public to fill in and weigh in on this flop of a topic… again. The options include keeping the current ban, revising it or allowing unlimited concealed carry. The survey is open until Sept. 6, and in-person comments will be taken at the UW Board of Trustees’ Sept. 26 meeting in Laramie.

Enough already. UW has already told everyone how frightening and dangerous it would be to allow concealed firearms on campus. Instead of the university wasting time gathering similar comments, here’s a thought: Just survey legislative candidates and ask them when they’re going to get it through their thick heads that no means no.

Given that many more incidents of gun violence have occurred throughout the country since the Legislature last tried to ban gun-free zones, it’s not likely opponents suddenly want to welcome weapons on campus.

“The dynamics of college life include tremendous stress, social obstacles, alcohol and drug abuse and other questionable behaviors,” a UW Faculty Senate resolution stated in 2017. “These can have potentially lethal impacts when firearms are readily available.”

The Associated Students of UW conducted a survey the same year. While some students supported concealed carry, especially if it coincided with better gun safety training, many others opposed it for a wide range of reasons.

“Any sort of carry on campus would make me extremely uncomfortable and not welcome,” according to one student. “I would be constantly worried about shootings. If there is no gun present then no gun can be fired.”

Many students disputed the cliche that all it takes to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. “Guns are symbols of violence and often triggering to many individuals,” one wrote. “Further, the school should take note that [more] guns do not prevent mass shootings, guns do not prevent rape, and guns do not prevent other forms of violent acts.”

This was another common sentiment: “I own guns, I enjoy shooting them for sport, but I do not want them in my learning and working environment.”

There have been many studies about what happens when guns are allowed on university campuses, but one that I find particularly compelling is a report by the American Bar Association. 

“Forcing guns on college campuses inhibits the free exchange of ideas in the classroom by making students and faculty feel less safe to express their views,” the ABA noted. “The presence of firearms can have a chilling effect on the free expression of ideas, especially ideas that are controversial.”

Other reasons to completely ban guns at colleges, according to the ABA, include the connection between firearms access and suicide, the prevalence of interpersonal violence, accidental shootings — especially on campuses with widespread drug and alcohol abuse — and thefts of firearms.

Everytown for Gun Safety ranks Wyoming as 44th in the nation for its gun law strength.

“Wyoming has one of the highest rates of gun deaths and gun suicide in the country, along with some of the weakest gun laws and high household firearm ownership,” the organization said. “Despite these alarming figures, Wyoming has taken no steps to address gun safety policies, like preventing access to domestic abusers or background checks for all gun sales.

“To the contrary,” Everytown added, “its Legislature has sought to weaken existing laws.”

One of the few strengths of Wyoming’s gun laws, the group stated, is that it does not force colleges and universities to allow concealed carry.

But I fear the state may in the not-too-distant future. The recent primary election results indicated the Freedom Caucus will pick up several seats in the House, where most extreme gun rights legislation has solidly passed in recent years. The caucus could have a strong majority, depending on the general election results on Nov. 5. A new version of 2024’s revocation of gun-free zones is guaranteed to be a key part of the far-right agenda.

The Senate used to be the chamber that could be counted on to kill the House’s most extreme ideas, including authorizing concealed carry at UW and community colleges, whether the institutions like it or not. The Senate doesn’t have official Freedom Caucus members, but the primary showed that candidates aligned with the caucus have increased their numbers.

It doesn’t bode well for UW deciding its own fate on the gun issue, because the Freedom Caucus will call the shots and ignore whatever input the university compiles. If the Freedom Caucus elects a governor more sympathetic to its goals than Gordon in two years, local control will be a relic of the past.