A protest organized by the ODU College Republicans and the VCDL today has received a number of media attention, calling attention to the ill-advised attempts by the Old Dominion University board to outlaw all guns on campus, including those by lawful conceal-carry members.
ODU of course has been bedeviled by numerous violent crime and robberies in the surrounding area directly next to campus. This past summer a nephew of Maryland Congressman Elijah Cummings was shot and killed in his home directly behind campus. Friends of mine who live in the area are nervous about going out at night in the area for fear of crime and violence.
ODU’s reaction?
BAN ALL GUNS.
ODU continues to demonstrate how absolutely moronic their Board is, somehow thinking that preventing their students from protecting themselves lawfully, this will somehow reduce the amount of violent crime. Nevermind that many of the crimes taking place are not student-on-student, but rather non-students in the Norfolk area preying on college students. An urban campus in a poor neighborhood like those between 29th and 49th streets off of Hampton Blvd is rife with danger and forbidding students from protecting themselves is a recipe for even more disaster.
Those committing the crimes aren’t concerned with conceal carry laws, or with the laws of a university they don’t attend. So ODU isn’t preventing violence, they’re actually encouraging it by letting those who would commit crimes that if we have our way students will be unprotected always.
Events like those in Virginia Tech of course must give up pause, but also must remember it was the work of a deranged man who slipped through the cracks. That’s not to take away from the magnitude or tragedy of that event, but too often it becomes a blanket we throw over any and all gun laws regarding campus safety.
ODU is a unique situation and requires unique solutions. The ODU Board’s lack of regard for their students constitutional rights to protect themselves flies in the face of the very freedoms this country was founded on. I personally join the ODU College Republicans in calling for ODU Alumni to withhold donations from the Monarchs until the Board understands the ramifications of their ill-thought regulations.
[UPDATE]
Thanks to BD contributor Andrew Schwartz who sends along this email from the President of ODU, attempting to spin this regulation. I think Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli would be particularly surprised to know that Broderick claims the AG recommended ODU enact this unconstitutional legislation.
Dear Campus Community:
Tomorrow, two organizations will be holding events on campus relating to weapons policies at colleges and universities in Virginia.
The Virginia Citizens Defense League and Students for Gun Free Schools will be supporting opposite sides of the debate on whether universities should permit weapons on their campuses. Similar events are being planned for the College of William and Mary, Virginia Tech, George Mason, James Madison, Virginia Commonwealth and Radford universities.
The debate was sparked by recent actions of ODU and other state colleges and universities to change their existing weapons policies to regulations.
Since some media reports haven’t accurately captured what prompted this move by Virginia universities, I thought it would be helpful to the Old Dominion community to provide the background.
For more than two decades, ODU has had a policy prohibiting firearms in its buildings and athletic facilities. This past summer, Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli issued an opinion that universities’ policies banning the possession of firearms on campus do not apply to visitors – uninvited guests, specifically – who have a concealed carry permit.
The attorney general’s guidance was for colleges and universities to enact regulations, which carry the force of law, to ban any visitor from entering university facilities while armed. So, this fall, Old Dominion began that process. After review from the attorney general’s office, the university’s regulation will be presented to the Board of Visitors for approval.
These actions do not represent a change in our rules or our philosophy to weapons on campus. The same rules we have had in place for years will still remain; only they will now be enforced by a legally sound regulation.
Sincerely,
John R. Broderick
President
