A gun bill for everyone
After sailing through committee and then the full Senate, there's no question a bill to allow guns on Idaho college campuses is going to be approved by the Idaho Legislature.
The question now becomes, what exactly will that bill look like?
If you read the comments posted on related stories and opinion pieces at cdapress.com, the final legislation could land anywhere between allowing anybody to have a weapon anytime on campus, to simply rejecting the Senate's bill and doing nothing on the issue this session.
We have what we believe is a reasonable compromise for the House.
As Ken Howard, chairman of the North Idaho College Board of Trustees, so clearly expressed in an opinion piece published Wednesday, everybody really wants the same thing: Safe places for our students and college employees to learn and teach. Howard, an attorney, also noted that allowing qualified retired law enforcement officers to be armed on campus would have its advantages for public safety.
However, where logic and legislation take a bizarre reality break is in the gun-toting requirements outlined in Senate Bill 1254. Rules for retired officers are stringent: Six different standards must be met, including having their gun license renewed every single year.
Inexplicably, the rules for any Jane, Dick or Harry to carry a concealed weapon on campus are far more relaxed. Harry can't have a felony on his record, he needs to be fingerprinted and his mental health record shouldn't have any big black marks on it. But the training required of Harry - compared to a minimum of 15 years in law enforcement for Officer Friendly - is an eight-hour hand-gun course that requires firing at least 98 rounds of ammunition. Unlike Officer Friendly, Harry's license is good for five years, not one, every time he renews it.
We know some folks believe those in law enforcement shoot innocent bystanders for fun and worship Satan on Sundays. These people are forming posses and storing ammo as we write this. But for all the rest of us, our confidence in seasoned, well-trained and rational-under-fire current and former law enforcers is infinitely higher than it would be for some Harry who saunters into an NIC English class packing heat in his pants pocket after essentially learning how to pull the trigger.
The compromise is that if the Legislature is unwilling to place higher standards on the general citizenry, requirements to carry on campus should be the same for former law enforcement officers as they are for anybody else. We call on the House to make this important amendment and send the bill back to the Senate for approval.