Serious Questions for Conceal & Carry States

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As you may or may not know, Ohio does NOT have a conceal and carry law, although the debate rages on. My questions are to those of you who live in states that do have them. I will leave my personal views out of it.

1. What is the minimum age for conceal and carry in your state?

2. Can a school teacher or administrator, public or private, use the conceal and carry law to LEGALLY take a loaded firearm into a school building or to any school function?

I would think that in those states with C&C laws, there would be reasonable limits or restrictions, but I need to be educated. You can tell by the questions that there is real fear by some Ohioans that our schools could turn into LEGAL O.K. corrals.

I would appreciate any thoughtful replys.

(:raig

-- Craig Miller (CMiller@ssd.com), July 28, 2000

Answers

Here in Oregon the legal age is 21. As far as I know school staff can not carry in schools, there is a fedral law prohibiting firearms within 500' of any school, concealed or otherwise.

-- Hendo (OR)r (redgate@echoweb.net), July 28, 2000.

I can't give you the answer for every state, but the general concensus is that permits don't allow you to carry into churches, schools, or any governmental (any level) building or property. The age is usually 18, but the deciding factor is usually some kind of required course (Idaho & Texas have them)or possibly "permission" from the county sherrif (Iowa requires this).

-- Chris Stogdill (cstogdill@rmci.net), July 28, 2000.

Here in Texas the legal age for a handgun, which the concealed carry law applies, it 21. There are restrictions on where a handgun can be carried. Of these places schools and hospitals are restricted. There are others but I can't remember them. Government buildings, I suspect. Also, some business owners have elected to post signs at the entrance of their businesses prohibiting concealed weapons, but it has always been figured if the weapon is concealed what the heck. Also, it's been said that the state law overules such signs in public places. Also, in order to get a concealed carry permit here in Texas, you do have to get approval from the local sheriff or police chief. By the way. Since Texas has implemented the right to carry law, violent crimes have gone way, way down.

-- Joe Cole (jcole@apha.com), July 28, 2000.

I live in the Cinti. area. I hope this judges decision sticks. There was a story on the news last night that was reporting how the attorney "shopped for the right judge to hear this case". It was explained that certain cases that need to be heard right away are called equity cases. There is a monthly rotation as to hears them. The story had the slant of seeming upset that the attorney waited for the month when he thought favorable judge would be hearing it. Like this is something new or underhanded!

I hope that there would be restrictions as far as minors, but I dont see anything wrong with a teacher being able to protect himself and other students. Oh, but what am I thinking. They cant even spank them anymore!

-- Denise (jphammock@msn.com), July 28, 2000.


Here in Alabama, concealed carry is the ONLY LEGAL WAY to carry. You must have a valid issued state permit , renewed yearly with background check and no licensed individual may carry into a school, courthouse, bank, post office, estabishment selling alcohol for on site or off site consumption, national forests or wildlife preserves.

-- Jay Blair (jayblair678@yahoo.com), July 28, 2000.


Hendo & all, I believe the federal Supreme Ct. ruled that "no guns within 1000' of schools" law unconstitutional on grounds that there is no interstate commerce connection. Good thing too, because 1000'radius from school properties will virtually cover entire cities. Also, as a homeschooler, I was never able to determine that the law only applied to government indoctrination centers (I think it didn't).

So, what I'm wondering, in exchange for their pay, did government school teachers surrender their Constitutional rights as well as their souls??

-- Guy Winton III (guyiii@home.com), July 28, 2000.


I don't live in a concealed carry state, but we are moving to one. The first thing I have to say is that I wish a teacher would have had a gun at Colombine. Perhaps some of thos precious lives that have been lost would have been saved. Perhaps that teacher who died trying to save his students, would still be alive. The idea that everyone who enters a school leaves their rights at the door nauseates me. Years ago boys carried guns to school to hunt squirrels on the way, and amazingly enough there were never mass school shootings. Criminals prey upon the unarmed. I would much rather have the odds even, than have a bunch of unarmed people being killed by a maniac with a gun and no way to defend themselves. This is what I don't understand about the current climate with regards to guns. What I see is people claiming that guns are the problem when the real problem is the restrictive gun laws we've placed upon ourselves that prevent us from protecting ourselves. Every gun taken away is another person that can be shot by a criminal. Every teacher without a gun is another student shot by his peers. Hello! What does it take for people to wake up. In every country where weapons have been banned, Crime has gone up! Banning weapons is NOT about crime prevention, it is about government control! How many more tragedies like Colombine do we need before someone wakes up and realizes that as long as men's hearts are dark, we need the great equalizer. We need to be able to carry it on our person, and it is better if No one knows it is there. This means that as far as I am concerned the government shouldn't know either. You know people talk about the old west as if that would be the w9orst possible thing, but at least at the OK Corral, the men were shooting at one another and not the townspeople! Both parties were equally armed and both parties chose to be there as far as I'm concerned it was a fair fight. Better that than have those guys running around sneaking up on innocents to gun them down in cold blood and those innocents denied the right to defend themselves. All those children died at Colombine because we killed them with our laws that prevented those teachers from stopping thos boys in their tracks with the business end of a forty-five.

Little bit farm

-- Little bit Farm (littlebit@calinet.com), July 28, 2000.


Craig, the NRA website has a breakdown of concealed carry laws by state. Here in Maine -- highest percentage of private gun ownership in the US except maybe Alaska, according to one news article -- we have a "shall issue" law that says any citizen SHALL receive a concealed carry permit unless the issuing authority (usually local law enforcement) can provide good reason not to, such as felony conviction, mental instability, etc. When the carry law was liberalized in the 1980s, Maine too saw an immediate decline in violent crime, particularly against women.

-- Cash (cash@andcarry.com), July 28, 2000.

Virginia--age-21 Schools--not without a special volunteer deputy permit (like Iowa). With this permit you can carry anywhere except a federal building. They are not as easily obtained as they use to be !

-- Joel Rosen (Joel681@webtv.net), July 28, 2000.

Little Bit, you are right. The only person besides Harris and Klebold who had a gun at Colombine was a cop who was pretending to protect the school. After a couple of shots, he turned tail and ran. As is often the case with police, he was mainly interested in his own safety. The teacher who stood his ground with no weapon would have taken out those two cowards. American schools will not be safe until the cops are thrown out and responsible teachers are issued weapons to protect their students. I know I will open up a hornet's nest with this post, but I didn't make it this way. When I was in school, parents were responsible and taught children right from wrong. It was not unusual for a female teacher to ask to borrow someone's pocket knife if she needed to cut something. Every little boy's hand in the room would go up as each one hoped she would choose his knife. Of course, we had scuffles and fist-fights on the playgrounds, but we had no stabbings. We were taught right from wrong. Parents are at fault. In answer to Craig's question, I am a teacher in SC, and we must be 21 to carry a concealed weapon. No one except cops are allowed to carry a gun near a school or any other public building.

-- Jim (catchthesun@yahoo.com), July 28, 2000.


Iowa's laws have already been posted, so I won't go through that again. But I want to say that your protection is not up to the police, like some would have you believe. It is up to you. The police are just there to clean up the mess and investigate what happened should you fail in your endeavor of protection of yourself and family. Annnnnndddddd, contrary to most belief, the Old West is/was only Wild in books and Hollywood. Sure, there were instances of bad men doing bad things, much like today, but for the most part it was a very polite place because everyone wore guns and everyone knew it.

-- dave (tidman@midiowa.net), July 29, 2000.

in massachusettes u need a license plus the age is 18 i belive

-- steve (SJG7335@yahoo.com), February 28, 2001.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Countryside are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Countryside or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

This is a Gun Free Zone!

Source: Themestream
Author: Kevin Baker

This is a Gun Free Zone!

by Kevin Baker
February 22, 2001

Thanks to Tom Buchanan http://freedomnet.cnchost.com/tom/hgc/

My last article, "A Few More Than 27 Words", resulted in a short e- mail exchange with "B. K.", who wrote (among other things):

"I enjoy guns and will side for slow buying laws and accountability laws and gun free zones by children, every time. States may desegnate "community areas" to the paths of target ranges for school sport shooting. This would be seperated from normal child use by some border of 1,000 or more feet. This is not the sixties of the 1900's and by and large the kid that brings the gun to school is not doing it because he has hunting appointments with dad, or becuase he is practicing for the winter olympics."

I told "B. K" in my response:

"If you are interested, I would like to continue this discussion. I realize that to most people the "gun debate" isn't very important, but a few of the things you mentioned you support, I just shake my head at in disbelief. I hear people say they support them, and I cannot understand WHY. However, if you wish to stop here, we can."

Whereupon I was invited to make this discussion public, and put it up on Themestream for other interested parties to follow. So, I have. Hopefully this will develop into an exchange of ideas and beliefs, and will be illustrative to the undecided in this debate. (Otherwise it will wither and die a horrible death from lack of interest.)

Let's start with an easy one. Of what purpose is a "Gun Free Zone", whether a school, shopping center, or a private home? Would you be willing to post a sign in your front yard stating "This is a gun free home"? Isn't that equivalent to stating "We're unarmed, please don't hurt us, we won't resist"? Is passing a law making it illegal to possess a firearm on or arbitrarily near a piece of property supposed to be a deterrent? Against what? If a kid like Luke Woodham or a nut like Buford Furrow decides he's going to go to school and kill a few people, the idea that taking the gun to the school is illegal is supposed to dissuade them?

Here's a little known fact: In the October 1997 Pearl, Mississippi school shooting in which Luke Woodham killed two and wounded seven others, he was stopped by Joel Myrick, an assistant principal. That part is fairly well known. What isn't well known is that Myrick, when he heard the shots, ran to his car and retrieved his .45 pistol. He then confronted Woodham as he tried to leave, and held him at gunpoint until the police could arrive. Under the "Gun Free Zone" law, Myrick could be charged with a felony for having a handgun in his vehicle within 1000 feet of a school. He could certainly be charged for retrieving the handgun and taking it on to school property. Why? Woodham was charged and convicted of murder. How much more time would the "Gun Free Zone" law tack on to that?

As an aside, here's why that fact is little known (from a June, 2000 Reason on-line magazine article):

"Anyone reading the local paper, the Rankin County News, would have known all about Joel Myrick's heroics. But anyone watching evening newscasts on, say, ABC, CBS, or CNN wouldn't have known that it took an armed man to stop the shooting. None of them mentioned it. According to the Alexandria, Virginia-based Media Research Center, NBC mentioned it just twice, once on the October 2 Nightly News and once on the Today show the next morning.

... out of 687 stories...on the shootings in Pearl, just 19 made reference to Myrick. Some of those that mentioned him left his gun out of the story. CBS's Dan Rather, for example, reported, "Myrick eventually subdued the gunman." How he "subdued" him Rather didn't say."

From that same Reason article:

"In April 1998, a 14-year-old middle school student in Edinboro, Pennsylvania, walked into a school dance with a .25-caliber handgun and opened fire, killing a science teacher and wounding several students. He turned to flee, but the owner of the hall, James Strand, armed with a shotgun, chased him into a field. When the boy stopped to reload, Strand captured him and held him until police arrived 11 minutes later." (My emphasis)

"Gun Free Zone" laws, and laws like them, sound good but are at best useless. In reality, they act to either inconvenience or disarm the law-abiding, or are used against law abiding people who make an honest mistake, but they have no effect on the criminally inclined. They are the definition of "feel good" legislation.

If I have a handgun in my vehicle, and go to the school where my sister teaches to help her move some materials for her classroom, I will be in violation of the "Gun Free Zone" laws. Am I a threat? Laws like these imply I am. Laws like these are apparently based on the idea that wanting a gun indicates criminal tendencies, and having a gun implies criminal intent. If someone comes to your kid's school with intent to do harm, who will stop them? The "Gun Free Zone" law won't, somebody with a gun will. In a "Gun Free School" that will be a cop - whenever they finally show up.

I eagerly await the promised response of my counterpart.

Yours truly,

Kevin Baker

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Countryside are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Countryside or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

-- William in Wi (gnarledmaw@lycos.com), February 28, 2001.


Hey Little B.F., Hear, Hear!!! (applause).......I'm curious though, WHERE are you considering for your move?

-- Action Dude (theactiondude@yahoo.com), February 28, 2001.

Actually, we have already moved and we now live in the great state of Oklahoma. God bless her precious soil! I am so happy to be out of the PRC(Peoples Republic of California), where tyranny will rain down upon all its citizens if they don't kick the idiots out of office who are trying to make it a communist nation within a nation. Now the state has seen fit to try and own all the electric utilities, at the expense of private industry, after having forced the utilities into financial suicide. Deregulation my behind! Well gotta go kiss the dirt. God bless you all!

Little Bit Farm

-- Little bit Farm (littlebit@calinet.com), February 28, 2001.



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