Brewer Vetoes Campus Carry

I guess after signing Constitutional Carry, she didn’t feel like we had much room to ask her to take another chance on us. In her veto statement, she expressed a belief that the law was unclear, because it only protected the right-to-carry on “rights of way” through campus. Legislators understood this to mean streets and sidewalks, but Brewer stated, “Bills impacting our Second Amendment rights have to be crystal clear so that gun owners don’t become lawbreakers by accident.”

We got it through the legislature this year. My opinion is that we come back next year, take the Governor’s words to heart, and give her a clear bill she can’t veto.

5 thoughts on “Brewer Vetoes Campus Carry”

  1. There was also a concern RE: the definition of ‘education facility’ and the possible interpretation of that including K-12 facilities with the resultant conflict/confusion of other state as well as federal laws.

    My take on her veto is “Good idea, bad execution…Fix yer shit and resubmit.”

  2. “right of way” is silly anyway. We can currently carry on the grounds of a college campus in Texas, but not the “premises” (legal definition being a building). But, who the heck just wonders through campus without going into any buildings?

    Our 2A rights shouldn’t end at the invisible line drawn around a college campus.

  3. Assuming she wasn’t saying one thing while thinking another, right of way was definitely a problem. If you can’t go in any building, including a bathroom (other than a porta-potty where you unquestionably have the right-of-way), then you pretty much can’t carry legally to and from a building either.

    Right of way either should have been (re?)defined in the code as “anywhere anyone can go without being strip and bag-searched” or those words never should have been included. Carry on every square foot of campus property shall be allowed, period, schools that violate get their vehicles seized a la SB 1201.

  4. Am I’m reading it right that carry on campuses in Arizona is “legal” under state law but forbidden by University policy?

    Maybe the better tack is to look to Colorado. Setting aside private schools due to the private property issues, just how independent are the state schools when looking at how the state preemption is worded?

    What -exact- legal authority is vested in the University Board of Regents to promulgate policy?

    For example, the case I’m (slowly) prepping up here (AK) rests on multiple state SC precedents stating that the University is not truly as independent of the state legally or financially as the Board likes to claim.

    The preemption statute says “Municipalities” but has been interpreted to include all political subdivisions of the state (boroughs) in practice so I’m arguing it applies to them. After all, with all the changes to our carry laws over the past decade the Legislature has had multiple chances to make them a prohibited place if they had wanted to.

    Further, the Boards only actual authority to promulgate regulations per statute is:

    Sec. 14.40.120. (b) The Board of Regents may
    (1) adopt reasonable rules, orders, and plans with reasonable penalties for the good
    government of the university and for the regulation of the Board of Regents;

    That’s it.

    My argument is that it is in no way a “reasonable” to utterly restrict a fundamental Federal and State civil right on a campus, inside buildings or out, that are by policy and history open to the public in the normal course of business and that punishing the exercise of the right with academic sanctions or trespassing (depending if one is a student or not), when one is otherwise in full accordance with the law, is not a “reasonable” punishment.

    Since the Uni just got spanked on the subject of civil partnership benefits a few years back my argument is in line with precedent six ways from Sunday.

    Anyway, some things you just can’t get done politically in one swoop in the short term. I know Gura’s a little busy but what is SCCC in Arizona up to?

    =)

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