Compromise on concealed weapons is full of holes

By Marjorie Cortez
Deseret Morning News
Published: Tuesday, Feb. 13, 2007 12:18 p.m. MST
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Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary defines compromise as: "settlement of differences by arbitration or by consent by mutual concessions." If that's what compromise means, just what happened between the Utah Legislature and the University of Utah, which wanted a legislative means to enforce its long-standing concealed weapons ban? A legislative solution was needed after the Utah Supreme Court found the policy conflicted with state law.

So university officials said, in effect, "OK, we'll work with the Legislature on this. We'll even drop a pending federal lawsuit on the issue."

For that demonstration of good faith, the university got a state law that permits students who live on campus to elect not to be placed with students who are concealed-weapon permit holders and allows professors to post signs if they object to a student carrying a concealed weapon into their offices.

Permit holders are still free to carry guns into classrooms, the Huntsman Center and Rice-Eccles Stadium. They're free to carry them just about anywhere else on campus.

Some compromise.

Then again, the parties aren't on equal footing. The university is a state institution subject to state policy, and it needs every penny the state appropriates to higher education. But one would think, after dropping a federal lawsuit on the issue, that the Legislature could have given a little more, particularly on carrying guns in sports venues.

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But that's probably expecting too much from a state that permits people to carry concealed weapons into public schools where children are compelled by law to go to school. Even Texas, where I'd surmise the Second Amendment is just as revered as it is here, prohibits carrying concealed weapons in schools. For that matter, Texas prohibits concealed-weapon permit holders from carrying guns in venues where high school or college sporting events take place. No such restrictions here, though.

Some 85,650 people now hold the Utah permit, many of them from out of state. Because the state Bureau of Criminal Identification is required by Utah law to conduct background checks on concealed weapons permit applicants within 60 days, other criminal background checks get put on the back burner, most notably those of newly hired teachers and substitute teachers. With record tax revenue to spend, the Legislature should appropriate more money to BCI to address this mess.

The gun rights lobby will tell you that we shouldn't worry about concealed-weapons permit holders. The vast majority are law-abiding people. In the spirit of "compromise," I will concede that point. But some who have been granted this privilege are not up to snuff. The state has revoked some 1,500 permits in recent years. Six were revoked for homicide convictions; 24 for convictions of rape or sexual assault; 11 on drug convictions and 176 for domestic violence. Thirty-two were convicted of firearm offenses, including 13 for threatening the use of the weapon in a fight and eight for carrying the weapon in restricted areas.

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