The Continuing Struggle Over Who Controls The University of Utah

As I've mentioned in this Shotgun News article, the Utah legislature has been fighting with the University of Utah over who gets to make Utah's laws. The University of Utah wants to prohibit concealed carry on campus by its students, faculty, and staff. The Utah legislature says that it can't. The University of Utah, of course, has filed a series of suits to try and get a court order declaring that the Utah legislature doesn't have authority to pass laws that apply on campus.

One side effect of this dispute is an examination of weapons arrests on campus, from the August 27, 2007 Salt Lake Tribune:

As the debate over guns on Utah college campuses raged during the 2007 Legislature, lobbyists on both sides quoted statistics and provided scenarios to prove that allowing guns would have either worsened or improved a hypothetical campus crime.

But crime data obtained under the Clery Act, which requires all campuses to report crime statistics to the federal government, shows few incidents between 2001 and 2005 when weapons were found or used on campuses, and in those few incidents, rarely were students involved.

No incident reported during the five-year period involved a student brandishing a gun in a threatening manner, and of the 23 incidents on Utah college campuses involving guns, seven involved loaded handguns while the rest involved BB guns or paint-ball guns. The other incidents involved weapons that ranged from butterfly knives to brass knuckles to nunchakus.

No incidents involved a legally concealed weapon.

Such data only reinforce why gun advocates have successfully defeated efforts to ban concealed weapons on campuses, said Clark Aposhian, chairman of the Utah Self-Defense Instructor's Network.

"Concealed weapon carriers are not people to be afraid of," Aposhian said. "They are simply folks who are concerned with one thing and one thing only: lawful self-defense."

Yet University of Utah lobbyist Kim Wirthlin still worries about allowing weapons of any kind on campus.

"Even though those statistics don't indicate that concealed weapons are what's causing the problems, if you have weapons, you may have accidental discharges," she said.

Data gathered under the Clery Act shows the number of weapons incidents on campus, but does not spell out the types of weapons used. Individual campuses, though, were able to break down the incidents by weapon used and an analysis shows there were nine incidents involving students with guns from 2001 to 2005, though no one was harmed in any incident.