Regents must challenge concealed carry in court
The Montana University System has a professional and ethical obligation to challenge HB 102 in court. This bill is ostensibly meant to make our communities safer; however, even a cursory glance at the bill shows that to be a deeply specious claim.
Montana State University employed over 4,000 people in 2019, according to its website. Those 4,000 employees have good reason to be scared. The prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain
responsible for making rational decisions and impulse control, is not fully developed until age 25. Now imagine that your job involves working with people well under that age who are free to carry a handgun into your work environment. While I am not a lawyer, it seems to be quite clearly unconstitutional, based on the plain language in the Montana state constitution.
For the sake of all those employed at our institutions of higher learning across the state, I beg the Board of Regents to challenge this law in court.
Roger Fischer
Bozeman
Legislature should have stayed in its lane on guns
Montana Legislature, stay in your lane! As a multiple teaching award winning post-secondary education professional I am writing to state my complete opposition to guns on campus. I can’t believe that in 2021 I even needed to write this letter.
I’m a hunter. I’m obviously a gun owner. There is a place for firearms.
Universities and colleges (and churches) are not the place! The whole idea of concealed or open carry of firearms on Montana campuses is outrageous revealing a rather shocking lack of leadership, integrity, and character in the Montana Legislature to even have considered such a thing. History will speak to how completely mindless the law was and how primitive and shortsighted the people were who put this idea forward.
If you read the Strategic Plan Mission, Vision, Goals and Objectives of the Montana University System, you’ll see that concealed or open carry of firearms on Montana campuses is fear driven and flies in the face of higher education ideals and objectives. It also sets a dangerous precedent by challenging the governance of our education system. Here’s the mandate: “The governance and administration of the Montana University System is vested with the Board of Regents, which has full power, responsibility, and authority to supervise, coordinate, manage and control the Montana University System, and supervise and coordinate other public educational institutions assigned by law.”
Here’s the question I submitted for a virtual public forum: What objective for the betterment of higher education is served by having guns on campus?
Eric Funk
Bozeman
Bozeman Daily Chronicle Letters to the Editor 5/18/21