Cuccinelli: College Boards of Visitors Should Deal With Students

This AP story written by report Bob Lewis ran yesterday.  It is another in a number of articles that have run since the Virginia Tech incident last Thursday that deal with the issue of firearms on campus.  He does a good job of covering the issue and whether Virginia Tech should be dealt with differently due to having experienced the events of April 2007.  Lewis talked with the mother and gun control activist of one of the students that survived the shooting.

Now a fulltime gun-control advocate, Haas on Thursday asked the question that the day's false alarm at Virginia Tech begged so soon after Cuccinelli's pro-gun legal guidance on UVa's policy: Does the Republican attorney general with his eyes on an eventual gubernatorial run believe Virginia Tech has the right to ban guns from its campus?

"It's unacceptable, allowing the carry of guns on campus, concealed or otherwise. It puts the community into a panic," Haas said.

But he also spoke with Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli.  Cuccinelli defended his ruling that said a college or university cannot ban firearms by policy but can by regulation, which carries the force of law.

"The law can be adjusted by the General Assembly and the governor and, to a certain extent, by the universities themselves acting as agencies using their regulatory power," he said. "But the law doesn't change because it gets more or less sensitive in one place or another."

He also had this to say regarding who should be allowed to carry on college campuses:

"Faculty and staff should be able to fully exercise their concealed-carry rights. Period," Cuccinelli said. "But I am of a mind to let boards of visitors deal with their own student bodies."

For students, it's largely a moot point because concealed weapons permits are issued only to residents 21 and older, Cuccinelli said. "So nobody's going to roll out of high school and have a concealed-carry permit."