California Revokes Mechanism For Concealed Carry On School Campuses

It’s official. Governor Jerry Brown has signed a bill that now prevents superintendents from permitting staff with concealed carry licenses from being able to be armed on school grounds. We knew it was going to happen, and it did.

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Gov. Jerry Brown signed a law Saturday that will remove the rights of school administrators to decide whether employees with concealed weapon permits can bring guns on campus.

State law already prohibited civilians who are not school workers from bringing firearms onto campuses, but a change in the law last year gave school district superintendents power to decide if employees could bring concealed weapons onto campuses, according to Assemblyman Kevin McCarty (D- Sacramento), who authored the bill.

Five California school districts — including the Kingsburg Joint Union and Kern school districts — have begun to issue authorizations for some school employees to bring guns on campuses, McCarty said. He said it has increased the chance of school shootings.

“A safe learning environment is essential for our children to be successful in the classroom,” McCarty said. “That’s not possible if a school district allows armed civilians to roam California school campuses.”

Of course, staff members aren’t exactly “roaming” campuses. They’re working.

The reality is that when it was first proposed to allow superintendents discretion to offer permission for licensed staff to carry their firearms at work, none of the anti-gun lawmakers thought it would happen. After all, aren’t school superintendents supposed to be political allies of those who favor gun control?

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But some did. Five, actually.

And without a single reason, that’s over. McCarty doesn’t want to accept the simple fact that the presence of firearms in the possession of law-abiding and licensed staff members isn’t a mass shooting waiting to happen, but a deterrent to just that.

The fact is that McCarty and his ilk are pearl-clutching politicians with a case of the vapors over the fact that some schools actually believe their staff–people with extensive background checks, both as educators and concealed carry license holders–might actually be terrorists or something. It doesn’t matter that statistically, concealed carry permit holders are the least likely group to commit a crime. That’s compared to lawyers, judges, police officers and, yes, politicians.

It doesn’t matter to McCarty, who thinks the plebes should be disarmed and turned into victims. Does he have some kind of perverse need to be in control of what everyone does in the state of California? It sure sounds like it.

Unfortunately, in what he claims is an attempt to provide safety, he’s now made schools far less safe. Those children in those schools are now without a significant means of protection should evil enter those schools. I pray we never see any of the potential ramifications of these laws, which could be severe. Those ramifications include dead children, the same people that so many anti-gun zealots claim to care about so deeply.

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Guns don’t increase the potential for something bad happening, they decrease it. Lord only knows what it’ll take to convince politicians of that fact, though.

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