The Gun Safety Measures Charlie Kirk Opposed Might Have Saved His Life

This “right” to carry a concealed or unconcealed gun on a college campus was reaffirmed in state legislation passed earlier this year. If you keep your gun in your dorm room, you don’t even need a permit. Think of it as an emotional support animal that doesn’t pee on the floor. “As an institution,” says the website for the UVU Police Department, “UVU respects the right of its students and others to legally carry a concealed firearm under those parameters, as outlined by state law.”

The state’s laissez-faire position on campus carry explains how Kirk’s killer could have been carrying a rifle (or something long enough to contain one) at UVU for approximately half an hour without attracting notice (except from video cameras that enabled investigators to retrace the shooter’s movements after the fact). Meanwhile, security screening at the speaking event was either light or nonexistent; Deseret News reporter Emma Pitts said that when she entered the venue she wasn’t scanned and her bag wasn’t checked.

In Utah, universities may not take it on themselves to ban guns from campus. I don’t know how UVU faculty feel about that, but according to the Tribune, faculty at the University of Utah really don’t like it. “It feels like this is an incredibly dangerous situation for our students, faculty and staff in our spaces, as well as guests,” Sydney Cheek-O’Donnell, an associate dean for research, told the Tribune. No kidding! In Utah, the only public spaces permitted to ban guns are churches (no guns in Mormon temples), courthouses, prisons, police stations, airports, mental health facilities, homeless shelters, and federal sites.