In addition to opposing licensed, armed self-defense on college campuses, some gun control advocates take their opposition even further and oppose law enforcement being armed.

The troubled city of Baltimore has set new records for homicide, continued to fight racial tensions, changed police commissioners three times in five years, and is facing corruption scandals from both their mayor and the police department.

In a bid to protect the campus population of over 15,000 students and 4,500 faculty, Johns Hopkins University introduced a plan for a private, armed police force. (The college presently relies on a combination of off-duty Baltimore police officers and unarmed security.)

The change would require legislative approval from the Maryland General Assembly.

The move has been met with controversy, as 100 professors signed a letter of opposition, protestors branding themselves Students Against Private Police (SAPP) marched on JHU President Ronald J. Daniels’ house, as well as invading campus buildings and chaining doors. The protests culminated in 7 arrests.

“Nobody deserves to have the right to play God, to take someone’s life in such a brutal force and not be held accountable just because he or she wears a badge. It’s utterly ridiculous and unacceptable,” said protestor Tawanda Jones. The movement says a campus police force would lack accountability and threaten its student population, and JHU should shift its focus to strengthening social safety nets and improving inner-city education.

“I don’t want those people to have guns because I know who they would use them against – and that is me,” said Jamie Grace Alexander, a self-proclaimed representative of the Baltimore trans community.

Opponents are currently collecting signatures to prevent the measure from appearing on the 2020 ballot.

Strangely, an armed police force has seen public support from one of the staunchest proponents (and financiers) of the gun control movement – billionaire Michael Bloomberg. Bloomberg, a JHU alumnus and donor, called it “irrational” that the college doesn’t have their own security. “When you have a city that has the murder rate that Baltimore has, I think it’s ridiculous to think that they shouldn’t be armed,” Bloomberg told the Baltimore Sun.

While colleges have been increasing the presence of armed police officers in recent years, the presence of law enforcement on campus is hardly a guarantee against mass shootings. Even major universities often have only a few officers on the clock patrolling hundreds of acres of classrooms, dorms and facilities.

According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, “A majority (92 percent) of public institutions used sworn officers, compared to 38 percent of private campuses. Nearly all sworn campus police officers were armed. Most sworn campus officers were authorized to use a sidearm (94 percent), chemical spray (94 percent) and a baton (93 percent). Nearly all campuses (95 percent) operated their own law enforcement agency.”

Students for Concealed Carry remains neutral on whether campuses should employ armed security. Responses to the unique threats of mass shootings are the responsibility of each college and state government, and we respect the weight and responsibility shouldered by law enforcement.

What is clear is that so-called “gun-free zones” enforced by signs alone amount to nothing more than a deadly illusion of security. Assuring psychopathic killers their victims are disarmed is a lure, not a deterrent. Among the many solutions on the table, threatening responsibly armed citizens with jail time and expulsion for wanting to defend themselves does not protect them. Gun free zones invariably make students less safe.

ABOUT STUDENTS FOR CONCEALED CARRY — Students for Concealed Carry (SCC) is a national, non-partisan, grassroots organization comprising college students, faculty, staff, and concerned citizens who believe that licensed, lawfully-armed citizens should be afforded the same legal protections for self-defense on college campuses as they enjoy virtually everywhere else. For more information on SCC, visit ConcealedCampus.org or Facebook.com/ConcealedCampus.

Columbus, Ohio – After a nearly half-decade long legal battle challenging the legality of the university’s campus-wide ban on firearms, Students for Concealed Carry Foundation (SCCF) has finally reached a settlement with The Ohio State University. OSU has changed its Student Code of Conduct, a part of the Ohio Administrative Code, to comply with laws passed by the Ohio General Assembly.

The student group, with a mission to fund research and litigation, initially filed the suit in Franklin County Common Pleas Court in 2014, before refiling in Marion County.  Individually named lead plaintiff Michael Newbern began taking and teaching classes at the OSU-Marion branch after finishing his bachelor’s degree in industrial engineering at OSU’s main campus. During his time as an OSU undergraduate student and leader of the campus chapter and later Ohio director of Students for Concealed Carry, he witnessed first hand the struggles of students who desired to exercise their right of self-defense.  In the lawsuit, Newbern, along with SCCF and Ohioans for Concealed Carry, contended that the Student Code of Conduct’s provisions completely prohibiting the student possession of firearms both on campus and off-campus at University activities at all times violated the intent of Ohio Revised Code section 2923.126(B)(5), which expressly permits storage of firearms in a locked motor vehicle on a college campus by concealed handgun licensees.

In the settlement reached with the Plaintiffs to conclude the latest litigation filed in Marion County Common Pleas Court, OSU agreed to change the Student Code of Conduct to permit the lawful storage of firearms in motor vehicles by qualified Ohio State University students at all campuses no later than March 1, 2019.  The OSU Board of Trustees passed a resolution at their regular meeting on February 22, 2019, amending Ohio Administrative Code Rule 3335-23-04 “Prohibited conduct,” at paragraph (E), “Dangerous weapons or devices,” in accordance with the settlement agreement. The Plaintiffs then dismissed the remaining claims in their lawsuit.

“We’re happy that Ohio State has changed the student code of conduct so that vetted, trained, licensed students will be able to store their lawfully possessed firearms in their cars parked on campus,” Newbern said. “It’s unfortunate that the rights of those students codified by the General Assembly some 15 years ago weren’t recognized until we challenged the University in court at great expense to the Ohio taxpayer.”

“We’re hopeful that other Ohio public colleges will follow OSU’s lead and restore the right a student has to go armed during his or her commute,” Newbern added.

Of note is that over the course of the litigation, OSU also changed its employee and staff rules to no longer prohibit lawful possession of concealed handguns by permit holders in their vehicles.  The Plaintiffs viewed that as a significant victory for the Second Amendment as well, even if the courts never ordered it.

Columbus-based attorneys Derek A. Debrosse of Barney DeBrosse and Michael R. Moran of Gahanna, who jointly represented the Plaintiffs, have mounted several successful legal challenges to government officials’ illegal laws and ordinances since the passage of Ohio’s state firearm preemption statutes by the legislature. These OSU cases are the first of their kind in Ohio challenging public university policies on Second Amendment, plus state statutory and constitutional grounds.

“We believe this outcome is precedential despite a lack of a final ruling by the court on all of the issues,” Mr. Moran stated.

Mr. DeBrosse added, “This settlement recognizes a right the General Assembly was very careful to protect when it implemented the concealed carry program in Ohio in 2004.”

Case(s):

Students for Concealed Carry Foundation, et al., v. The Ohio State University, Marion County Common Pleas Court, Case No. 2016CV0621 (Judges Jim Slagle and Warren T. Edwards).

Students for Concealed Carry Foundation, et al., v. The Ohio State University, Franklin County Common Pleas Court, Case No. 2014CV006927 (Judges Dan Hogan and William H. Woods).

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ABOUT STUDENTS FOR CONCEALED CARRY — Students for Concealed Carry (SCC) is a national, non-partisan, grassroots organization comprising college students, faculty, staff, and concerned citizens who believe that holders of state-issued concealed handgun licenses should be allowed the same measure of personal protection on college campuses that current laws afford them virtually everywhere else. SCC is not affiliated with the NRA or any other organization. For more information on SCC, visit ConcealedCampus.org or Facebook.com/ConcealedCampus.

AUSTIN, TEXAS – In the two years since the Students for Concealed Carry (SCC) board of directors dismissed former Southwest Regional Director Antonia Okafor, SCC leaders past and present have held their tongues as, time and time again, she has repeated the false claim that she was involved in the drafting and passing of Texas’ campus carry law.

By portraying herself as the person who passed campus carry in Texas, Okafor—who joined SCC six weeks after Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed Senate Bill 11 into law and who served as an SCC leader for fourteen months of the eighteen-month interim between the 2015 and 2017 Texas Legislative Sessions—has secured invitations to appear on high-profile TV news programs (both in the U.S. and abroad), speak on college campuses, and be honored as the invited guest of far-right politicians and organizations.

If members of the gun-rights community want to honor Okafor as a pillar of Second Amendment activism, that is a subjectively defensible choice. However, it is objectively indefensible to suggest that she played any role (beyond, perhaps, being one of thousands of concerned Texas college students who reached out to Texas lawmakers) in the passage of Texas’ campus carry law.

Students for Concealed Carry, the National Rifle Association, and the Texas State Rifle Association spent eight years fighting for the passage of campus carry in Texas. In the latter years of that fight, SCC, NRA, and TSRA were joined by groups such as the Open Carry Texas, Texas Carry, Texas Firearms Freedom, and the Texas Concealed Handgun Association.

Madison Welch served as SCC’s Southwest regional director during the 2015 Texas Legislative Session (the session in which campus carry finally passed). Prior to that, the position was held by Adrienne O’Reilly, who succeeded Daniel Crocker, who succeeded Brett Poulos, who succeeded Mike Guzman, SCC’s original SWRD. These are the people who deserve the credit for leading SCC’s efforts to pass campus carry in Texas.

At no time during the eight-year fight to pass campus carry in Texas did Antonia Okafor hold a leadership position with SCC or any other organization instrumental in that fight. The first time she so much as tweeted about campus carry or SB 11 was two weeks before the end of the 2015 Texas Legislative Session.

In March 2017, six months after Okafor was dismissed from SCC, SCC Assistant Director of Public Relations Mike Newbern reached out to her to politely ask that she stop making false claims about her involvement in the passage of SB 11. Okafor responded by blocking Newbern and several other current and former SCC leaders from viewing her social media pages.

In February 2018, a former SCC director detailed many of Okafor’s misstatements of fact (ranging from misstatements about her involvement with SCC to misstatements about her education) in a lengthy internal memo/essay titled “Who Is Antonia Okafor?” That memo/essay can be downloaded here. 

Newbern commented:

When the board made the decision to let Antonia go, none of us harbored any ill will toward her. We simply felt we needed a regional director who, like Antonia’s predecessors in that role, better understood the issue. We even offered her a less-demanding role within the organization, an offer she declined.

It’s easy enough to look at the press releases, op-eds, and TV commercial SCC released during the 2015 Texas Legislative Session and see that Antonia was not the organization’s Southwest regional director at that time. It’s easy enough to look at her social media accounts and see that she wasn’t even talking about campus carry until two weeks before it passed.

For the past two years, we at SCC have hoped that somebody in the media would take the time to question Antonia’s story. It is a disservice to the countless organizations and volunteers involved in the passage of campus carry in Texas to let her false claims go unchallenged, and it has become apparent that nobody is going to question those false claims unless we call attention to them. So let me state unequivocally and for the record that Antonia Okafor played no role—at least no more so than thousands of other college students—in the passage of Texas’ campus carry law.

I’ve been with this organization for years. I’ve seen this group defeat a campus carry ban in Colorado and advocate for the successful passage of campus carry laws in over half a dozen states. The real hero of campus carry in Texas never publicly took credit and has quietly moved on to other endeavors, out of the spotlight of activism, including motherhood.”

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 ABOUT STUDENTS FOR CONCEALED CARRY — Students for Concealed Carry (SCC) is a national, non-partisan, grassroots organization comprising college students, faculty, staff, and concerned citizens who believe that holders of state-issued concealed handgun licenses should be allowed the same measure of personal protection on college campuses that current laws afford them virtually everywhere else. SCC is not affiliated with the NRA or any other organization. For more information on SCC, visit ConcealedCampus.org or Facebook.com/ConcealedCampus. For more information on the debate over campus carry in Texas, visit WhyCampusCarry.com or tweet @CampusCarry.