CA SB 707 - Prohibits CCW Firearms on School Grounds

Two days ago Governor Brown signed SB 707. SB 707 prohibits people who have been issued a license for a concealed weapon (CCW) from carrying on school grounds in CA. Previously a person with a CCW could carry on school grounds. The new law carries the same penalties for firearms as it does for ammunition. The new law does not apply to firearms or ammunition that is in a locked container within a motor vehicle or within the locked trunk of the vehicle at all times.

As part of the new prohibitions, this new law would exempt retired police officers. This tactic of exempting police and retired police from gun laws has been a tactic to either gain support, or avoid protest from the law enforcement community which is a strong lobby in CA.

In the 2002 case Silveira v. Lockyer decided at the 9th circuit a similar issue. In that case, there was a provision of the CA assault weapon ban that also exempted retired police officers. This was pre-Heller so certain constitutional questions that were raised are no longer controlling. As part of that opinion, the 9th circuit conducted a rational basis review of the retired police officer exemption provision.

The retired police officer exemption was severed from the rest of the statute accordingly. (oddly, this is the only instance that I am familiar with that rational basis review failed)

Later, in 2010, Jerry Brown as Attorney General opined similarly:

Two questions for debate:
[ol]
[li]Should people who possess a valid CCW be prohibited from carrying on school grounds?[/li][li]Should retired police officers be exempted from prohibitions on CCW on school grounds?[/li][/ol]

As to the first question I think if a person has been authorized by the state to carry a concealed weapon and gone through the requisite hurdles and background checks associated with that permit, then there should not be a general prohibition for all school grounds. I think this question turns on whether all school grounds are construed as “sensitive places” as mentioned in Heller. All of the rationale that would apply to bear in general would apply to a person outside their home whether on school grounds or not.

As to the second question, I think the holding in Silveira stands and this new law attempts to create a separate class of people treated differently and would run afoul of equal protection just as the same provision did in Silveira. Gun laws that exempt retired police are a violation of the constitution’s 14th amendment. The law should be struck down as unconstitutional.

Personally, I’m OK with #1, but don’t know about the constitutionality. I’ll leave that up to the justices.

For #2, absolutely not. I’m sorry, but being a cop doesn’t give you special rights when you retire.

I think these are examples of gun laws that make little sense and probably do no societal good. The only chain of events where this law does any good would be:

  1. A person with a CCW license enters school grounds carrying a gun concealed
  2. That person is going to commit a crime with that gun at the school that day, or some day in the future OR they have elsewhere committed a thus far undetected crime with that gun
  3. That person is detained by police and arrested

I could talk about it at length but I think a reasonable person will understand this nexus of events is instead very rare. Much more commonly a person who is bringing a gun to a school to shoot someone is carrying illegal (often the case when street violence from the outside spills into an inner city school), most people who shoot at schools are I believe too young to legally get CCWs in any case. In other cases where the shooter is an adult who could legally get a CCW, the rest of the scenario doesn’t work either. Adam Lanza walked up to a school that he probably knew did not have a police officer present, and shot his way in through the front door with a rifle. He wasn’t carrying concealed, and didn’t care about concealing his firearm. He knew that he would be inside killing people before anyone had a chance to react to seeing him coming with his gun, so concealment was not a concern.

At Columbine I believe they did have their guns hidden as they walked onto campus but drew them and started shooting fairly quickly. Columbine did have a police officer at the school, but it’s a really big school and they only had one. I don’t know, but I’d imagine given their overall planning they generally made sure to avoid him and also to avoid having their guns drawn around him until after they began shooting (he did exchange fire with them from outside the school at one point, after the shooting had already progressed.)

I don’t think in general there’s any real societal good in tons of people carrying guns, or teachers with CCWs carrying guns or etc. But I also don’t believe it causes much if any harm in this context and these geographic CCW bans I think do very little to deter crime meaningfully.

How about

  1. A person with a CCW license enters school grounds carry a gun concealed

  2. That person had no intention of causing any problem that day, but got really pissed off over something during the day and ends up shooting someone.

A lot of states have passed laws that exceed the Law Enforcement Officers Safety Act. As both a retired and current LEO I doubly benefit from that law yet opposed it. I think it violates both the 14th & 10th Amendments as I do any laws that create a protected class of people.

But I also think requiring any form of permit or license to carry a firearm violates the 2nd Amendment. So any state laws that require that should be struck down first.

Notice #2 says “That person is going to commit a crime with that gun at the school that day”, it doesn’t say “plans to”, so scenarios where they would later “get mad and shoot someone” would be covered. But I think that is still a very low statistical chance of happening. I don’t think most people who are on school campuses tend to get mad and start killing people randomly. I think it’s a fairly rare occurrence, remember we aren’t talking about kids here but the adults. Kids do get in fights a lot but they can’t legally get a CCW.

Most States CCW age is 21 (maybe all states?), so this would even exclude most college students on college campuses. Places where arguments escalate to a CCW holder doing violence are often places that serve alcohol or similar such gatherings. Many states ban concealed carry if you’re drinking alcohol or are in a place that serves alcohol for this reason, for example.

Like I said, I’m not broadly in favor of people walking around with guns all the time. But I think the specific geographic bans are a situation where you’re criminalizing real edge case behavior for no real reason. I’m generally not a fan of this sort of “bureaucratic creep” type of gun control; additionally I’m not usually in favor of laws that make a criminal of someone doing something otherwise legal just because his left foot lands on a piece of land that is part of a school campus, which is what these laws do.

I’m broadly in favor of the practice of facilities being allowed to set their own policies on what is allowed in and what isn’t, and violations of said law being considered trespassing. I’m not in favor of turning trespassing into a felony like this. Jerry Brown struck down some drone laws earlier this month because he said existing criminal statutes cover this already–I would argue the same applies here.

Banning guns from school grounds is so pointless that it borders on being a sick joke.

It makes for a target rich environment.

Are you saying that you think the intent of the law was to create a target rich environment?

May not be the intent, but that is the result.
Have you noticed mass shooting never happen a gun club meetings, NRA picnics, gun stores, or police stations?

Yeah, this will surely stop criminals from carrying concealed guns on campus.

Except for that police station in Detroit where four officers were shot.

And the guy in NJ who grabbed an officer’s gun and opened fire.

The officers in Lakewood, WA weren’t at the station, but the shooter walked into the coffee shop and opened fire on the four of them and walked out without shooting at anyone else or taking any money.

What was the target in those three shootings?

The people who commit mass shootings aren’t angry at NRA members and random strangers at the gun range. They’re angry at the people at their school, their workplace, and police. They target what they’re angry at.

The shootings at gun rangesand gun shows are accidents so hey, no charges filed!

I think it’s fair to say that shootings, or incidents of life threatening violence can happen pretty much anywhere. I have yet to see a school in suburbia set up such that it would protect against a person intent on doing harm.

In CA, a person is required to demonstrate “good cause” to receive a CCW. This is a subjective standard, and can be used by a local sheriff to approve or deny a permit for virtually any reason. My position would be that for any reason that is used in favor of granting a permit in CA, this reason applies to when the license holder travels to a school just as much as when the license holder goes about their normal day. School grounds provide no special talisman against people intent on doing harm and any justification that the state has approved for carry in other places would apply equally there. There is no reason for the state to think a person should be authorized to carry a firearm all the places they go, except at a school where all the sudden they become extra dangerous.

In any case, the number of people with CCW permits in CA is quite low, per capita. This new law creates new ways to turn unsuspecting people into felons. I suspect it was at least partially designed to frustrate CCW holders from carrying because it becomes impractical to do so when they travel to pick up their kids.

“Unsuspecting” is a poor choice of words, I think. I am frankly shocked that in California of all states you can carry on school grounds. And it doesn’t really make sense to ascribe this particular gun law to ulterior motives (though certainly there are other gun laws that seem to fit that category). We ban all sorts of things on school grounds that are okay elsewhere. We create sentencing enhancements for selling drugs *near *school grounds.

If you have, it’s because you’re stupid. Apparently you also didn’t hear about that Chris Kyle dude.

I’m of two minds. First, people who are CCW permit holders are generally not the problem when it comes to gun violence, and this change will literally prevent nobody from bringing a gun onto school grounds with ill-intent, while causing law abiding citizens to potentially run afoul of the law without improving school safety.

OTOH, if the law had been created like this initially, i.e. Schools are Gun Free Zones, no CCW Exception, I wouldn’t have batted an eye, it would have made complete sense insofar as whatever limited sense Gun Free Zones make to begin with.

I’d reconsider a bit if there were incidents where a CCW holder brought a gun to school with law-abiding intentions, and the whole thing went to shit as a direct result of a gun being at school legally.

Note, I am not a gun-rights guy, but some of these laws make a lot of hay without changing the landscape much.

Firearms are prohibited at the schools I’m familiar with here in Tennessee (I would say all schools, but I don’t know). I’m a little surprised that they weren’t in California until now.

I have no problem with it. Who is affected by this the most? Millions of K-12 parents. In a sea of children, you don’t need a bunch of dumbasses walking around with a pistol in their shorts. I say that as a lifetime shooter and former CCW carrier (i didn’t renew it, don’t like carrying a gun). I’ve been around enough dumbasses with a gun that everyone is a dumbass until proven otherwise. And as a parent, I see a lot of dumbass parents. Now I’m imagining them walking down the same hall as my daughter and they’re carrying a gun. Fuck that.

Why should retired LEOs have any special priviledges in regards to carrying guns? They’re retired.

I generally favor gun rights, and though I disagree with most gun control laws, I can at least understand stand the goal, even if I disagree with it, or at least the intention if I think it will fail to achieve that goal. That said, I just plain don’t understand the logic of gun-free zones. Yes, mass shootings in places like schools tend to get a lot of press and cause more widespread panic, but mass shootings can, and do, happen essentially anywhere.

As such, if there is legitimate concern that CCW holders are a real threat, then we should be reconsidering how they’re issued so that those holders are generally trusted, or reconsider the whole idea altogether. I really just don’t get the idea that someone intent on committing a mass shooting would care AT ALL whether or not the law says he can carry in the location he intends to carry out his act.

Without even addressing whether or not someone carrying may or may not be able to step in and stop or lessen the impact of a mass shooting, it still seems as though it puts an undue burden on these people that we’ve trusted to carry in any number of other places. As mentioned upthread, what happens if someone has a CCW and carries everywhere but then goes to pick up his kid at school?

Moreso, I’m not really sure how this can be enforced. In many government buildings or installations, there’s armed guards, and sometimes even metal detectors. There’s an actual perimeter that presents some sort of a barrier to someone intent on causing harm. But I’ve never been in a school that I’ve seen remotely the level of security that I would think anyone intent on getting a gun on campus to cause harm would have the slightest bit of difficulty breaching. As such, it again, seems to cause a burden on the law abiding citizen without actually preventing a criminal.

No. If we don’t trust the average CCW holder who would be likely to carry, why should we trust a retired LEO who may be well out of practice even? What about former military or other people who may be well trained in using a gun? Why do they get a preference just based on the job they used to have? Hell, I don’t even think a current LEO that is off-duty should get an exemption.

Frankly, in my view, we should either trust a person to carry everywhere or we shouldn’t trust them to carry at all. As a shooting can happen just as easily at a church, a grocery store, a mall, a park, a gas station, etc. as it can at a school or other government property. If there is some greater pressing need to prevent those people we trust to carry from carrying in a specific place, then it’s worth having the security there to enforce it.

What about the scenario where the CCW holder never intends any harm, but uses his weapon in an attempt to defend against some threat, and hits innocent bystanders in the process?