VA Supreme Court Upholds The George Mason University Building Gun Ban – Good And Bad News
Covington VA –-(Ammoland.com)- Yesterday the Virginia Supreme Court ruled that the George Mason University gun ban was constitutional because it was narrowly tailored and applied to a school or government building or special event.
It does not ban lawful carry outside of the school buildings.
The bad news is, of course, that the GMU ban was upheld. One key question that was NOT appealed to the Supreme Court was if GMU was even allowed to CREATE such a ban under Virginia law.
The Court only ruled on whether the ban, however it got put in place – rightly or wrongly, was constitutional.
The good news is that for other public universities and colleges, such as VCU, which have a gun ban outside of their buildings and special events, those bans have been **effectively** invalidated.
However, they won’t actually be invalidated until the university or college has been taken to court.
For GMU law-abiding gun owners, including students, can have a gun outside of the school buildings or special events constitutionally, including stored in a vehicle. For other universities or colleges the same won’t apply until a court rules their ban to be invalid. I would be quite surprised if any of those schools were to even attempt to enforce their ban outside of a school building or special event as they are virtually guaranteed to lose in court. I’m betting that they keep their bans on the books to intimidate the unknowing, but do so without any attempt at actual enforcement.
This isn’t necessarily over, either. A new lawsuit can explore many areas of the legality of the ban that the previous suit did not.
Attorney General Cuccinelli said last year that when the suit was over he would explain why he sided with GMU and didn’t abstain from defending GMU (an outside counsel could have been used to do so). I will advise when we know more on this.
About:
Virginia Citizens Defense League, Inc. (VCDL). VCDL is an all-volunteer, non-partisan grassroots organization dedicated to defending the human rights of all Virginians. The Right to Keep and Bear Arms is a fundamental human right. Visit: www.vcdl.org