I got quoted last week in the Houston Chronicle’s Pearland blog Ultimate Pearland last week. We have had two guns on school grounds situation come up in the last year. In both cases there were adults involved and in both cases there were no charges filed by the authorities. I have had a lot of folks ask me what the law is on guns and schools. The main law is the Gun-Free School Zones Act implemented as part of the 1990 Crime Act. 18 U.S.C. § 922(q). It reads in part:
(A) It shall be unlawful for any individual knowingly to possess a firearm that has moved in or that otherwise affects interstate or foreign commerce at a place that the individual knows, or has reasonable cause to believe, is a school zone.
(B) Subparagraph (A) does not apply to the possession of a firearm—
(i) on private property not part of school grounds;
(ii) if the individual possessing the firearm is licensed to do so by the State in which the school zone is located or a political subdivision of the State, and the law of the State or political subdivision requires that, before an individual obtains such a license, the law enforcement authorities of the State or political subdivision verify that the individual is qualified under law to receive the license;
(iii) that is—
(I) not loaded; and
(II) in a locked container, or a locked firearms rack that is on a motor vehicle;
(iv) by an individual for use in a program approved by a school in the school zone;
(v) by an individual in accordance with a contract entered into between a school in the school zone and the individual or an employer of the individual;
(vi) by a law enforcement officer acting in his or her official capacity; or
(vii) that is unloaded and is possessed by an individual while traversing school premises for the purpose of gaining access to public or private lands open to hunting, if the entry on school premises is authorized by school authorities.
The way I read it, don’t bring a loaded gun on school property unless you are in law enforcement or crossing school grounds with permission to get to your deer lease or duck blind. (We don’t do a lot of hunting here in Pearland so this is probably not much an issue.) According to the first Ultimate Pearland article, police determined that it was a mistake on the part of the Dell employee and did not pursue the matter further. He did not “knowingly possess” the gun on school property.
>>>Tom is a law school buddy and gun rights activist. He is correct that the court did find the original law to be unconstitutional. It was amended and has stood for about 10 years. Still, unless you have the resources to be a test case all the way to the supreme court, I stand by my comments above. As to whether the gun was loaded, the Pearland Police were unable to determine at the time of the report so this element was also not met.
Was it loaded?
The federal law you cite is unconstitutional in two ways. First, Article I, Section 8’s commerce clause cannot be stretched this far. A law like this has already been struck down under U.S. v Lopez, and this law is not significantly different than that struck down. Firearms possession has nothing to do with regulation of commerce among the states.
Second, this federal law is a violation of the Second Amendment’s right to bear arms.
The state statute is still a violation of the Second Amendment and the Texas constitutional provision protecting the right to bear arms. (This assumes that the Supreme Court will soon properly recognize that the Second Amendment applies to the states via the Fourteenth Amendment.)
Practically, schools are defenseless victim zones now. Crazies and terrorists know they can go to a school and get no significant resistance.
After terrorist attacks against their schools, Isrealis put a practical stop to it by allowing adults at schools to be armed.
For the life of me, I do not know why we leave our children and faculty and staff at schools as sitting ducks for whatever crazies or terrorists may choose to attack them.