Firearms Owners Against Crime
Institute for Legal, Legislative and Educational Action
Institute for Legal, Legislative and Educational Action
In the very early morning hours on July 20, I was in Aurora preparing to fly out of Denver International Airport when, standing at the gate, I pulled up the terrible news on my mobile telephone. As a Colorado resident since 1989, I was reminded of the day in 1999 when I rushed to pick up my sons from their Jefferson County public schools after gunmen invaded Columbine High School.
I thought as well of a snowy December day in 2007 when a gunman murdered missionaries and church-goers in Arvada and Colorado Springs. As in the hours following those tragic days, much remains unknown about the murders and the man who commited them; soon we will know more than we ever would have wanted.
Likewise, as occurred following those tragedies, yesterday, even before my flight landed on the East Coast, there were declarations by some, including New York City's Mayor Michael Bloomberg, that guns, gun-ownership and Second Amendment rights are the reasons for these tragedies.
I write this in the darkness of Saturday's early morning hours knowing that, because the organization I lead defends the rights of law-abiding citizens to exercise their federal and state constitutional rights to keep and bear arms and, if they qualify, to carry concealed weapons, we will be described as part of this alleged "national problem." Such accusations ignore, not only that gun rights are supported overwhelmingly by the American people, but also that the Supreme Court of the United States affirmed those rights in two landmark rulings in 2008 and 2010. (In the latter case, Justice Alito cited to our brief.)
Furthermore, earlier this year, in a case we brought on behalf of Students for Concealed Carry on Campus and three Colorado students, a unanimous Colorado Supreme Court upheld the Colorado Concealed Carry Act, which allows those who qualify to carry firearms throughout Colorado — with four specific exceptions: locations prohibited by federal law, K-12 schools, public buildings with metal detectors and private property. The court overruled attempts by the University of Colorado to set its own policies and bar concealed carry weapons and the exercise of Second Amendment rights on its campuses.
It appears that Cinemark Holdings Inc., owner of the theater where these murders took place exercises its rights as an owner of private property in Colorado to bar those who hold concealed carry permits from exercising their rights in its theaters. As a result, law-abiding citizens, including owners of concealed carry permits, who were in the theater that dreadful night were unarmed and thus unable to defend themselves and their fellow movie-goers from the murderous attack visited upon them.
Opponents of the Second Amendment and concealed carry laws call the areas created by Cinemark's decision "gun-free zones." They are not. As we discovered to our great horror in the early morning hours of July 20 and as we have discovered in the past, they are free only of the guns owned by law-abiding citizens.
William Perry Pendley, an attorney, is president of Mountain States Legal Foundation.