Jessie
A new state law expanded the places where guns may be carried by people with new “enhanced” concealed carry permits. More than 3,000 people have such permits and, by gosh, they want to take advantage of the new law by toting heat in Little Rock City Board meetings, the state Game and Fish headquarters and other places where signs still say no guns allowed.
The gun zealots are right. The law is the law. You can now take a gun, if you have the proper permit, into City Hall. How the city can claim this is an unsettled question is beyond me. Even more inexplicable is the apparent belief that the Game and Fish Commission can rule its building off-limits to enhanced permit holders with guns. This is an intriguing part of the story. If a gun nut challenges the ban, will Game and Fish defend by citing its constitutional independence? That’s a “third-rail” issue that has generally been avoided in state government until now, but it has a huge related part. If Game and Fish is constitutionally independent as to gun laws, so, too, are colleges and universities. If Game and Fish can tell the gun toters to go to hell, citing independence, so, too, could the colleges.
Maybe this is just a signage dispute — a need to update the signs to explicitly note the exception for certain